Multidisciplinary Aspects of Design

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

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2. OBJECTS

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Beyond the Beauty-Utility Diatribe

      Towards New Aesthetic Categories for the Eco-design

      • Open Access

      Elisabetta Di Stefano

      Abstract

      The aesthetics of industrial objects has traditionally been framed by the diatribe opposing beauty and utility. Modernism has privileged a simple but functional aesthetic, following the motto “less is more”. In the second half of the twentieth century, new aesthetic categories emerged that enhanced playfulness, irony, and memory. At the turn of the century, industrial production faced the challenges of environmental sustainability: this is how ecodesign has come about. Originally quite a niche, this new trend is now practiced by many brands. Design today is geared towards natural fibres and recycled materials, reconciling beauty with the ethics of responsibility. Given these premises, this essay aims to outline a theoretical framework for the aesthetics of industrial objects, which goes beyond the useful Vs beautiful dialectics. In this regard, centre stage is taken by the notion of frugality. Already prominently featured by the sociological and anthropological debate, this notion is now also part of the architectural discourse (see the Manifesto for a Happy and Creative Frugality). As it combines beauty, health, and well-being, frugality provides an aesthetic-functional category, and it can notably provide a theoretical model for the production of sustainable objects and clothes. Nevertheless, the challenges faced by design in the ecological transition are broader. They concern in fact a different way of relating to the environment and designing lifestyles. In this regard, frugality can also become an ethical-aesthetic measure of life and a healthy way of inhabiting the world.

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   3. “The Useful-Beautiful Couplet”: On the Aesthetic Appraisal of Designed Objects

      • Open Access

      Jane Forsey

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   4. Imaginative Object and Mimetic Object

      • Open Access

      Andrea Mecacci

      Abstract

      The mimetic and imaginative dimension of the object defines the very essence of objects and their use. Their interaction is seen in an exemplary way in that specific object with which every human being begins their relationship with reality: the toy. The aesthetics of the toy thus makes it possible to ascertain how mimesis and imagination cooperate and/or conflate in the constitution of the object. To investigate this dialectic, the essay examines Alma Siedhoff-Buscher’s toy Bauspiel: Ein Schiff in which imagination becomes the center of the child’s user experience. Leaning on a number of theoretical considerations on the toy, from Plato to Benjamin, the essay seeks to emphasize the aesthetics of toy as a space of creative freedom even in its opposition to the mimetic declination of the object understood as the adult’s ideological interference in the child’s world. Imagination, expressed in play, thus becomes the configuration of a possible world that, in Siedhoff-Buscher’s perspective, the mimetic object would seem, on the contrary, to deny.

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3. OBJECTS. Objects Between Anthropology and Material Culture

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Seaweed Fabrics for Fashion Design. A Field Research Experience

      • Open Access

      Paolo Franzo

      Abstract

      The essay addresses the reasons why fashion design is manifesting an increasing interest in the marine environment as a context where to identify new materials for fashion, focusing on the particular case of seaweed. Through a field research, which involved MA fashion students at Università Iuav di Venezia, it is possible to demonstrate how an object such as seaweed fabric is not only a response to the need for new sustainable materials for fashion, but it is also interpretable through the framework of new materialism in a posthuman perspective. These fabrics, perceived as vibrant, represent a stimulus to redefine fashion design and its relations with environment, territories, people, and bodies. In the experimentation with seaweed, nature becomes raw material for constructing aesthetic and cultural imagery in a multispecies landscape.

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   3. Material Objects as Dispositive of Memory

      • Open Access

      Toufic Haidamous

      Abstract

      This manuscript narrates a pedagogic experience in a Furniture Design course at the American University in the Emirates (AUE). Senior students enrolled in the Interior Design Program tackled a studio project which was about designing a piece of furniture inspired by a pavilion of their choice pertaining to Dubai World Expo 2020. The direct learning outcomes were assessed through technical drawings and three-dimensional printed physical models scaled one tenth proceeded by real scale prototypes of the chairs. The indirect outcomes are considering these material objects, the furniture items, as tools of memory, holding symbolic and cultural connotations. The design process would allow a space of reflection on contemporary practices and rethink prototypes as tools for analysis and research. Beyond functionality and aesthetics, objects become means of communicating personal findings, translating urban, architectural, cultural, and social attributes. This research will demonstrate through combined research strategies how products of the real and the imaginary give material form to memory.

