As known from previous studies, materials are the key players in the design process. In fact, materials not only can give the right shape to artifacts, assuring and solving its function but, they can influence and enhance the relationship between objects, users and life cycles as well. Materials determine the experience and suggest behaviors. If a designer learns all the possibilities that materials and processes allow, surely it will be capable not only to design with them but to profit from all the materials experiences that are possible to embody in products during their lifetime and beyond.

The proposed course aims to present an alternative approach to the conception and development of materials and their transformation processes. The material and its physicality become the subject of the design activity and the students acquire experience by working directly with the matter and its qualities. The design of materials become an explorative process of learning characterized from unexpected and surprising discoveries provoked from the direct interactions and experimentations. The proposed approach suggests a change of perspective from what design students have regarding the materiality of artifacts. We look to spread the idea of the matter as a dynamic element in which is crucial to learn how to intervene and experiment, conversely to the usual way to see materials as static and taken for granted. This new design perspective invites students to open eyes to the transversal value that materials possess, contributing to the value of the project thanks to the contamination processes of the course. The course also proposes to transfer a critical vision about materials as relevant actors in the contemporary life trying to launch challenges for a constant rethinking of the material culture. The intended environment for the course will be the one which stimulates and inspire experimentations motivated and shared among participants.

The course is offered to curious students who seek for experimentation as a pathway for learning. Basic knowledge around technical properties and expressive-sensorial qualities of materials are expected from MSc. Students.

The working methodology offered consist in a mix of theoretical inputs, interventions from the international experts in the field and experimentation/development of the materials. Specifically, students will be invited to realize material samples defining their formulation, qualities, material identity and experiential patterns. Those patterns will be the starting point to suggest future scenarios of application