PAD. Pages on Arts and Design

6-17

Authors: Gianni Montagna, Maria Antonietta Sbordone

The theme of issue 20 of PAD “Fashion and Textiles Reconstruction” is grafted onto the topicality of the emergency dictated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the aim being to discuss critical and innovative thinking that lead to new paths of meaning in the creative and productive areas of Fashion and Textiles. Current events have dramatically resulted in complex choices to deal with periods of crisis whose aspects – environmental, health, social, cultural, economic, etc. – are interconnected and feed, in times like these, inequalities and vulnerability, thus distancing the results and opportunities of an extended and combined intervention.

39-59

Authors: Kellie Walters

Coronavirus’ disruption to normalcy shows signs the fashion industry is changing in a way that will disrupt the trend cycle for fashion and consumer products. Production slowed in January 2020 due to supply chain strains, the globe shut down and stay-at-home orders kept fashion weeks from happening. Brands reflected on their previous calendars and extensive multi-season line releases creating a call from industry to slow down the fashion calendar and push towards key shows, focusing on impact over filling the calendar. Additionally, consumer conscious has changed in the course of 2020. Social justice, political activism, and human existence are impacting personal expression in the mass market. Consumers are not focusing on whether their aesthetics are on-trend and instead are ranging from flamboyance to practically. Fashion went digital, rooted in trend expression moving to social media. Combined with the fashion industry’s call to slow down, it is expected that there will be long term changes to the trend cycle. This paper begins by investigating decreased production and shifted consumer conscious will lead to a lasting slowed diffusion of innovation curve; then uses methods of aesthetic trend forecasting to dive into the aesthetic consumer foci after of 2021.

86-109

Authors: Sandra Regina Rech, Giovanni Maria Conti

Design is the basis of organizations’ innovation and sustainability process and an indispensable re-source for meeting short-term sustainability goals and transforming the long-term economic model. However, it is known that the current configuration of the organizational work ecosystem in the Fash-ion sector has been marked by a panorama of sanitary, social and economic instability. That said, the objective of this paper is to map the organizational ecosystem of work in the Fashion sector from a systemic perspective between the individual, organization, work environment, products, tasks, and tools in a post-COVID-19 scenario and of profound technological changes. Thus, it is essential to re-think corporate culture and organizational ecosystems through new models of collaboration and inno-vation between partners. The relevance of this study for the Design area is in determining strategies for stakeholders in the present, from the projection of future work scenarios in Italian fashion companies, as vectors of development and a balance factor in the relationships between people, objects, and the environment. The research approach was systemic-constructivist, and the methodological design included Grounded Theory and Triangulation.

130-151

Authors: Chiara Del Gesso

The current consciousness about the environmental impact of fashion request an urgent need for intervention on both the technological production and the processing plants in the textile sector; but these are not the only aspects to be considered. Focusing on an approach based only on the sustainability of materials and processes, and not considering the gears that move the fashion system, would lead to a symptom based solution that does not involve the roots of the problem. The intangible, social and symbolic aspects that invest the fashion sector have significant repercussions on material production and stimulate the phenomenon of fast-fashion. The purpose of this contribution is to individuate a further approach which looks at recent technological advances in the field of sustainability, not only as alternatives to production and processing in the textile sector, but aims to investigate its potential in aesthetic and semantic terms, to establish new correlations between material and immaterial aspects. Specifically, reference will be made to the field of biodesign, which considers the collaboration with living organisms as a design tool that, if applied to the textile sector, will allow energy efficiency savings and to reduce environmental impact, but also generate new ways of interaction, use and customization of clothing.

175-192

Authors: Renato Stasi, Margherita Tufarelli

This contribution aims to discuss “the paradox of sustainability” in the fashion system since it often represents exclusively a communication tool, which transmits more than has been done in the implementation of real programs towards social, environmental and economical sustainability. Juxtaposing the terms “fashion” and “sustainability” perpetuates a contradiction that “makes the expression sustainable fashion an oxymoron rather than a credible tool” (Ricchetti, 2009), or the current emergency condition, raising unresolved questions, places us in front of a total redesign of the system?