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   4. Objects Between Material Culture and Visual Culture

      • Open Access

      Loredana La Fortuna

      Abstract

      What happens to a squeezer, a coffee maker, a corkscrew, when they leave the kitchen and become part of a film set? What happens when material culture is transformed into visual culture? What new roles, meanings and connections to the subject, do objects find themselves constructing in the content continuum of virtual media?

      This paper attempts to answer, albeit partially, these questions by using a specific case study, namely the analysis of the presence of some of the most famous Italian design objects, the kitchen objects by Alessi, within the American filmography of the last twenty years.

      The ultimate aim is to reason in terms of meaning and narrativity according to the methods proposed by sociosemiotics and cultural studies, in order to identify new characteristics and functions that design can perform within an experiential context that is already dominant: the world of images.

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   5. Puppets’ Tales. New Design Perspectives for a Multimedia Archive of a Humanity’s Intangible Heritage

      • Open Access

      Vincenzo Maselli

      Abstract

      In 2008 UNESCO has recognized Puppets as expressions of intangible cultural heritage and, since then, thirteen traditions from around the world have been included in the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. In the last decades puppets have been object of study and cultural fascination. This paper aims at suggesting an unprecedented perspective in reading, displaying and narrating this priceless intangible cultural heritage, by both outlining its aesthetic, and symbolic values, and enhancing its processual and material features. These thoughts open a research path that applies the point of view and the tools of multimedia design to tell the narratives, the craft and production traditions of objects that have crossed the history of humanity. The aim is to create a multimedia archive filled with audiovisual artefacts produced by hybridizing documentary media (photographs, videos and interviews) with fictional productions (drawings, scripted dialogues and animated sequences). To test the validity of using hybrid languages and visual codes a didactic experiment will be described. Students of a Multimedia design class were asked to design an archive of audiovisual artefacts that stage under a new perspective the cultural roots, materials and production processes of a tradition worthy of being visually narrated.

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   6. Anonima Castelli. Objects, Design and Cultural Heritage

      • Open Access

      Dario Scodeller

      Abstract

      Anonima Castelli’s historical archive is an interesting resource for studying the industrial production of furniture in Italy between the 1950s and the 1980s.

      This article aims to illustrate a preliminary study for a research project dedicated to the archive and the historical production of the Castelli company. The drafting of the research hypotheses was preceded by a few educational experiences carried out as part of the Degree Course in Design at the University of Ferrara, organised in collaboration with the company; these experiences confirmed how worthwhile these archival sources were for inspiring the creative process.

      The thesis asserted here is that, as well as historicising the phenomenon of Italian design based on documentary sources, company archives are also able to encourage the revival of production processes with the aim of re-issuing the objects present in historical catalogues.

      This way, the original project designs become documents that are useful both for historians and for designers and entrepreneurs interested in making these “memories” operational again.

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4. OBJECTS. Political and Social Value of Objects

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Through the Mirror. Concept Maps to not Lose (One’s Way Between) Objects

      • Open Access

      Silvia Berselli

      Abstract

      This study delves into the relationship between the subject and things by regaining the anthropological and cultural values that have become embedded in objects already theoretically investigated by other disciplines (philosophy, literature, history of art, cinema) but here presented together with the works of designers that from the 19^th to the 21^st century managed to give a voice to things. This presentation springs from multi-annual research undertaken by the author at the universities of Bologna and Parma. After selecting twenty-four everyday objects (like mirror, ring, chair, table, telephone, suitcase, door), the research carried out for each one an analysis of its symbolic and cultural values and required students to create a graphic concept map to be intertwined with other maps, therefore with other objects, in more complex structures. This essay focuses on one object, the mirror, in order to explain thoroughly the survey method. Delving into the cultural values of objects gives the material landscape that surrounds us a critical perspective, which is essential to the comprehension and the project.

