Experience of Material Tinkering from Waste in the Year 3-Year 5 Primary School Age Range as an Introduction to Design and Sustainability

A possibility increasingly experimented in the field of design to improve end-of-life sustainability is integration of agro-waste into materials. Design can “upcycle” waste, offering perceptive and aesthetical acceptance to objects produced from it. On-field experimentations can foster awareness over the possibility to modify objects lifecycle, avoiding a “use-and-throw” perspective, and exploring the identity of materials in their prospected field of application. This will be aimed at creating a bond between user and objects, based both on function and on affection, also considering the modifications the material can undergo over time, making it adapted to different uses. This practice can have a significant educational value: in particular, this study moves from an experimentation carried out at July and September 2017 by design and materials engineering researchers, with several groups of 15 children, age 8-11, at Museo dei Bambini-Explora in Rome, investigating their “experience” and “creativity” on the topic. Conclusions are also drawn on possible modifications of the step-like procedure to introduce students of all ages to the knowledge of experimental method through the production of DIY bioplastics from waste. This “trial and error” procedure allows reflecting from a play-like point of view on aspects essential for the success of this operation, such as mode of coloration, effect of texture, possibility of obtaining curved or complex shapes, mechanical workability, optimal cooking and aromatization. The consequence of the exercise is customizing materials obtained from waste, with the idea of teaching how an expressive and functional success of the objects produced can make these “resilient” over time, therefore inherently sustainable. This would lead, through a combined and simple teaching of elements of experimental procedure and sustainability, to an awareness of their respective importance in design. The tool for this result is the development of DIY materials. The significance of this experience, which could be applied also in other age ranges, appeared to be to communicate the role of design to improve the perception of materials by transforming them into valuable objects. This proved to be better explained in the challenging case of waste, hence a substance bearing no longer any emotional or functional relation with us, with which this “bond” needs to be rebuilt through an experiential path.  Keywords: design education; material tinkering; sustainability for childre

Experience of Material Tinkering from Waste in the Year 3-Year 5 Primary School Age Range as an Introduction to Design and Sustainability

A possibility increasingly experimented in the field of design to improve end-of-life sustainability is integration of agro-waste into materials. Design can “upcycle” waste, offering perceptive and aesthetical acceptance to objects produced from it. On-field experimentations can foster awareness over the possibility to modify objects lifecycle, avoiding a “use-and-throw” perspective, and exploring the identity of materials in their prospected field of application. This will be aimed at creating a bond between user and objects, based both on function and on affection, also considering the modifications the material can undergo over time, making it adapted to different uses. This practice can have a significant educational value: in particular, this study moves from an experimentation carried out at July and September 2017 by design and materials engineering researchers, with several groups of 15 children, age 8-11, at Museo dei Bambini-Explora in Rome, investigating their “experience” and “creativity” on the topic. Conclusions are also drawn on possible modifications of the step-like procedure to introduce students of all ages to the knowledge of experimental method through the production of DIY bioplastics from waste. This “trial and error” procedure allows reflecting from a play-like point of view on aspects essential for the success of this operation, such as mode of coloration, effect of texture, possibility of obtaining curved or complex shapes, mechanical workability, optimal cooking and aromatization. The consequence of the exercise is customizing materials obtained from waste, with the idea of teaching how an expressive and functional success of the objects produced can make these “resilient” over time, therefore inherently sustainable. This would lead, through a combined and simple teaching of elements of experimental procedure and sustainability, to an awareness of their respective importance in design. The tool for this result is the development of DIY materials. The significance of this experience, which could be applied also in other age ranges, appeared to be to communicate the role of design to improve the perception of materials by transforming them into valuable objects. This proved to be better explained in the challenging case of waste, hence a substance bearing no longer any emotionalor functional relation with us, with which this “bond” needs to be rebuilt through an experiential path

The design of surfaces, between empathy and new figuration

Nowadays design languages seem anew defined through images and figures that appear increasingly distant from abstraction. In the time that we live in, where it is prevailing a dominance of individual needs rather common desires, an abandon of abstraction in favour of new figuration, stimulates the opportunity to investigate a new dyad, ‘Project and Empathy’; these terms could summarize well the expanded modality of physical and psychological interaction between people – as individual – and artefacts, through the increasing role of surfaces. The whole world of postmodern image, especially through the digital technologies, tends to offer hyper realistic aesthetic simulacra, altered nature: this is the current world of extension of feelings and sense, in which we are immersed daily. This condition affect the approaches to design, which require a new thinking around technologies, method and tools from training to practice the activity of design: a new attitude for materiality of things, beyond the immateriality of digital reality