1,721,021 research outputs found
Neo-Local design. Looking at ‘our local contexts’ as potential resources
No full textOur research efforts in design are inherently linked to our peculiar standpoint: Sardinia, the island in which live and work. Our region presents in fact a set of conditions that, we believe, can make it a working laboratory for exploring new development models, investigating the power of design and innovation to combine local identity and knowledge, contemporary needs and sustainability. A complex layering of specific historical and geographical facts have contributed to giving shape in Sardinia to a context which is quite unique in the whole of Europe. Over the last few years, this lead us to develop 'Neo-Local design', a concept about exploring ways to combine the potential of design as an innovation force with the values and skills of the local dimension. Through the discussion of some experimental projects we have carried out recently in our Design School, we wish to present our very specific point of view within a broader emerging debate. The paper will focus on new ways to interpret elements such as local knowledge and culture that we though were lost by the effects of the simplification of modernism in the first place and, more recently, by the homogenization of globalization, and that are instead making today place for themselves as valuable agents in the rethinking of the contribution of design to our society
Design sapiens. The work of Tibor Uhrín-Design sapiens. DieloTibora Uhrína
No full textThe text is a short presentation of tyhe author's work I was invited to write for the boo
DesignIntorno. Atti della Conferenza annuale della Società Italiana di Design
No full textAtti della Conferenza annuale della SID - Società Italiana di Design, Alghero, 4-5 luglio 2022
From Possibility to the Everyday. Distance Learning in Design Education
No full textAlthough virtually implicit since the advent of the internet, the dimension of online teaching has for the most of us long remained in the realms of the possible, failing to emerge as a practical alternative to real, face-to-face teaching. In the context of the abrupt changes occurred recently in our lives, the emergency linked to the pandemic has instead forced us to confront – under different conditions and with mixed outcomes – a completely new didactic dimension. In light of the exceptional circumstances we experienced on a global scale last spring for various weeks, it makes sense to expect that, just as it will be for many other aspects of our lives, our approach to teaching will not, after this test, simply go back to what it was. With the present article it is our intention, by presenting two parallel experiences in this domain, to contribute to a reflection on the perspectives that the current state of affairs poses to design education. In doing so we shall not underestimate the emergence of sensitive issues associated with this phenomenon, such as those connected with the sphere of academic design teaching, the new dimension of international competition among universities, and even of a ‘rediscovered’ role of our profession as a bonding agent for our society. The article focuses on the crucial topic of design education, on the grounds of those very particular experimental activities – the design practice and its teaching – that although not specific to design per se, are essential in defining the set of skills we usually associate with the cultural and professional sphere of our discipline. In this respect, the paper will primarily discuss how, in the impromptu situation in which we suddenly found ourselves in the early weeks of lockdown, we sought for ways to respond to the challenges posed by a rather unique emergency by transforming the emerging challenges into opportunities. In this perspective, the contribution will discuss the objective of exploring ways to re-enact in the dimension of distant learning some key elements – such as the emotional participation, sense of belonging, tension and concentration span – that we have so far typically associated with face-to-face design experience, and that we have previously considered inseparable from any serious approach to design education. Far from pretending to reach a conclusive answer to problems facing us in the near future, this contribution moves from two experiences that in their differences, specificity and highly experimental character, complement each other, and have led to somewhat encouraging – and surprising – results. In light of such development, the article aims to address some key topics for a debate to come
Designing ‘Engaging Environments’ on the Borders of Real and Virtual.
No full textA mixed media research project for a temporary outdoor exhibit for Alghero’s city prison has allowed us to confront with a domain that lays at the frontiers between the physical dimensions of space and the narrative component of audio- visual communication, and to explore its potential in presenting meaningful information to a vast public.
The result of this effort is the ‘Sidewalk Museum’ an experimental project aimed at extending the boundaries of exhibit design within a hybrid territory in which the narrative power of space and the idea of revisiting a collective dimension of audiovisual communication team up in a part in shaping exciting informative participatory experiences
Heritage Experience Design: case of Sardinia
No full textThis paper explores the emerging concept of heritage form the perspective of how design can contribute in promoting value to its experience, either individual and collective, tangible and intangible.
It draws on previous research and projects by the AnimazioneDesign research unit, and discusses a series of approaches to heritage, design, and teaching.
Every chance to experiment with new ideas and teaching approaches – especially when it is carried out in intensive form – is relevant to our work and research. The Heritage Experience Design Scientific School (HexD), which took place in Alghero and Porto Conte in September 2022, and that we wish to present here, was one of such: a major opportunity to explore a complex theme such as that of heritage, investigating ways and forms with which to promote and enhance some of its many and diversified manifestations.
As a matter of fact, the HexD project addressed in the first place the need to explore a series of possibilities of valorization and mise en scene, and ways to convert them into guidelines to promote something as undefined – notably in its intangible form – as heritage. In the context of the current communication system, of a generalized access and almost obsessive consumption of information, promoting the heritage implies in fact today a mosaic of specialist skills, ranging from technological ones to the ability to represent places, or ultimately, to tell stories
Picturing 700 years of history. Charting political and social relationships from the Statuti Sassaresi, a XIV century manuscript statute-book
No full textIn 1316 the town-republic of Sassari issued its ‘Statuti’, a collection of regulations describing the city’s legal and administrative matters. Although the contents of the document vividly present many traits of the city’s XIV century’s life, the original form in which it came to us – in Latin and vernacular Sardinian – make it very inaccessible to the general public. In the 700’s anniversary of the Statuti the local Historic Archives started a vast dissemination project involving us on the grounds of our expertise in communication design. Over the following year our research unit was engaged in the production of an experimental informative platform in which various artifacts – three animated short films, an illustrated booklet, and a website, among the others – explore ways to enhance the degree of accessibility of such an important historical account to the general public. A key step along this process was the understanding that as different users have varying abilities in processing the available information, to provide actual access to it implies varying degrees of interpretation of the text per se, which clearly raises questions of historical accuracy. This brought to the development of a model in which a series of artifacts based on various degrees of ‘proximity’ – and therefore of interpretation – to the original text, can represent different access points for the understanding of an otherwise very inaccessible text
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