Designing Knit Designers

"Traditionally associated with craftmanship and manual work, knitwear seems a quite unusual subject of investigation for scientific research. This book places it as an integrative part of the industrial design culture where the dialogue between a productive system of excellence and the design discipline taught in universities becomes a topic of central concern. From an industrial standpoint, knitwear is a fertile ground of technological experimentation while being at the same time one of the most traditional sectors of Made in Italy. The complexity of a long and fragmented production chain is an interesting challenge for designers but affects the training and the knowledge transfer inside companies. On the academic side, the presence of such an industry creates the urgency for higher education to understand how to train knit designers as new professionals, and thus the opportunity for knitwear to be recognized as a discipline deserving specific teaching strategies and a focused scientific research. The present book reports an experimentation conducted in the unique conditions of the Italian industrial design culture, that defined tools and methods to train knit designers not as artists, but with the technical and cultural knowledge and the project-oriented mindset that is typical of industrial design disciplines. These contents are of interest for the academy, as they constitute a tool to design teaching experiences oriented to such a specific industrial sector; for those approaching knitwear design, as it is a pool of information on the complexity of knitwear, a map of the background knowledge, collected and rearranged, and a compass to be guided in building one's own skills; for professionals, who will find here their history, the opinions of colleagues, the opportunity to integrate their knowledge and to learn more about the in-depth experimental, technical and design work that takes place at Politecnico di Milano.

Reacting to the Emergency by Opening Perspectives. Design-driven knit therapy as a adaptable tool to answer the change

When the COVID-19 emergency raised, the entire world -and small communities with it- had to stop, adapt, find ways to face the big ongoing challenge. The article reports the reaction and the changes undertaken with an ongoing project that was, in February 2020, experimenting, inside the hospital environment, the therapeutic effects of knitting on people with physical and psychological pathologies. The project, driven by scientific studies made in universities, hospitals and research centers worldwide, had the aim to bring the intervention of designers on the topic, to answer the emerged need to promote research in what is considered a low-investigated and high-promising field. Experimental pilot actions, designed and led by designers on-field, were going on when the emergency changed the scenario, limited the environment, shifted the eye on a new, wider target of healthy people, made knitting a tool to face new circumstances and improve everyday-life quality.Observing the newly emerged scenario and the spontaneous initiatives risen on the web (and on social media in particular) to help individuals in spending the forced time at home in meaningful ways, designers involved in the ongoing project identified in knitting an activity that could be beneficial on a psychological and physical level also for quarantined individuals. The project took a new perspective and evolved in the #IOLAVOROAMAGLIA (#IKNIT) social media campaign, linked to the globally spread #STAYHOME campaign, aimed at inviting people to remain home for preventing the diffusion of the infection, while proposing at the same time new solutions for positively living the emergency times. #IOLAVOROAMAGLIA was embraced by many users and it also became a weekly scheduled live virtual workshop, with a direct reference to the workshops in the hospital of XXXX, temporarily stopped during lockdown.The two projects, on-field and online, proved how knitting can be a meaningful solution not only for healthcare, but also for the daily life of people, both in normal times and in emergency situations.Moreover, the role of the designer and of a design driven approach proved to be fundamental, for the product and service creation, improvement and consolidation and for its communication for valorization and promotion

I boschi alpini del Settecento come exemplum dei fenomeni ambientali contemporanei

The author discusses the concept of “natural environment spatialization” referring to the 18th century Western Alps context. Under the Savoy dynasty, resources began to play a means-ends function, becoming commodities to be extracted and turned into profit according to the Enlightenment’s idea of forest as economic resource, thus losing its role of habitat. The state’s necessity to manage these territories led to the birth of a new legislation that not only did regulate exploitation but also catalogued everything that could constitute an income for the state, e.g., fields, woods, and mines. Such interpretation of nature have characterized the mountain environment of the following centuries, up to the present day. Nowadays, due to the global crisis, the hitherto localized extractions are being stimulated again through a phenomenon of new internal extractive practices that mainly apply to the Alpine territory, and in which forests and minerals are the main resources

Designing Sustainable Clothing Systems

The Fashion System is at the center of the international debate as one of the most polluting and most impactful industries on the environment. In the last decade the fashion industry has changed, and is still modifying, its approach, aware of the fact that the attention to the environment can no longer be considered a trend: the entire system needs to find and adopt a methodological approach to the project and to the production of goods and services. Today all the stakeholders on the supply chain follow a path from upstream to downstream: from the treatment of pollution, to the intervention on the production processes that generate a product, to the redesign of products and/or services to reach the discussion and reorientation of social behavior. This path shows the need to intervene in design terms and that the growth in responsibility and role of design, requiring reference scenarios, knowledge and new tools. The book defines the features and scenarios of sustainable development, as well as the evolution of sustainability in research and practice of fashion design, addressing the strategies for the design and development of environmentally sustainable products. The authors describe the Life Cycle Design approach and the strategies and guidelines for integrating environmental requirements into product design for sustainable fashion. They present the so-called Systems of Sustainable Products-Services, namely the most promising scenarios and models to make design for sustainable fashion economically convenient. Finally, they provide a method and related tools to support design for sustainable fashion in the evaluation of the environmental impact of products, with particular emphasis on the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment). The text is enriched by a full-bodied review of interviews and case studies, with the dual purpose of making the design options clear and of highlighting their specificity for the different design contexts