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   3. For F☆ck’s Sake. The Political Narrative of Sex Toys in the Communication of MySecretCase

      • Open Access

      Silvia Biasetton, Noemi Biasetton

      Abstract

      In the last 20 years, the industry of sex toys has grown exponentially within the Western online market, giving life to new forms of communication regarding topics such as sex and sexuality. However, if on one hand the online sale of sex toys and its related communication allow (once again) the spread of political narratives, on the other they seem to reinforce an individual and self-determining conception of sex and sexuality which preclude its broader understanding within societal norms and omit forms of collective and shared practices related to such topics.

      To understand the consequences of this paradox, the paper will focus on sex toys as carriers of political narratives related to sex and sexuality, reflecting especially on the role of that online communication might have on their diffusion. To achieve this, the paper will take into consideration the visual communication of MySecretCase as a case study and analyze it through the visual methodology proposed by Gillian Rose [1, 2]. Through the analysis of the communication design strategies adopted by MySecretCase, we aim at interrogating whether—if confined in the virtual space—sex toys can still be considered as carriers of political and collective values, reflecting on the role of communication design in shaping the symbolic narrative around these objects.

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   4. Telephones in Italy, the Italtel Study-Case

      • Open Access

      Rosa Chiesa

      Abstract

      The primary objective of the narrative, which spans the 1960s and 1990s, is to verify the contribution of industrial design – through the objects it uses (telephone sets but also fittings) and in their implications of function, form and production [1] – as a lever both in the private market (which Italtel Telematica used) but also considering how, beyond the object, the investment was part of a broader strategy of expansion of the telecommunications sector in Italy. The telephone, an element of connection par excellence that accompanied the physical and immaterial transition from mechanical to electronic and digital technology, in its parallel evolution with the development of communications technology, turns out to be only a piece, albeit an emblematic one, an instrument of cultural and social representation that satisfies the functional, symbolic and communicative dictates of every era.

      The essay therefore proposes a reinterpretation of the encounter between a fundamental player in Italy, Italtel – formerly Sit-Siemens (IRI) – with one of the nascent forces of the 1950s, industrial design, the new discipline that, in the years of the economic boom, promised through ‘good industrial product design’ the achievement of market success. The role of design as a catalyst for innovation and as one of the main drivers of Italian innovation in the Sit-Siemen and Italtel entrepreneurial venture is thus argued.

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   5. Design and Self-reproduction: A Theoretical-Political Perspective

      • Open Access

      Alessio Fransoni

      Abstract

      Art, in the strictest sense, and industrial design, are associated with many other phenomena, activities, and objects in lists that constitute the field of visual studies. From this subsumption, the traditional hierarchical preeminence of pure or fine art over industrial design, and the corresponding disciplines that deal with them, seems to be reversed.

      As the means of recording and disseminating images of everyday life have further developed – and the visual domain of private and social spheres has been able to disproportionately expand its audiences – a self-reproductive function has gained space over the merely utilitarian, aesthetic, or symbolic function, meant in a traditional sense. It is precisely for self-reproductive purposes that the privileged ‘prop’ is not a work of art but a product intended for use.

      On this basis a design theory which takes this function into account can adopt a decisive task: it can offer a contribution to the delineation of a general political theory of visuality, that is completely different from a theory of the social use of images.

      Coherently with these aspirations, this essay puts four different objects through an ‘extended’ analysis: a type of 6th-century Attic kylix, the cradle of Napoleon’s son (1811), a cardboard cot of the 60s, and a ring light used for selfies and vlogging.

      The perspective unbarred by these broadened analyses is different than that which can be delineated on the basis of traditional classifications and forces a different set of questions the object needs to be asked.

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5. OBJECTS. Philosophy and Representation

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Everyday Design: The Aesthetic Dimension of Alternative Use

      • Open Access

      Monika Favara-Kurkowski

      Abstract

      The Functional Account of Design Aesthetic Appreciation (FADAA), a recent position on design in analytic aesthetics, attempts to establish a sui generis aesthetic theory of design that is somehow distinct from that of the fine arts. This account recognizes that, in evaluating the aesthetic dimension of design, not only form but also function and use are critical variables. However, FAADA has yet to question the status of being a user—usership—as well as the aesthetic strategies we use in our everyday interactions with designed objects.

