A matter of clay: new scenarios of ceramic material composed of algae
This project examines how through material experience, the philosophy of “think globally act locally” and experimentation of tinkering it’s possible to renew and imagine new materials, products, and processes in a specific territorial context. During the research emerged a design framework on materials and territories enabled a different design approach that allowed to re-discover and re-innovate traditional materials and led to a renewed vision of their role as bearers of local values.
Local
Italy
Milan, Nove (Vicenza), Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza), Laveno Mombello (Varese), Faenza (Ravenna)
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
This research examines how through material experience, philosophy of “think globally act locally” and experimentation of tinkering it’s possible to renew and imagine new materials, products, and processes in a specific territorial context. It emerged a design framework on materials and territories, it starts from research on the context, analyzing the economic, social, tangible, and intangible factors that compose it. Moreover, it’s necessary to understand what type of resources it offers in terms of materials and processes in order to start active experimentation with the material through the addition of biological resources or the reuse of waste. The new material will experiment with local workers or the community. As a result, human capital and companies are involved to restore the economy and cultural heritage in order to lead to social innovation. This framework was then applied in the case of ceramic processing in Nove territory (Italy), famous since 1400 for ceramic, trying to renew the material through hybridization. Given the presence of the Brenta river, algae have been identified thanks to the fact that their increasing presence due to global warming. This alga called Oedogonium capillare it's destroying the river's ecosystem and chemicals are being used to eliminate it. The use took place on the material before firing (on dough) and after firing (as a finish). The results are that the dough is more viscous and consequently more elastic. The elasticity allows to reach very thin thicknesses without dough cracking. Algae are used also as glazing, the algae during firing released pigmentation which create with unexpected colors.
This enabled a different design approach that allowed to re-discover and re-innovate traditional materials, it also led to a renewed vision of their role as bearers of local values. Researchers and designers through this framework play a fundamental role in conserving and implementing the territorial cultural heritage.
Social Innovation
Material experimentation
Material Thinkering
Reuse of Waste
Think globally Act locally
Men today need to reconnect with the territories and with the materials present on site, not only to rediscover the socio-cultural values associated with them but above all to create a new awareness of the use of traditional materials.
Currently, material knowledge is being lost, and traditional or local materials, are no longer favored for 'global' mass-production materials (i.e. especially plastic from large international manufacturers). Through material experience and material thinking, the Project has made it possible to develop a new material that is ethically, socially, and economically sustainable for the local area and people. Thanks to the philosophy of ThinkGloballyActLocally, it allows to reconnect with territories and local materials, and to rediscover the beauty of an ancient material as ceramic, and renewing it. Furthermore, the hybridization between algae and clay have led to new physical properties of the material. The algae helps to have an elastic mixture and create micro-pores that make the baked material very resistant, light and extremely thin as they block any cracks. Used as a finish, they act as natural glazing, an alternative to chemical finishes. They also are a data viewer on the presence of metals inside the water.
Accordingly, we have a material innovation that leads to more sustainability, less waste, and renewal of the material, it also becomes the actuator of processes that generate social, cultural, and economic change, therefore to social innovation. More in-depth we start from a study of the context in which we want to act, then we analyze the territory, its economy, the social and cultural factors, its history, its human capital, and all those elements that can be enclosed in the concept of cultural heritage. After the territory study we highlight what kind of resources it offers in terms of raw materials, and how they can be processed to become workable materials, and with what processes can be modeled. The research program goes on with the direct experimentation on the material through either the addition of biological resources or the reuse of waste. It continues with the forming tests, understood as the ability to be worked and transformed; this phase is in close collaboration with the local workers or the community. Following its transformation, the material acquires specific expressive-sensorial qualities that allow us to identify the values that the material itself transmits. Lastly, this material is inserted within the community and the territory with the prospect of involving human capital, companies, and restoring the economy and cultural heritage, essentially leading to what it is called "social innovation".
For the project case study, it was applied a new research method that examines four different stages: 1. study of the territory heritage (natural, cultural, social, and institutional resources of a territory) 2. finding autochthonous materials 3. thinkering process with those materials (both on materials and technologies). 4. community acceptance of the new above points.
During this research, it was understood how through the use of material experience and its tools, we can lead to social innovation in a particular context. In detail, the way to renew a material through the thinkering process through direct manipulation was analyzed, and new forms of aesthetic-expressive characterization have experimented with that lead to new poetic visions of the project. These materials called “restored” have a sustainable nature as they are composed or hybridized with waste or biological materials. These materials can be processed and transformed both with specific technologies or with new processes and tools defined as "democratic" and "widespread" such as 3D printing.
We worked with ceramic companies (cibas impasti, sartori ceramiche, decor nove etc.), with istitutions (ceramic museums of nove and bassano del grappa, municipality of nove) and local artisans and citizenship to link all the differt sphere and included them in the design process.
The research method developed was then applied to the town of Nove (Vicenza, Italy) famous since 1400 for its ceramic manufacturing. Everything in town speaks of ceramics, architecture, nature, and above all people. At the beginning of the 90s, a profound crisis began for the ceramic sector which led to the closure of 90% of the ceramic factories and a change in the culture of the country. Today there are few craftsmen left, the industries that operate in the sector are still gradually losing the ceramics know-how and the memory of the material.
From this reflection born the desire to investigate the ceramic material, understand its peculiarities, its expressive-sensorial sphere, and find its potential in order to renew it so that it becomes the starting point for social innovation.