213-233

Authors: Roberta Angari, Gabriele Pontillo

The rapid rise of emerging issues, often linked to the absence of sustainable action, exposes society to unexpected and unwanted risks. Today, more than in the past, this condition of fragility places at the center of the design debate the need to build a critical point of view, concerning some production actions that still accept the inevitability of environmental damage, whose resolution is postponed to pursue economic growth. Only through responsible action will it be possible to predict the effects and design the remedies useful for reconciling the relationship between human beings and the ecosystem. In this perspective, it is the convergence between different disciplinary skills that offers a sustainable and effective response to urgency, shortening the supply chain that goes from creation to production of the artifact and reducing the gap between market and consumer. Thanks to the methods of Ethical communication and the techniques of digital manufacturing and prototyping machines, fashion, and more generally the textile sector, could lead to the creation of valuable products considered as communication tools useful for the common good of society, not only in socio-cultural terms but also in terms of sustainability and circularity.

259-281

Authors: Rossana Gaddi, Roberto Liberti

Within the scenario of contemporary design, we daily observe experiments to redefine the meaning and value of products and give rise to renewed consumer attitudes, with a more ethical approach, according to the logic of circular economy and inclusive practices. The territory takes value from the tradition and the identity of the place, the so-called genius loci, and becomes a symbol for local values through the enhancement of traditional knowledge. In this proficient competition between territories, design becomes the element of dialogue between different societies and cultures. Today, the prevailing system of the fashion industry has created many environmental, social, and ethical issues behind the glamorous facade. How to reduce fabric waste during the design process has become an urgent requirement for fashion designers, specifically in countries with an outstanding industrial production as India. Even while the country progresses with power looms and modern designs, India still continues to protect its handloom legacy, traditions and culture to sustain the craft and keep it revived. The essay tackles the duality between branding and environmental sustainability for a fashion project developed at GD Goenka University on the theme of capsule collections between textile tradition and green experimentation.

6-12

Authors: Marinella Ferrara, Francesco E. Guida

PAD dedicated the year 2020 entirely to women, their creativity and design action. The focus of issue 18, entitled “The Women’s Making”, was on the maker culture and its meanings. In this issue 19, the attention shifts to the field of Communication Design. The intention is to continue investigating the design contributions and views, expressions and cultural and political positions of women. We believe that the present issue can contribute to the international debate and widen its boundaries. The title of this second consecutive issue dedicated to women’s design intentionally quotes the text edited by M. Antonietta Trasforini, Arte a parte (2000). A collection of contributions that in its title wanted to highlight the marginality and omissions made against women artists in art history. This metaphor of the marginal place (“apart”) emphasises the “centre” partiality, that is to say of those who wrote history until now. This centrality of historical studies and its importance emerges in this issue of PAD, in which half of the essays have a historical approach.

40-58

Authors: Letizia Bollini

In recent years the focus on the role of women in the design world has opened up significant spaces for exploration and research. However, in worlds bordering on other disciplines such as Information Communication Technologies, STEM and Computer Science, i.e. the world that involves design in the digital field, the mapping of their contribution becomes blurred. The article addresses the problem of research and mapping the presence of women in the field of digital technologies and design according to a historical perspective. In particular, it addresses and analyses the research context and the lack of documentation and sources that often highlight not the absence of female protagonists, but rather the lack of their narrative. In particular, it suggests a revision focused on the (under)representation of women in knowledge gatekeepers, such as Wikipedia, or inside the community represented by tech and international conferences, as a symptom and need for a change of perspective.

