PAD. Pages on Arts and Design

22-45

Authors: Carla Langella, Gabriele Pontillo, Roberta Angari

Over the last few decades, design has become part of the realm of food in an increasingly incisive way, with the designing of both functional and communicative products at the service of nutrition as well as of food itself. Design for food, through the interpretative filter of contemporary sciences and interdisciplinary experiments, takes the opportunity to consider the future scenarios of nutrition along with the possibility of finding adequate solutions to the increasingly stringent needs for well-being, health, and sustainability. In this perspective, the scientific literature underlines the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, whose antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, soothing properties, as well as the presence of vitamins, mineral salts, and fibers, constitute a precious heritage to be enhanced and translated into contemporary lifestyles, as they favor the prevention and reduction of various pathologies. This important baggage of scientific knowledge opens up new and unexplored fields of design experimentation for the discipline of design that is able to guide, convey and modulate the values and potential benefits of Mediterranean food culture through the design of artefacts that can be imbedded into everyday life, becoming an instrument for the treatment of psycho-physical well-being.

69-94

Authors: Claudio Gambardella, Ilaria Masullo

The Moroccan poet Mohammed Bennis writes that the Mediterranean “[…] is no longer just a historical and geographical entity […] it has turned into an idea, aspiring to reconcile its own peculiarities – that is, plurality, variety and diversity. […] Mediterranean culture embodied tolerance, dialogue, and open-mindedness. It was a song of migration and a shared imagination. It would reconnect what politics and economy would divide”. This cultural idea of the Mediterranean, that joins plurality, variety and diversity, can help to ease tension between two cultural territories that often lie apart and need reconnection, that is design and craftsmanship. The Mediterranean man has become skilled at building bonds, connections, bridges. This inclination makes for a gentle, yet deep harmonisation of “different worlds’’. There are no miraculous solutions, all we can do is patiently listen and understand those that appear as “islands”, kept apart by the sea. The paper, in its final portion, will describe the educational activities carried out both during an Industrial Design Laboratory – in the context of a Bachelor’s Degree – and in a few graduation theses where students designed porcelain items to be manufactured in Capodimonte, which forms part of the local production excellence in Campania. Regardless of its outcome(which was, by the way, indeed interesting), such an experience falls within the framework of a mediterraneanization of design culture, enabling it to build connections where there are none, and where separation seems irreconcilable.

125-152

Authors: Aybeniz Gökmen, Fatma Nur Gökdeniz Zeynali

Marriage is a significant part of almost every culture. As a cultural phenomenon, marriage consists of traditional patterns that connect material and spiritual culture and give it belonging to a culture. The dowry tradition, which is a common part of this pattern; includes all kinds of material items that are prepared, made, or purchased consisting of cultural-specific spiritual elements for newly married couples to use in their new lives. The concept of dowry, which is evaluated within the scope of intangible cultural heritage, is a composition and collection of objects that carry a lot of cultural information. Due to its structure, the dowry concept, which refers to the practice of making, purchasing and exhibiting, is encountered in many cultures around the world. However, this practice, which is completely shaped by cultural knowledge, carries traces not only from ethnic differences but also from socio-cultural changes. In this context; it is aimed to concretize and discuss the results of the interaction of dowry, which is a long-established tradition of productivity and creativity, with industrial production and socio-cultural changes from the beginning of the 20th century to the present in Turkey. In the study, socio-cultural changes in society on the based on periods and the changes they created in the dowry phenomenon were mentioned. Today, some non-traditional items and practices have also been traditionalized and belong to the dowry tradition. It has been observed that objects and practices belonging to the dowry tradition are influenced by developments in many political, economic, technical and cultural fields. Another important result is the inclusion of non-traditional industrial products in dowry rituals and becoming traditional. Sometimes not only objects but also some practices constructed with these objects have become part of the dowry tradition and the tradition has been reinvented.

179-209

Authors: Sara Coscarelli

There are several similarities that point to the aesthetics of design between various countries that address the Mediterranean. Although it is well known that design practices have always been common in this area, it is also the transfer produced between them due to trade and cultural exchanges produced throughout history. This transfer generates synergies and transformations between design resources of the local cultural traditions. It is the case of interior design done during the decade of the thirties in Catalonia, through the publications of the GATCPAC magazine D’Ací I d’Allá [From Here and There], whose articles demonstrate how important traditional Mediterranean design is at that precise moment, in which the Catalan territory is in the middle of the interwar period and supposedly under the emancipatory umbrella of the International Style. However, it is already observed in the 1930s that there is a common thread that links the apparently rationalist design methodologies of Lombardy and Catalonia, led by Gruppo 7 and GACTPAC groups of architects, with a certainly Mediterraneanizing trend. And the common reference of both realities is detected in the figure of Le Corbusier, who at the end of the 1920s, he begins to enter towards the Mediterranean regional universe.