Using local materials or waste from unused processes or products to regenerate them and create new, more environmentally friendly materials . This method also allows the use of simple technologies that can be inserted in different contexts, especially in areas with economic and social difficulties in order to rehabilitate them and lead to socio-economic development or implementation.
These research allow new uses of ceramics, this material reintroduced into the economic cycle of the town of Nove (or other cities), can be a starting point for the renewal of the country's ceramic culture. Furthermore, cities and territories emerge more and more as important economic actors: they become objects and subjects of exchange, attractors, and amplifiers of the economic, cultural, and productive systems connected to them, bearers of material and intangible values, incubators of social and cultural developments.
The materials come into play from the point of view in which re-enhancing local resources by transforming or re-discovering them allows not only to create an economically and ethically sustainable project but also to raise the culture of the territory through a reinterpretation of the values of the territory itself.
Thanks to the Design framework developed all local regions could develop their new social innovation with their new materials linked to colyural heritage. Moreover all the new local economies can related to each other to create a new suistainable material platform that could create a digital place to exchange experiences and information. A new way to conceive the materials process and productions, more inclusive and sustainable both economically and socially.
During this research, it was understood how through the use of material experience and its tools, we can lead to social innovation in a particular context. In detail, the way to renew a material through the thinkering process through direct manipulation was analyzed, and new forms of aesthetic-expressive characterization have experimented with that lead to new poetic visions of the project.
Lots of different fields were involved, of course material design though material thinkering and material experience. Design process to think at the framework. But also history and research of territories and local heritage. Local processes and thecnology with artisans to undestand how thing are made.
he research method examines four different stages: First the study of the territory heritage (natural, cultural, social, and institutional resources of a territory) then finding autochthonous materials, after that we can pass through the thinkering process with those materials (both on materials and technologies). At the end the community acceptance of the all above points.
More in-depth we start from a study of the context in which we want to act, then we analyze the territory. After that we highlight what kind of resources it offers in terms of raw materials, and how they can be processed to become workable materials.
The research program goes on with the direct experimentation on the material through the addition of biological resources. It continues with the forming tests, understood as the ability to be worked and transformed. Following its transformation, the material acquires specific expressive-sensorial qualities that allow us to identify the values that the material itself transmits. Lastly, this material is inserted within the community with the prospect of involving human capital, companies, and restoring the economy and cultural heritage, so essentially leading to social innovation.
The material design framework has been applied to the case study of Nove and ceramic processing, however, it is possible to believe that this approach can be applied to other case studies with different materials and different territories. Considering the increase of new materials on the market and the consequent lack of natural resources, this approach allows to re-discover the beauty of ancient materials (such as ceramic) by renewing them in their consistency and giving them new expressive sensory characteristics. Furthermore, cities and territories emerge more and more as important actors: they become objects and subjects of exchange, attractors, and amplifiers of the economic, cultural, and productive systems connected to them, bearers of material and intangible values, incubators of social and cultural developments.
The materials became the way to re-enhancing local resources by transforming and, re-discover them allows to create an economically and ethically sustainable project and also to raise the culture of the territory through a reinterpretation of the values of the territory itself. By renovating them, designers play a fundamental role in preserving and implementing the cultural heritage of a territory.
This research allows us to reconnect territories and local materials, rediscover the beauty of an ancient material such as ceramic, and renew it. Furthermore, the hybridization between algae and clay has led to new physical properties of the material. The algae help to have an elastic mixture and create micro-pores that make the baked material very resistant, light, and extremely thin as they block any cracks. Used as a finish, they act as natural glazing, an alternative to chemical finishes. They also are a data viewer on the presence of metals inside the water.
All of them, the material design framework can be applided to any local economies and territories. With their specific processes and materials. But also in the tecnology, processes and products discovered within the ceramic experimentation. What happend with the addiction of algae it's a pure material innovation Due to the new physical characteristics of the material which is now much lighter and more resistant. Due to the new aesthetic that this material has acquired, it is more material and natural. For the fact that the pigmentations become a visible fact on the pollution of the river waters. People seeing colors and not numerical data were very impressed by how polluted the waters are. And ultimately because they understand a new role for materials, as bearers of place values.
Men’s history is studded with materials experimentation materials that would support the creation of artifacts. Their importance is highlighted by the fact that some prehistoric and historical periods are indicated with the name of materials: stone age, copper age, bronze age, iron age. For 9,000 years, these have been the materials with which man has built all the necessary things to live and to inhabit. In our days the era we are living in has been identified as the nuclear era, then the space era, and today as the Internet era. Materials seem to be disappeared, they lost the centrality they had for our ancestors. Men's today need to reconnect with the territories and with the materials present on site, not only to rediscover the socio-cultural values associated with them, but above all to create a new awareness of the use of traditional materials. Through material experience and material thinking, the project has made it possible to develop a new material that is ethically, socially and economically sustainable for the local area and people. Through the philosophy of think globally act locally it allows you to reconnect with the territories and with the materials present on site and to re-discover the beauty of an ancient material such as ceramics by renewing it in its consistency. Furthermore, the results of the hybridization between algae and clay led to changes in the properties of the material. Due to the new physical characteristics of the material which is now much lighter and more resistant. And to the new aesthetic that this material has acquired, it is more material and natural. For the fact that the pigmentations become a visible fact on the pollution of the river waters. People seeing colors and not numerical data were very impressed by how polluted the waters are. And ultimately because they understand a new role for materials, as bearers of place values and cultural heritage.