88-108

Authors: Cinzia Ferrara

Thérèse Moll (1934 - 1961), a little known but by no means secondary figure, is part of the history of visual communication design in which she left a brief but lasting trace. Moll is enrolled at the School of Arts and Crafts in Basel where she meets important designers and teachers including Armin Hoffman, Emil Ruder, Karl Gerstner and Antonio Boggeri. Still very young, she receives an invitation to be a visiting designer at MIT in Boston. At the beginning of 1959, Thérèse Moll arrives in the U.S.A. and during her four-month stay she works with Jacqueline S. Casey and Ralph Coburn at MIT’s Office of Publications, radically modifying the MIT communication, while at the same time introducing to her American colleagues the modernity and experimentation of the Swiss school of which she too is a spokesperson. The grid system, the typography, and the asymmetrical composition are only some of the elements of the efficient machine for communicating represented by the Swiss school that, like Le Corbusier’s house was a machine for living, is a powerful and effective device that responds to a specific need and that improves our quality of life.

145-169

Authors: Elisa Bertolotti

Ursula Ferrara’s body of animation work was made over the course of almost 40 years and lasts only 30 minutes in total duration. Working in solitude between Pisa and the hills of Lucca in Tuscany, she animates using her hands, frame by frame, painting and drawing onto large sheets of paper, cardboard and acetate, amongst other materials. She is recognized by many as one of the greatest living female animators, yet she is little-known outside of the animation community. Ferrara opened the doors of her studio during my doctoral research while she was working on three separate animated sequences for three independent documentaries. She was embracing the limited time available on these commissioned films as an opportunity to experiment with alternative techniques which would allow her to work faster and less inhibited, whilst remaining true to her own way of animating. Using primary research, collated through interviews and fieldwork, this article will reflect on Ferrara’s independent animation practice, the highly inventive ways she played with time and the various techniques and processes she employed during this period.

192-213

Authors: Anna Barbara

When dealing with women, stereotypes always exist. They manifest, mainly in two kinds of attitudes: the first resort to outdated models and the second address feminist models. Years ago, me and my colleague, the architect Indu Varanasi have been called to create a design-driven experience to promote the dialogue between different generations of women and female leaders in UAE. The setting was the Dubai Women Museum, founded by doctor Rafia Goubash, where is located the main collection of women stories and objects in Emirates. The project HERstory. A women design project in UAE aimed to promote a different kind of approach, the one that considers female thinking and practice as an inclusive model. HERstory project was a result of plural desires: of meeting and speaking with the women in the UAE, who are trying to change their world; of investigating their forms of dialogue, confrontation and expression; of using design as a tool for building dialogue, listening, creations. The idea was to build a strong contact between women living in UAE, asking them to use their senses as a meta-language for an authentic communication. The project, and the final exhibition, was curated and designed by Politecnico di Milano together with the architect Indu Varanasi (IRDesign) and sponsored by Iguzzini Lighting Middle East.

231-247

Authors: Paola Ciandrini, Francesco E. Guida

From 9th to 28th of October 2020, Laboratorio Formentini per l’Editoria in Milan hosted the exhibition “PINK. Representations of Women and Women Graphic Designers”. The event, initially postponed due to the pandemic, was organised by the Aiap CDPG in collaboration with the Fondazione Mondadori and the Master on Digital Archives FGCAD held by the Università di Macerata and was curated by the authors (Francesco E. Guida and Paola Ciandrini) with Lorenzo Grazzani (Aiap CDPG). The exhibition opened the 9th of October 2020 with a round table attended by Annalisa Rossi (MiBACT Soprintendenza Archivistica e Bibliografica della Lombadia), Valeria Bucchetti (Politecnico di Milano), Raimonda Riccini (Università Iuav di Venezia) and Anty Pansera (President of the Association DcomeDesign).

