researchscapes

The economic and social crisis that has occurred over the last decades has deeply challenged all paradigms of modernity. As a result, the search for authenticity and the recovery of cultural roots is becoming an essential value in contemporary societies, whereby diversity is the new post-modern expression of globalization.

This research area focuses on studying and framing new design strategies that fully exploit the cultural capital of companies and institutions. It aims to transform tangible and intangible historical reservoirs into new design sources, enabling their recovery into artefacts and services perceived by users as authentic, meaningful, and consistent.

How does design reinterpret heritage knowledge into meaningful contemporary artefacts and services? How can tangible and intangible historical reservoirs be translated into accessible know-how? How can new technologies enable access to cultural reservoirs within companies and institutions? Which are new production paradigms that can be implemented to revamp traditional artisanal practices?

 

augmentedheritage projects

As the currently networked 24/7 global society becomes more complex, the need to understand cultural contexts through modelling increases. Moreover, creative industries have moved from the positivist ideal of technology-driven innovation to defining innovation as a significant process of the contemporary culture, referring to it as an embodiment process of new meanings into tangible and intangible artefacts. 

Hence, this research area focuses on studying and codifying relevant cultural contents to define evolutionary trajectories of the specific cultural contexts, where those elements are generated and developed. Furthermore, it aims to create design directions to inspire and promote new meaningful perspectives that can orient and enrich consumers' experiences.

How does design scan cultural contexts and detect significant values and contents to read cultures? What is the role of design scenarios as a tool used and/or as an outcome produced by different functions within companies? How do design scenarios reshape the contexts they represent by applying interpretative filters to highlight new emerging meanings? How can design scenarios detect opportunities for new emerging consumption behaviours oriented toward culture-intensive experiences?

 

 

generativeanticipations projects

Fashion and creative industries have always focused their attention on their outcomes, being too often only products cantered. Nevertheless, the increasing complexity of markets and social environments requires them to reengineer their processes, not only passively reacting to turbulent contexts, impoverish their cultural potential, but becoming active agents of a positive transition. 

 

This research area focuses on enhancing design and creative processes, identifying new design management strategies and tools able to strengthen the capacity of fashion industry to respond to contemporary challenges. It aims to support new organizational models' where design can link all processes within a new paradigm of production and consumption, preserving high cultural contents and authenticity and promoting sustainability. 

How can design processes be better planned and managed to pursue continuous innovation as well as products cultural renewal? How can design and product development processes be better linked to other key functions, such as manufacturing, supply-chain management, retail and communication, to promote a new sustainable circular model? How can design drive new technologies to become enabler of new fashion business approaches and models. How can creative industries implement efficient product development strategies while embracing new socially responsible practices? 

 

 

 

transparentprocesses projects

Organizations have implemented the relational and experiential contents underlying the economic exchange, enhancing their tangible and intangible offer to consumers. The narrative structure of communication processes is the centrepiece of a cognitive, cultural, and aesthetic design praxis as well as an activation system for new appropriations and re-contextualization of identity by the end-user.

This research area focuses on studying and enhancing the narrative processes embedded in cognitive and cultural systems on knowledge transfer procedures and methodologies to support communication, visuals, and retail designs. It aims at building narrative scenarios where products are presented only if immersed in highly cultural and social discourse, therefore broader than the aesthetic-formal one.

How does design mediate brand strategy with the product, retail, and communication strategies through narrative processes?
How are cultural and identity-making contents developed and embedded into the organization's narrations? How can institutional, retail assets –such as point of sales, showrooms, factories, etc.– be transformed into cultural places and contexts? What role does retail play in narrating brand identity and in building brand authenticity? How have narrative processes been changed due to the diffusion of new and social media?

 

transmedianarratives projects