235-255

Authors: Laura Succini, Margherita Ascari, Elena Formia, Valentina Gianfrate, Michele Zannoni

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is considered at EU level as a cross-cutting priority to encourage societal actors to work together during the whole research and innovation process, aligning results and outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society. In order to investigate the relation between Design Cultures and the multi-level perspective of RRI principles, the Advanced Design Unit of the University of Bologna has launched the 2020-2021 Winter School “Design for Responsible Innovation” working on multiple ecosystems (Italy, Mexico and Chile) with their own territorial capital. The Winter School represented a first experimentation of a methodological approach that was gradually co-designed among the research groups involved, in order to work on an inclusive and non-hegemonic knowledge system. The relationship between the RRI dimension and the design disciplines has led to the creation of an iterative framework, in which the methodological approach has allowed to identify actions and tools to investigate and test how the processes and practices of Design, integrated with the RRI approach, could help to activate dynamic processes within social actors at transnational scale, and can facilitate the design of product-systems able to contribute to the big challenges of the present. The description of two experiences about Gender Equality topic, led the discussion about current educational design model that moves from local to the international dimension. The mutual exchange among teachers, young designers, and institutions creates new learning opportunities beyond territorial borders, introducing the Responsible Thinking and Education as a key to train future designers, able to take a role in mixed groups of interest and power.

282-306

Authors: Antonio de Feo

In a social and economic context that moves according to rapid patterns, in a contraction of time that paradoxically distances the past and brings with it an increasingly innovative future, photography can become a historical memory of ancient designs close to social and cultural values and traditions. The waves of the Mediterranean are ploughed by ships and small boats, projects that find their roots in the most ancient of human history and are still present today and continue to unite lands and men. It is the boat that merges the sea between lands. The gozzo, a small wooden boat, is an ancient project that was able to exploit knowledge from the past. The contribution intends to investigate how photography has been and still is today an important tool for telling the story of the past and useful for handing down forgotten forms and views. The heirs of that specific knowledge, of that past which formed an entire society, are destined to disappear: the photography of construction sites, tools and craftsmen represents one of the privileged ways of keeping memory of this history. Design, understood as a wide-ranging design process, can become the historical memory of society, and photography, which has always been a tool for sharing and a means of communication, can transform itself into an opportunity for historical and social investigation, always carrying with it the Barthesian axiom of what has been.

19-38

Authors: Sonia Seixas

This paper intends to reflect on the relationship between design and academia and its context in a fragile and integrated ecosystem challenges such as the fashion system and its sustainability in a strategy of circular economy and change of social paradigm for the emergency of the future. Design theories and practices are presented as fundamental for the sustainability of the fashion system and for human survival. Different approaches will be confronted in a critical perspective of ideas and possible paths to follow as essential tools for a more conscious and design creative thinking. The methodology will be carried out through a review of literature where it is intended to review fundamental concepts and to proceed to a critical, constructive, and real analysis on the competences of the students. Develop strategies to raise awareness about sustainability concepts and circular economy allowing to understand its importance for its learning and future. The expected result will be to identify large thematic areas indispensable to design and transversal to education which are consistent with the evolution of the textile and clothing industry and with the needs of the consumer. Also, a reflection on the importance of the theme in the current and future economy.

60-85

Authors: Elisabetta Cianfanelli, Debora Giorgi, Margherita Tufarelli, Leonardo Giliberti, Paolo Pupparo, Elena Pucci

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to a sudden halt most of the human social, economic and productive dynamics, causing, on the other hand, a rapid acceleration towards digital transformation in order to overcome the limits of physical presence. In this transformative context is inserted the contribution that aims to describe an experience of applied research to explore new possible models of communication for the fashion system in the digital world. Through the current climate of transformation, the project Metamorphic Fashion Design was born, which intends to reflect on the possible responses of the fashion industry in this new phase. Metamorphic Fashion Design is a new experiential multiverse in which new relationships have been formed between different disciplines such as Character Design, Game Design, Fashion Design, Interior Design, Performance Art and Sound Design. This project experience has opened to new reflections and new critical insights on how the digital properly declined can consolidate, more and more, as a means of new innovative trajectories throughout the fashion system. The project aims to propose a new form of communication for the excellence of fashion with the possibility of extending this experimentation to the made in Italy system.