6-13

Authors: Marinella Ferrara, Shujun Ban

Women empowerment and gender equality are fundamental goals of sustainable development. Since 70s until now much work has been made to deal with this issue, but the gender hierarchies are remarkably resilient, and gender gap continued to be in many parts of the world. All this require not to reduce the attention on the issue. Thanks to the creation in 2011 of the UN Women the international community has supported gender-related agendas to ensure women have a voice and participate in creating a more equal and safe world. An essential objective is to make visible the commitment of women in society and culture while at the same time making clear the male prejudice underlying traditional knowledge. It is needed to combat the difficulties that women still suffer made of Internal and external blocks like the following: the cultures that tend to undermine the confidence of women in their ability and to discourage from taking an interest in scientific, technical or entrepreneurial fields; the social pressures and gender roles that encourage women to retain the primary responsibility for the family and taking care activities as a free work; and the lack of female role models. Combining a commitment towards these needs and absolute confidence in the ability of women to make art, design, science changing the way we think about the world, this PAD #18 focus on women’s making and offers a broad overview of the path of women in crafting and design thinking, as a repertoire of behavioral patterns, proactive attitudes, and abilities models which could be pursued, empower, or overpasses.

41-64

Authors: Vittorio Linfante

We Should All Be Feminists, the speech given in 2012 by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, became a fashionable slogan in 2017, having been printed on the T-shirts presented by Maria Grazia Chiuri in her first collection for Dior. An operation that also aimed to contribute to the redefinition of the female role within the fashion system. Even though Poiret has freed women from corsets and constrictions, it is thanks to Madame Grès, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, that a renewed relationship between dress and woman’s body has been questioned, opening the doors to the creations of Mary Quant, Krizia, Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo, Miuccia Prada, Consuelo Castiglioni and Phoebe Philo, to mention the most relevant. These figures all looked at woman’s body through cuts and formal and material experimentations by using a personal vision of style and a precise creative process. Far from being limited to gender discourse, the article intends to investigate, the evolution of the relationship between the creative process implemented by women designers and the fashion project. A dialogue that does not end in pure formal experimentation, but that succeeds in giving shape to new cultural and social values and, in defining fortunate entrepreneurial stories.

85-109

Authors: Roberto de Paolis, Umberto de Paolis

The general theme of this paper is the role of women in the development of business systems and in the creation and anticipation of design scenarios through invention products and registered models, in the women’s clothing sector, during the 20th century. The case we are presenting here to the scientific community is the result of an ongoing original and unpublished research study concerning a female entrepreneur and creative mind, Teresina Negri (1879-1974). During the course of her life, characterised by different forms of creativity, she was able, according to the different periods and the socio-economic context, to give the most appropriate response to the evolution of customs and behaviors, becoming emblematic and a pioneer of a way of positioning the female figure towards a proactive society. In conclusion, the discovery and the research activity about Teresina Negri are gathering a multiplicity of documentary sources all over the world, that incorporate innovative aspects and offer an original contribution to the theme of the role of women, in the recent past, in design creations and business history and are emblematic of a creative fervour that has been able to combine inventiveness and entrepreneurial ability as well as social and economic affirmation.

146-172

Authors: Ana Julia Melo Almeida, Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos

This article analyzes the trajectory of designer and scientist Marta Erps-Breuer (Frankfurt, Germany, 1902 - São Paulo, Brazil, 1977) from her training at the Bauhaus to the work she performed at the Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology at the University of São Paulo where she contributed to pioneering research from the 1930s to the 1970s. We have mapped three axes that lead us to understand her trajectory: the training and workspaces she occupied; the migration from Germany to Brazil; and the social relations she established. Gender studies, which permeate our theoretical and methodological approach, provided us with fundamental contributions in the search for available sources and in the interpretation of the materials found. From this perspective, we seek through Marta's journey to make explicit the challenges present in the documentation of women’s work in the field of design.

196-214

Authors: Antonio Stefanelli

The article wants to be a contribution to the understanding of the methodology for the renovation of anonymous popular object that in the middle of the second world war Charlotte Perriand carried out in Japan and Clara Porset undertook in Mexico. Porset, following her expulsion from the island of Cuba because of her radical political positions, moved to Mexico and pursued her interest in furniture design. In particular, she collaborated with Luis Barragan, designing several objects for his architectures. While, Charlotte Perriand, who collaborated with Le Corbusier, moved to Japan in 1940, when the Ministry of Industry invited her to define new guidelines for the Japanese industrial production. Both of them have undertaken in-depth studies on material and immaterial local culture, taking into account people's history and way of life, analyzing craft products, raw materials and local processing techniques. They were able to merge local crafts and culture with the architectural thought of the moment, showing that there is no break between true tradition and modernity. They believed that beauty is in the harmony of popular objects, which are closer to people needs.

