Design for Senses: Design for Well-being

This study is developed on two complementary research fields: Strategic Design and User-Centred Design. The culture of the Thermal Baths has an ancient tradition in Italy and in Europe since Roman civilization. Subsequently, as from the Middle Ages, this social and personal practice has been forgotten because of the catholic persecution of every physical pleasure – on the contrary in Islamic Turkey the Thermal Baths has endured and characterized in Hamman. Then, in the illuministic nineteenth century, the Thermal Baths regain a value as health-care places, before for elitarian consumption and then, after second post-war period, for mass consumption. Today this important cultural and environmental heritage, is enduring an economic-social evolution joining to a competitive supply of products and services to answer to the actual psycho-physical need of well-being. The sensorial condition of hyperstimulation, which we are subjected in contemporary societies, induces us to a research of freeing from itself. This research, not able to do without consumer goods, make us expect from objects other kind of stimulus directly conversing with senses without a rational cognitive experience. In the globalization of languages, this new design field - Design for the Well-being Objects - is closely linked to an individual perception of satisfaction which reflects the most intimate experiences for the definition of needs and instincs through semantic localization and object personalization. This is the theme of the research "Design for Senses" which I’m developing at the Industrial Design Faculty of University of Rome "La Sapienza" in partnership with Federterme - the association of Italian thermal SPAs - and some italian design-oriented companies. The paper recognizes the design role in the strategic activities to defining social and productive background cultural skills where Thermal SPAs act as Environmental Health Area; and it recognizes the design activities role in order to develop a product and service system for personal Well-Being while improving the quality of life.