      I will look into the possibility of broadening the FADAA debate on design appreciation by (1) acknowledging the role of the perceiving subject in interacting with design objects and (2) including instances of alternative use as possible critical use practices without diminishing the aesthetic significance of function. To this end, I will introduce the concept of “everyday design,” which refers to an interpretative act by the user that generates an excess of function in relation to the context of use and the user itself.

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   3. Digital Objects’ Aesthetic Features. Virtuality and Fluid Materiality in the Aesthetic Education

      • Open Access

      Lorenzo Manera

      Abstract

      The growing and ubiquitous presence of digital objects raises issues of interest from the points of view of both Aesthetics and interaction design. In fact, such issues concern the perceptual dimension that defines our relationship with digital objects, the reconfiguration of the sensitive experience that their development implies, their hybrid ontological status, and their possible role in developing innovative forms of aesthetic education combined with design thinking.

      In the contemporary debate, digital objects are intended – on the one hand – as designed objects that incorporate and employ digital technologies [1‐3].

      On the other hand, they are interpreted as virtual bodies, interactive digital images that become a phenomenon of the binary representation of an algorithm which interacts with a user [4]. Within the former perspectives, digital objects display a quality that broadly belongs to technical devices, meaning their openness to forms of interactivity, and their sensitivity to contingency. In the latter, the features of intermediacy and virtuality are considered the defining characteristics of digital objects. The growing complexity of digital objects is, in fact, re-defining the relationship between materiality and distance, provenance and pertinence, suggesting an interactive conception of agency that allows forms of aesthetic experience in which imagination, sensibility and intuitions can be displayed within relational structures. By showing the results of a research project focused on digital materials and their transformation, which involved children aged 8 to 11 years old, this contribution aims to discuss the possible role that such objects can play in developing new forms of aesthetic education.

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   4. The Value System of Objects Through the Interpretation of Photographic Language

      • Open Access

      Paola Proverbio

      Abstract

      The design object finds in photographic representation a way - parallel to that of graphics - to the indispensable process of design reading. Photographic research has long been intertwined with the process of cultural qualification of the design object. The project that photography brings to bear on design is a visual narrative which, through an immediately comprehensible language, stands as a true parallel narrative, interrelated, yet not necessarily coinciding altogether with that of the written word. The object begins to circulate through the different channels of communication - from corporate catalogs to advertising pages and magazines - reaching distant people and places, sometimes even before the physical object enters the channels of distribution. This symbiotic relationship means that the object is very often accompanied by a valuable wealth of images, documenting and communicating its value system and its design, production and commercial processes, enriched over time by the shots taken by several ‘hands’, that is, by different authors who offer the opportunity for a multifaceted reading of the product. This text intends to give an example of the added value that photography represents for design through a series of paradigmatic cases (such as Gio Ponti’s Superleggera or Ettore Sottsass’s Valentine), which traverse the history of Italian industrial design from its early stage.

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   5. Objects, Things, Hyperobjects. A Philosophical Gaze on Contemporary Design

      • Open Access

      Chiara Scarpitti

      Abstract

      Through an applied research project in the field of contemporary design, the essay identifies and illustrates the passage of three philosophical transitions: the idea of the object as a design project (Flusser, Sottsass, Mendini) – first transition -, crosses over to the realm of the thing (Heidegger, Bodei, Rigotti) – second transition – until it reaches the notion of the hyperobject (Harman, Morton), – third transition – involving human and non-human entities.

      Through reclaiming for design the possibility of becoming a trigger for divergent thinking, the object acquires new human and dialogic qualities. The transition from the object-function to the object-thought [1] transforms the meaning of the product to the extent that it is no longer a passive element of dialogical discourse but rather the triggering actor of that same process of confrontation. In this perspective, the object transforms from an exclusive commodity with normal function into a thing full of meaning and expressive possibility. Such objects are connected to the individual and the intellectual relationship they establish. From a posthuman perspective (Braidotti), they are narrative subjects of a reflection increasingly striving for a pluriverse coexistence beyond humankind itself. (Haraway, Caffo).

      The last transition, to the hyperobject, is illustrated through a design experience at the boundary between these three value transitions. The final hyperobjects designed have their primary meaning to interrogate and raise awareness around diverse relationships – with ecosystems, beyond the human – unhinging an outdated idea that sees the object forcibly relegated to the world of practical and tangible consumer commodity.

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