241-258

Authors: Vera Renau

Contemporary cities are often considered as a reflection of the society that inhabits in there. Urban planification has been historically shaped considering social, political and economic facts. But are cities designed contemplating everyone essentials and ways of life? How have gender studies and feminist perspectives influenced urban planification? Those questions are raised by Col·lectiu Punt 6, an interdisciplinary cooperative of architects, sociologists and urbanists, with different backgrounds, and all of them women, working in Barcelona since 2005. From a feminist perspective, going beyond traditional gender binarism and proposing an intersectional analysis, their theories focus on the consideration of daily life as a central concept in urban planning. This essay attempts to contribute to the dissemination of feminist urbanism theories and to illustrate how they have been progressively developed in the specific case of the city of Barcelona.

283-305

Authors: Cathy Lockhart

In Australia, despite comprising half of the design student population, women remain under-represented in the design world and rarely hold senior leadership roles or win high profile design awards. This qualitative research, focussing on the workplace experience of nineteen female industrial designers, explores how these women achieve success and the facilitators and barriers. Overall, success was defined as happiness, work-life balance and enjoyment and engagement with the design process; impact was also important, with one defining success as seeing a stranger using a product she had designed. Most found the industry to be male dominated and struggled to secure their first job, explaining the challenge of learning specific software programs and then developing the confidence and courage to actively contribute design ideas. A variety of different strategies was utilised to secure their first job, contacts, mentors and role models later empowering over half to develop their own design start-ups. The decision to become an entrepreneur was a conscious choice, enabling these women to follow their design passion with more flexible, parenting-friendly hours. This qualitative research provides some nuanced insights into how these women navigated entrenched gender stereotypes and traditionally masculine workplace norms. The findings suggest the need for more radical approaches to facilitating women’s recruitment, retention, and progression.

329-352

Authors: Melanie Levick-Parkin

This paper discusses how a close encounter with a woman’s making practice, when viewed through a critical feminist lens, can give space to a broader discussion on how female creative labour is viewed and valued. Drawing on a 2018 doctoral thesis titled ’How women make – exploring female making practice through design anthropology’, the focus here is firstly, on how conceptions of immanence in a making practice have implications for ontological concepts of agency and, secondly, on the re-working of normative identity positions within women’s different crafting and up-cycling practices. These in turn point to certain conceptions of the feminine in the public realm and how visual and material voice is perceived based on gender. Different opportunities for subversion materialise in the women’s work through the interplay of concepts of beauty, femininity, nature, decay and death. The discussion highlights excerpts of a series of close up vignettes, which combined ethnographic, auto-ethnographic accounts and reflections informed by feminist theory and critique.

367-376

Authors: Marinella Ferrara, Shujun Ban

Ross Stevens, architect, industrial designer of many mass-produced products – including washing machines (Fisher and Paykel), lawn mowers (Morrison), televisions (Thomson, Saba) and lots of stereos (Perreaux and Plinius) also as a co-owner of PureAudio – and professor of design is engaged to establish a globally recognized design research expertise on multi-material 3D and 4D printing, at the School of Design Innovation of the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In the MADE lab (Multi-property Additive-manufacturing Design Experiments) students enjoy being free to explore multi-material printing and experiment with new design solutions. Meeting him on the occasion of the last World Industrial Design Conference and Industrial Design World Expo (WIDC 2019 & IDWE) in China, we were fascinated by his way of promoting women's work in the area of new digital printing technology. He helped us to understand the perspective of female students to generate novel applications of the technology to form complex and highly customized multi-material structures, assemblies, and products biology-inspired that cannot be made by any other means. He draws an analogy of women weaving and 3D printing as a complex process that requires patience and sensitivities to things like color, texture, and tactile qualities of the fiber. Ross thinks those sensitivities empower women in relation to this new emerging technology.