111-129

Authors: Giulia Scalera

From the French Fashion Pat to the Green in Italy brand, governments set sustainability targets to be achieved in the short term, indicating precise dates as an upper limit for reducing environmental impact in the fashion industry. From the Sustainability Manifesto, drawn up by the National Chamber for Italian Fashion, to that defined by the Fashion Revolution association, there are many programmes and objectives identified for the promotion of a sustainable approach in the fashion system. The main objective is to ensure fair and respectful behaviour that acts on the entire supply chain with zero impact actions and productions. But despite the political actions and the rich literature on the subject, in fact, as K. Fletcher says, there is still a real difficulty and slowness with which sustainability becomes a constant practice, and a working method within the fashion system itself (2018, p. 7). In the light of the many actions already launched by scholars and designers but not yet widely applied in the fashion system, the article underlines the need to raise awareness and guide companies towards the main themes of sustainability. A dissemination imagined through the design of widely diffused communication products able to enhance the best practices and the main sustainable models already present in the literature.

152-173

Authors: Carmela Ilenia Amato

The Textile-Fashion System was investigating its impact on the environment, moving towards sustainable innovation solutions. The Covid-19 gave an acceleration to this reflection, agreeing on sustainable ways but also relying on technology through wearable devices, virtual reality, 3D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, extending the vision of fashion to a place of research, beauty, and experimentation. Fibers are being selected and modified, new goals are being defined by interpreting research through the creation of textiles made specifically for humans. Progress with textile fibers that have been developed for the fashion industry has been remarkable, it will continue with smart, high-performance textile fibers, conductive inks, and nanometer electronics applied to garments for every need. Fashion companies are collaborating with industries specializing in technology, sustainability, biomedical, healthcare, cosmetics, electronics justifying examples such as fitbits, smartwatches or other devices designed to collect and monitor data on users personal health and physical activity, which help engage with their health, which help fight bacteria and viruses, regulate body temperature, heal skin and which also contribute to a responsible culture that makes textile design a distinctive and exclusive mode of socio-cultural inquiry from which tangible results are obtained. New body relationships therefore will lead to the creation of new homes by promoting healthy lifestyles.

193-212

Authors: Giulia Bolzan de Morais, Karine de Mello Freire

This research explores the theme of social innovation in fashion industry through coworking spaces as focal points to deal with the challenges the fashion industry faces to. Based on a case study, the paper demonstrates that coworkings can act as spaces of convergence, where people who do not know each other can meet and, from there, work together to create new models. The case studied was a fashion coworking space with a focus on sustainable fashion companies called Malha (2017). The results shows that coworkings face practical challenges for their consolidation as focal points, mainly in relation to the construction of a truly collaborative and transparent culture and the financial sustainability of the enterprise itself. The discussion demonstrates that coworkings are more than spaces for sharing resources, they involve values and a culture of their own that, if not reinforced on a daily basis practice, weakens the credibility of the space, making it impossible to act as a focal point. Finally, the article explores the strategic principles for coworking spaces to act as focal points, reducing the ambivalences between the concept and the practice.

234-258

Authors: Juliet Seger

While society is being transformed by information technology, contemporary sewing technology will continue to depend on sewing by human hands. Based on this, the production of clothing – and in particular the sewing process – must be assessed from an ethical perspective. The Matrix of Convivial Technology, which finds its origins in the Degrowth movement, is used as a guide to discuss the ethical features associated with sewing technology. Examining this technology across the spectrum of convivial values results in distinguishing it as a social technology. As such, it holds potential to fulfil basic needs, empower people through the ability to create, and build relationships. Under a commercialised motivation however, the human component shifts its position: Human labour becomes “inferior to the system” (Vetter, 2018, p. 3) and its inherent consumerism. Supported by the theoretical framework of the Social Construction of Technology, it becomes clear that the core question of how to design a more just future fashion industry is not – as initially thought – one of techno-optimism versus techno-pessimism: rather it is a question of social agency versus social passivity.

283-293

Authors: Gianni Montagna, Maria Antonietta Sbordone

MODAPORTUGAL promotes the Portuguese fashion ecosystem. It showcases the several dimensions of the industry and conducts promotional events that highlight its key assets. From design to manufacturing, the initiative presents the traditional along with the most cutting-edge features of Portuguese companies as they embrace the future with a sustainable and planet-friendly approach.