Material Practices in Transition: From Analogue to Digital in Teaching Textile and Fashion Design

The transition to digital design tools challenges the craftsmanship of textile and fashion designers as part of the product value chain, opening for reflection on how textile craftsmanship should be taught in education due to the current trend of digitalisation. By looking at new forms of craftsmanship, this research expands on the idea of teaching students transdisciplinary methods which connect analogue and digital tools within textile and fashion design education. Based on analysis of a number of case studies, we propose a framework of different strategies for teaching textile craftsmanship in the digital design age, with the aim of integrating textile-specific digital environments — which have been designed primarily to maximise the efficiency of industrial processes, rather than to enhance design development with regard to artistic expression — and non-textile digital tools on the basis that these are exploratory in nature and open to more creative design practices

Is empowerment of female radiologists still needed? Findings of a systematic review

Considering that radiology is still a male-dominated specialty in which men make up more than two thirds of the workforce, this systematic review aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the current role of women in radiological imaging, focusing on the main aspects such as career progression, leadership, academic practice, and perceived discrimination. Three electronic databases were searched up to 21 October 2020. To identify additional records, weekly automatic email alerts were set up on PubMed until December 2020 and reference lists of key studies and included papers were screened. Two reviewers independently performed the search, study selection, quality appraisal, data extraction, and formal narrative synthesis. In case of disagreement, a third reviewer was involved. Across the 61 included articles, women worked more often part-time and held fewer positions of power in hospitals, on editorial boards, and at the academic level (associate and full professors). Women were less often in relevant positions in scientific articles, had fewer publications, and had a lower H-index. Discrimination and sexual harassment were experienced by up to 40% and 47% of female radiologists, respectively. Our study highlights that women in radiology are still underrepresented and play a marginal role in the field, struggling to reach top and leading positions

Combining Weights of Evidence Analysis with Feature Extraction - A Case Study from the Hauraki Goldfield, New Zealand

© 2016 The Authors. In this contribution we combine different image processing and pattern recognition methodologies to map the probability of discovering epithermal mineral deposits in the northern part of the Coromandel peninsula, in New Zealand. The objective of this work is to propose a case-study where the substitution of structural geology GIS themes (commonly developed by humans) with products derived by image processing, computer-based, semi-automatic edge detection analyses, is carried out to reduce subjective input in the prospectivity analysis. Semi-automated lineament extraction results introduced in the mineral favourability statistical modelling can more easily reveal unexpected potentially mineralised target domains, being less subjective. We present initial results of this analysis and explain some of the methodologies adopted. Preliminary results suggest that this approach increases significantly the number of geological discontinuities mapped in the region, with the following implications: (1) prospectivity models are more risk-tolerant and result in an increased number of targets; (2) increments in posterior probability affect the statistical validity of the model due to conditional independence violation, requiring careful assessment of probability overestimation; (3) the feature extraction process identifies numerous lineaments that in some instances represent false positives (lineaments determined by a variety of causes, without geological significance); however, we find that Contrast calculations in the Bayesian analysis tend to penalize these evidential themes, because of the higher number of pixels (cells) containing a positive pattern (lineament existence = 1, being positive). This aspect reduces the overall impact of these predictors on the analysis, mitigating the effect of false positives (lower positive weights of evidence). Despite the limitations, results obtained are encouraging with a clearly superior and more detailed mapping of potential structural sites and their relative probabilities of hosting epithermal deposits

Combining weights of evidence analysis with feature extraction - a case study from the Hauraki Goldfield, New Zealand

In this contribution we combine different image processing and pattern recognition methodologies to map the probability of discovering epithermal mineral deposits in the northern part of the Coromandel peninsula, in New Zealand. The objective of this work is to propose a case-study where the substitution of structural geology GIS themes (commonly developed by humans) with products derived by image processing, computer-based, semi-automatic edge detection analyses, is carried out to reduce subjective input in the prospectivity analysis. Semi-automated lineament extraction results introduced in the mineral favourability statistical modelling can more easily reveal unexpected potentially mineralised target domains, being less subjective. We present initial results of this analysis and explain some of the methodologies adopted. Preliminary results suggest that this approach increases significantly the number of geological discontinuities mapped in the region, with the following implications: (1) prospectivity models are more risk-tolerant and result in an increased number of targets; (2) increments in posterior probability affect the statistical validity of the model due to conditional independence violation, requiring careful assessment of probability overestimation; (3) the feature extraction process identifies numerous lineaments that in some instances represent false positives (lineaments determined by a variety of causes, without geological significance); however, we find that Contrast calculations in the Bayesian analysis tend to penalize these evidential themes, because of the higher number of pixels (cells) containing a positive pattern (lineament existence = 1, being positive). This aspect reduces the overall impact of these predictors on the analysis, mitigating the effect of false positives (lower positive weights of evidence). Despite the limitations, results obtained are encouraging with a clearly superior and more detailed mapping of potential structural sites and their relative probabilities of hosting epithermal deposits