5-16

Authors: Anna Mazzanti, Matilde Marzotto

Like the sailors, who for centuries have crossed their ways and their destinies plowing through the Mediterranean, this editorial marks a possible route between the different reflections proposed by the authors. Their essays are dedicated to the closed sea in all its complexity of the landscape with fluid borders, which has always been a space for sharing and exchanges, as well as a place of subtle dividing lines and dramatic human movements. Herein, the topic is investigated according to extremely varied critical approaches between art and design. Therefore, what brings together the authors is the attention to the complex and delicate space of the border and crossing, metaphorically furrowed in the essays from the points of view of authors, as contemporary Ulysses with skills and practices that were not easy to gather and at the same time distribute in chapters.

36-59

Authors: Matteo Aimini, Lucilla Calogero

The paper addresses a reflection and explores the intangible dimension of the Mediterranean Sea, in other words everything that lies beneath and above the surface of the water. Reasoning on how this hidden dimension is a well defined landscape outlined by many scientific studies due the complexity not always accessible. The attempt to draw a palimpsest of levels for the understanding of this liquid volume inevitably passes through the design of tools needed to understand and study the raw data and how it can serve to build a “physical story” useful to tell and reveal what is not perceptible to the naked eye. The effort is to hybridize the scientific disciplines of landscape architecture and data design, indeed the understanding of physical dynamics and how they can be returned in physical form, in order to open a strand of research in support of certain scientific disciplines such as marine biology, meteorology or physics of marine environments and so on. Moving from these premises and in order to validate the proposed, some examples are presented which give evidence of how data design and analytical sensitivity can merge starting from scientific assessments.

77-102

Authors: Alberto Bassi, Giuliana Califano, Tommaso Listo

The Mediterranean landscape represents an interface between two different shores, a skin dividing an inner from an outer space, a fullness from a void, which are generated by two symbolic ways of living and construction of space: the space of staying that is sedentary, solid, full and the space of going that is nomadic, fluid, void (Careri, 2006). This research proposes a reflection on how the territory’s surface is invested with meanings, playing the role of link between different languages and means of identity construction (Dal Buono & Scodeller, 2016), thus offering a double overview. On the one hand, on how the nomadic transhumance of several populations affects the creation of a new Mediterranean landscape and on new forms of living the individual and common spaces, which generate a different aesthetics and a new way of experiencing the city time. An unpredictable aesthetics that in some places becomes void, as in the abandoned and depopulated Mediterranean areas, while in others it gets full of new migrants thanks to resettlement measures. The void left by the old inhabitants, abandoned spaces waiting to be repopulated, residues devoid of an apparent function that get new meaning and become shelters for diversity (Clément, 2005): for plants, as well as for allochthonous people that driven by force majeure, move from one garden to another, generating a reborn and an increase in the biodiversity hotspots (Clément, 2011). On the other hand, we wish to investigate the role of design in its various facets, methodologies and contemporary tools as a means to foster the relationship between landscape and citizenship, to let them achieve its own identity representation and fill the socio-cultural void of the territory. The project’s practice can be a tool to trigger policies of self-determination of the imaginary, allowing those who live in the territory to be involved in making their own story, according to a sense of belonging when they make a representation of their community (Colafranceschi, 2015). Focusing on design actions and multiple case studies – such as urban regeneration labs, social cooking, social engaged art and participatory interaction practices through digital media – which have been able to generate and encourage relationships between different cultural, identity and aesthetic aspects of the Mediterranean area, sparking short and long term moments of contemplation, sharing and discussion.

