Ideas and the Matter

Science and technology are extending into design fields, modifying materials and everything that surrounds us, even our bodies, redefining on a perceptive level the boundary between things and us.

To identify the actual evolution of the relationship between sciences, knowledge and design, in 2014 the Madec (Material Design Culture Research Centre) of Politecnico di Milano, initiated a wide debate with a series of contributions on innovation trajectories by well-known scholars across many disciplines, researchers, professionals and companies. This public debate, entitled 'Ideas and the Matter' has opened up new initiatives for design today, new ideas, and the definition of design approaches, contributing to the development of a new methodology of creativity-driven material innovation that, in a world full of opportunities but also problems to be solved, helps design to play a role in 'giving new meanings', through designing materials and objects with a critical approach.

This is a mission from which designers cannot abdicate, following the success of "Design Thinking", which was an opening up to social innovation challenges and achieving creative solutions beyond the reach of conventional structure and method. At the same time, "Open Innovation" is a go-to process stimulating ways of creating positive change in production. This book is the compendium of Madec's one-year research. The contributors to the book come from many and diverse disciplines (medicine, biotechnology, engineering, art, anthropology, architecture and design), by which design thoughts are fed.