Giovanni Maria Conti
Ph.D, Associate Professor, he is currently the Coordinator of Knitwear design Lab – Knitlab of the Fashion Design Degree at the Politecnico di Milano. His fields of interest are focused on contemporary design with a specialization on Knitwear and Fashion Design. He began teaching History of Fashion Design and Knitwear design. Especially in that new area of fashion design, he researched at the same time, from the point of view of the materials, the typical techniques and technologies of this sector. The research into Knitwear design industries has been carried from the point of view of materials, specifically, on yarns; according to this, he was curator of the exhibition “Textile Vivant. Percorsi, esperienze e ricerche nel textile design” at Triennale di Milano, from September to November 2014, where have been presented the most contemporary innovative researchs on fabrics, yarns and textile materials finishing.
Founder and Scientific Coordinator of the website/blog www.knitlab.org,, he is executive secretary of Fashion Design Degree at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano. Member of Faculty of the Master in Fashion Project Management (MFI – Milano Fashion Institute), he was involved as Visiting Researcher to Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology of Bangalore (India), as Lecturing in some University (China, Brazil, Perù, Australia), as consultant for SENAI Design program in Brazil.
Phone: +39 02 23995905
Address: Dept. of Design, POLIMI
Via Durando 38/A, 20131 Milano
Founder and Scientific Coordinator of the website/blog www.knitlab.org,, he is executive secretary of Fashion Design Degree at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano. Member of Faculty of the Master in Fashion Project Management (MFI – Milano Fashion Institute), he was involved as Visiting Researcher to Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology of Bangalore (India), as Lecturing in some University (China, Brazil, Perù, Australia), as consultant for SENAI Design program in Brazil.
Phone: +39 02 23995905
Address: Dept. of Design, POLIMI
Via Durando 38/A, 20131 Milano
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Papers by Giovanni Maria Conti
creation of fashion products the concept of good design is now acquired, knitwear
is now facing its decisive change from hobby into project; the enhancement of craft
(Micelli S. 2011) does not refer to any nostalgia for the past times, and even better
in Italy it is a very fertile area to be innovated and experimented. The ability to
innovate and promote new points of view in design processes does not arise only
from a thorough understanding of specific areas, but also from a lifestyle open to
diversity, that society has to accept and recognize (Micelli S . 2011).
Today, the ability of designers to explore contexts in an original way, proposing
ideas and results that are not just technical solutions of established problems, sees
in creativity and in fashion design education the ability to solve problems through
materials and their constant innovation for clothes, to experiment or to look at old
problems in a different way with the aim of going beyond the usual “fashion” idea.
This paper is written at the end of an educational experience in the Knit Design Lab
at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano, where Missoni, the most important
Italian knitwear brand, together with Woolmark, the most influencing certification
body at an international level for the promotion and enhancement of Merino wool,
in collaboration with Knitlab, a digital platform for the learning of the traditional
knitting techniques active in the School of Design at Politecnico di Milano, realized a
project in which the knitting techniques have been the first tool for the creation,
design and prototyping of a clothes collection for the spring-summer 2017,
coherent with the brand identity of Missoni and with at least the 70% of merino
wool as a condition dictated by Woolmark.
The aim of the paper is to highlight the moments of convergence and
differentiation regarding the methodologies and the design process into the
different areas of design.
In this way today we can talk about knitwear design: a specific field of Made in Italy
completely changing: to become project, knitwear must produce garments and
collections enhancing traditional techniques while expressing the spirit of time and in which the manual technique becomes a research tool and method to deal with all
the aspects in their influence on the industrial production chain.
O artigo aborda estratégias aplicadas à ampla cultura do projeto industrial onde as atividades operam para que a realização de produtos, tangíveis ou intangíveis, digam respeito ao novo.
Investiga-se o processo de desenvolvimento mediante a adoção da cross fertilization como instrumento condutor de projeto. As intersecções que se praticam entre as diversas áreas promovem mudanças e apontam para uma trajetória de inovação. Os relatos abordam situações de design, que por seu caráter multidisciplinar, é uma área que permeia tantas outras e cujas pesquisas estão sendo aplicadas com eficácia em distintos campos do conhecimento.
Abstract
The present paper focuses on the strategies that are taken in the broad culture of industrial design in order for its activities to result in products, be they tangible or intangible, that thrive in innovation. It aims to inquire into development processes by adopting cross fertilization as the project’s driving force. Intersections between several overlapping fields of knowledge promote changes and hint at the direction of innovation. The following reports deal with design situations, an area whose multidisciplinary nature, permeated by many other areas, allows for the findings of its research to be effectively put into practice in several fields of knowledge.
development obeys a number of techniques and whose result is what we wear, the
products we use to cover and protect ourselves.
In the early twentieth century, thanks to the growing incidence of women taking part
in sports, there emerged a sort of casual clothing that was comfortable and reasonably
priced and, thanks to Jean Patou, knitwear becomes the unrivalled protagonist of
this revolution. At first and in Italy in general, this particular sector played a secondary
role, purely domestic, with design solutions that lacked a strong identity.
Domyos, to be introduced into the Brazilian market. This work arose from the need to understand
and show the variations between nations, cultures and social behavior and the way that this
directly influences fashion with regards to styling, usage, frequency of purchase, etc. The objective
is to allow coherent integration of specific Brazilian products that match the equivalent European
offer.