133-159

Authors: Raffaella Trocchianesi

The paper deals with the enhancement of the Mediterranean identity in terms of visual communication starting from the landscape as the crucial aspect in creating a coordinated theme for the territory. In this context the landscape is read both as natural environment and as an extension and expression of the collective self (in anthropological and sociological terms), of a people’s culture and their way to relate with spaces. Therefore it is important – in the design approach – to isolate some identitary elements able to summarise the values, qualities and features of a territory. We are interested in communication design of Mediterranean visual identities and in the dynamics of building visual common codes. This research collects some case studies about the territorial communication field divided into three categories: Colours: in this category we can find those projects that are focused on the color as a visual code able to return the complexity of a place and its recurrent chromatic features.

183-205

Authors: Costanza Meli

Landscape is a containing and a contained space, an image space and a representation of space. Communities continuously interact with the landscape and in it. In this article, we will try to identify the trajectory within one of the landscapes that has posed the greatest number questions about the relationship between nature and culture over the centuries – The Mediterranean. We will do this with a non-linear perspective. We will make a journey that leads us to a reading of this space through a combination of different outlooks and experiences, like contemporary art and experimental museums, to affirm the impermanence that has always characterized the idea of the Mediterranean, and the necessity to continually reformulate its meanings. This article is based on the meetings I have had in recent years working as a curator between Rome and Lampedusa, within participatory artistic projects characterized by the dialogue between migrant people and local communities. The assumption of our article is the intersection of this Space consciousness with the aesthetics of engagement (Berleant 2004), through which artistic practices act in the anthropic landscape. This approach overcomes and articulates the meaning of site specific in the direction of a contextual practice that modifies the contexts in which it takes place and reformulates the geopolitical balances at the base of Western art. The practice of public artists will be presented through the example of a participatory project conceived in 2018 by the Bianco Valente duo in Palermo, for the exhibition Land of me. The works show the polysemy of this landscape: “Space of otherness, of confrontation and hybridization of identity” that build itself through experiences of dialogue and laboratory in which a shared creative practice can produce new narratives. The choice to introduce the works in mainly descriptive terms is due both to the lack of bibliography on such a recent project, and to my participation in the elaboration of the contents itself. The conversation with the artists for the drafting of the exhibition catalog highlighted the need to tackle very current and dramatic topics such as the experience of migration, in a simple way understandable by everyone.

231-255

Authors: Martina Marolda

“La matematica mi confonde. Come misura del mondo è strana./Per quanti conti si facciano qualcosa non torna mai pari./Due finestre fanno una vista? quattro muri sono una casa?”1 (D’Agostino, 2015). Art House is Adrian Paci’s family home transformed into a common, shared space, open to the ideas and cultural contributions of the art world, open to others and to the encounters within them. The concept of home, always dear to this artist of Albanian origin, finds here meaning and fulfilment here, thanks to an added value: a human element. The “four walls” of the house open up (not so much metaphorically, but above all physically, thanks to a series of large windows) and leave ample leeway to dialogue, to the exchange: “even if Albania is no longer as isolated as it once was, communication with the rest of the world is still difficult”, as Paci says, talking about the Art House project, conceived together with his wife Melisa Ballata, in his hometown of Shkodër.

5-11

Authors: Marinella Ferrara, Chiara Lecce

The Mediterranean scenario does not stop to attract our interest and attention. We believe it is essential today to generate a convergence of actions that promotes creativity and innovation in this region, looking at the future of youth, by breaking the barriers of differences and misunderstandings between the various national realities and making the most of the difference in understanding the other. PAD #16 issue deals with the design research and practices for the Mediterranean region, according to the vision of young creative innovators, in line with the previous #14 and #15 issues. It closes the trilogy of these last three issues to launch a new way of looking at the Mediterranean challenges. We decided to shed light on the potential of the new globalized generation who wishes to take control of their future. It is by supporting the innovation capacity of youth that we will be able to advance the actual Mediterranean reality and open new perspectives on the future.

