Abstract
Contemporaneity requires the rethinking of theories and design practices that offer proposals compatible with the reconstruction of a multi-referential dialogue between companies, design, and territory and therefore the production possibilities. This contribution presents a design experience of soft surfaces inserted within the broader research strand of design surfaces and, specifically, belonging to the INMATEX materials research laboratory of the Polytechnic of Bari. From the generation of scales of material gradients that act as lenses capable of discovering the meaning of materiality when it passes through material relations, and which at the same time are metadesign tools for the discovery and contamination of local identity processes enhanced at a transcultural level, the concept of innovation is intended here not only to produce a new product but also to implement strategies aimed at improving the skills and processes already present in the company, which, through simple changes of meaning or applications, can make products unexpectedly innovative. Critical reflections are reached for contemporary design with the theorization of a place - or metaphysical place - of research, a materiolab described as a roving workshop, and of a figure of designer-researcher priest of the materials to whom is up to reason with and on the materials in their experimental potential. In other words, a figure with a complex baggage of tacit and non-explicit knowledge is emerging, the result of curiosity, attempts, experiments, skills, previous elements of a cultural, experiential, and professional nature, but also of unexpected epiphanies.
Presenters
Michele De ChiricoResearcher fellow, Project Cultures Department, Università IUAV di Venezia, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Design Management and Professional Practice
KEYWORDS
Soft surfaces, Materiolab, Territory, Processes, Design of materials
