Marinella FERRARA, Chiara LECCE

Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano

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Abstract
Due to the increased complexity of materials and production processes, the responsibility of the development of a design is often left in the hands of technicians and production personnel. This lack of knowledge about materials thus effectively creates a barrier between the designer and the product. Bridging this gap represents a challenge to designers and especially to the design schools. Designers cannot know everything but they can open their minds and develop a more conscious understanding of this new field of design practice starting from a cultural point of view. This paper wants to present a research promoted by the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano and funded by FARB (University Funds for Basic Research), for the creation of a Research Centre named MADEC, with the ambition of recognizing peculiarities of Italian Material Design Culture, and tracking their evolution in the contemporary era of “tailor made materials” as technological paradigm. The paper is divided into three parts: the first part concerns reasons, motivations and research state of the art; the second part describes in detail the research activities developed during the first year of the project; and the third part is dedicated to conclusions with some critical considerations and future actions.

Keywords
MADEC; Material culture; Italian Material Design; Transdisciplinarity; Creativity-driven Material Innovation Methodology.