35-57

Authors: Valentina Frosini

This paper presents a practice-oriented research on intercultural education, based on an interdisciplinary process shared with design, anthropology and pedagogy. On the basis of an exploratory case study, the aim of the research was to investigate whether and how design could contribute to the theme of intercultural education in terms of innovation in kindergarten (3-6 years), thanks to the design-driven method, which has been used in a more inclusive and extended version, the design-intensive innovation. The output of the research is a series of open-ended game-tools, designed to be part of the educational programs in schools and oriented to stimulate creative learning in terms of possibility thinking. The field research was conducted within the Scuola per l’Infanzia I Gelsi di Scandiano: in terms of methodology, the Reggio Emilia approach has been used to verify the learning effects of the proposals. Conclusions report strengths and weaknesses of the project practice.

80-101

Authors: Jomana G. Attia

This paper investigates the struggles faced by Design Entrepreneurs in Cairo. After using grounded theory, general challenges arose from the codes, yet in depth understanding of the communication problems between the entrepreneurs, the designers and manufacturers in a start-up. The study took place in Cairo, where the entrepreneurial ecosystem is still emerging along the past couple of years. Six entrepreneurs were interviewed. The results exhibit most of the problems faced within the start-up and the ecosystem, also challenges emerged in terms of dealing with designers and makers in the product development phases. Understanding the struggles and the failed and successful methods of solving them helps create a foundation for design entrepreneurship. When this foundation is better established, hopefully would allow the economic status in Cairo to flourish. Due to lack of documentation, this study aims to guide design entrepreneurs struggling in Cairo, acting as reference for some of the problems and their possible solutions.

124-135

Authors: Mona A. Marie, Ahmed Wahby

The Fatimid dynasty was established in the Tenth century in what is modern day Tunis. Their capital was founded in the city of Al-Mahdya from which they expanded their realm to encompass North Africa and Egypt. They founded Cairo in 969 AD and moved the capital to this newly established centre of what was the Fatimid Caliphate. The Fatimids were known to be a lavish dynasty with a lot of pomp and exuberance. They initiated a lot of cultural activities that are still part of the Egyptian inherited culture up till today. The Fatimids also had many exchanges and influences on Sicily and Southern Italy. The Fatimids as a shi’i dynasty have left a lot of religious buildings that are still standing and functioning today, however their secular architecture is long gone. Despite many accounts on the Fatimid double palaces of Cairo, the manzaras, and the amazing throne halls, none of these buildings survive today. Consequently, this paper focuses on reconstructing the Fatimid secular architecture through historical textual narratives in books and traveller testimonials and descriptions. A visual presentation of Fatimid secular architecture is achieved through creating illustrated frames that can serve in backgrounds in printed material, or studio setups for media purposes such as television series or movies. A meticulous frame of enquiry is used in order to define the characteristics of Fatimid secular monuments and details by comparing to neighbouring regions and styles of the time. Furthermore, building techniques and terminology were examined. The resulting data is transformed into a visual language using manual sketching techniques with colored pencil and ink and edited digitally using photo editing software.

157-178

Authors: Serena Del Puglia, Viviana Trapani, Laura Galluzzo

The article deals with design experimentation in the complex and composite field of design for the culture of the territory, aimed at enhancing the particular resources common to the Mediterranean areas, through an incremental and collaborative design methodology. The town of Salemi (TP) inherited an extraordinary concentration of cultural heritage from its history; in particular the preparation and display of the decorated breads for the Festivity of San Giuseppe, occurring on March 19th, which expresses a profound religiosity and a complex rituality, shared, handed down and recognized as an intangible cultural asset to be protected. In this territorial context, a vision aimed at encouraging increasingly wider cultural and tourist growth and interested in the quality of experience has led to the design elaboration and realization of an Ecomuseo del Grano e del Pane. This is an experimentation articulated through meetings with the various territorial actors, gathering experiences and testimonies, and laboratory activities. Together with the description of the project outcome, the article intends to describe and analyze the intertwining of the many aspects that have structured the design process, based on a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary approach “necessary” for cultural elaboration and looking at design as a multidimensional and relational discipline.