Re-think through and for the senses. Growing design and design with materials

Over last decades the role of materials in design has undergone a significant transformation, starting as given entities upstream of the project became themselves something to design. The inven- tion can therefore arise both from the quality of the idea as from the qualities of the material itself, in a convergence between design and science which gives rise to a dynamic process of socio-technological innovation. The contamination between different disciplines pushes the designer to overcome the current fragmentation of knowledge, bringing the results of scientific research out from libraries and laboratories, and making them accessible through artifacts, places, and services. The develop- ments in the relationship between design and materials determine a condition of overdesign, offering at the same time the possibility to rethink the design approach, shifting from material selection to designing with materials. The paper illustrates through some examples how the material can become input into the creative process of invention, and how its experiential exploration allows the designer to minimize the gap between theory and prac- tice and generate innovation. The design experimentation will require a hybridization between the deductive-logical-analytical methodology of the scientist and the designer’s inductive-expe- riential-synthetic approach, with the aim of embedding in the project both the technical-performative and the aesthetical-per- ceptual dimension. In a world characterized by an increasingly hulking materiality, the design challenge is to rethink material culture by implementing a radical paradigm shift within the design culture, overcoming the linear and retrospective problem-solving approach, and placing design within a circular process of contam- ination between disciplines, through which imagine the possible alternatives to the prevailing paradigms, balancing the role of the individual with the system he is part of.