The production of these “research products” – trend books – represents a field of noteworthy interest, not only for the fashion market, but for many other design-oriented sectors that are progressively elaborating similar practices. In these, what takes on a greater value is the planning research project, instead of the finished product, since this becomes the instrument of the company’s strategy, whose potential effects do not regard a simple collection or family of products, but entire generations of products. The objective of this paper is to offer an overall view of these practices as well as to demonstrate the progressive convergence of sectors that are apparently very distant from one another, as for example, fashion and electronics, towards the said practices.
The paper focuses on the territorial dimension of the project, which is meant to be a resource for the development and support of local economies, helping them to increase the value of their cultural identity and their design process as well as production’s know how.
Considering such observations, we can identify a new trend aiming to recover settled in time values, through the strong relationship that connects an individual to a community and manual arts to history and local identity.
the paper focuses on the concept of Made in Italy interpreted not only as a value of the past that has been identifying as a typical creative process, a particular and daily way of designing things and a top manufacturing quality, but also as a resource to improve and innovate the italian mature design system and above all the Italian Fashion System.
Italian fashion products have always been characterized by an immaterial factor, the so called “gusto italiano” (Italian taste) or “stile italiano” (Italian style) combined with a material one, that is the high quality of the production. But nowadays duet economic and social global reasons, in the international scene they are losing their peculiarities and specificities, both tanbigle and intangible and the consumers from abroad are finding more difficult to understand and catch the italian distinguishing featurers of the national clothes.
the paper wants to demonstrate how the discipline of design can contribute to improve the creative process, the production and the communication of the Italian fashion material culture giving to the actors of the system tools and methods to act in their specific fields with the final aim of foreseeing and guiding the consumption of the fashion product.
in particular, in the phase of the creative process, design can rethink and replan it: a model in which all the components of the fashion product interact among them creating a simple equation, will be shown: the result will always be a different product, adaptable and flexible, thanks to the rational combination, design and manufacturing of its variables and constants.
In "Questions of Method" Sartre observes that the person produces the garment, which means that he or she expresses himself or herself through it. In this way, the garment magically produces the person: by transforming the garment, one transforms the body.
In current situation, the “system” of fashion, or rather that set of skills and activities that characterized Italian fashion has taken on new forms over time. Fashion, Eleonora Fiorani writes, is the form of contemporary culture, in its ability to fit into the dynamic individual / company. It is precisely the relationship between the individual / socio-economic system / product that has changed.
Which are the changes? What are they due to?
It’s important to emphasize the risk of a "sustainable fashion" understood as a pure virtuosity ethical expedient method to increase sales and to get a clear conscience.
Innovations move purely functional objects on a new plan, operating a radical step forward. The redesign changes the relationship between people and objects. In the fashion industry, the revolutionary concept of A Piece of Clothes (APOC), launched for the first time by Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara in 1999, creates clothes that are almost finished after the weaver or the knitting machine. Designed to reduce the waste of fabric, garments need seams and minimal finishes. This process eliminates the need to test fabrics and garments can be made on request, thus reducing also the space for storage. This concept is unique in fashion and represents a rethinking of fashion through the creative development of manufacturing technology.
Objects' Life (creative genesis, production, durability, processing and disposal) is an integral part of the environmental system and, as such, the result of design solutions that have to program the system of production, in this sense we can say that in recent years and with the evolution of technology, many tools have become available by introducing new parameters and production systems and complex cross. But the improvement project can not merely be an extension of the options, the project must take on new ways of 'being", new development opportunities and new fields of activity on which to apply creativity to build objects whose added value is not the price but the way in which it was created.
The alternation of fast fashion is no longer a scandal compared to the rapid depletion of resources, but rather becomes the "pretext" to create something new, the product life is extended, by its own properties determine the continuous re-project.
The paper aims to investigate the perspectives, current and future scenarios according to the design-oriented design, whose purpose is to ready - (re) made: rethinking fashionable object considering the whole cycle of life as a resource. A change in the way of understanding the goods which are no longer disposable items, but objects with a history and potential that should be exploited.
Besides the primary use granted by the designer, the object will depend on many others who are assigned by the requirement, culture and experience of its owner.
The starting point has been Ernest Hemingway’s novel of 1952, “The Old Man and the Sea”; the author, tells us about an old unlucky fisherman named Santiago that one night takes off alone for the open sea on his sailing boat, looking for fortune. But Santiago at the end of the story approaches the pier just with a fishbone.This element is the center of Hemingway’s story, and it becomes the winning-defeat symbol of life: this idea leads to the Concept of the project and to the research of the stitches that have been used. In order to find a balance between the “handmade” parts and the “industrialized” ones, the garment has been made both with crochet and with a Brother knitting machine.
For the “handmade” parts, two wood instruments called “forcelle”, made of a central base piece and of two shafts around whom the works develops, were assembled. The result is a series of knots and loops that recall the image of a fishbone. For the machine parts it was created a stitch that could give the same idea using the holding cams.
The main construction of the garment comes from the sailing boats. Looking at the history of navigation and at different types of sails, such as the squared, the gaff and the lateen ones, various modules shaped as them were developed.
Combining them on an ideal woman’s body, gradually the pattern of the dress was decided. The loops of the handmade parts have been joint together in order to recall the shapes of the sails and also the ancient method of interlocking the nooses of the ropes used to stop the sails at the mast and at the yards. In the final garment, there can be recognized different techniques and different modules.
The materials used are all natural. The machine parts have been made with pure boiled hemp and the handmade ones have been made in linen. The choice of this two kind of fibers is strictly related to the project, since those were the materials of which the fishermen’s ropes were made of.
The idea of the project can also be applied to other design fields. The same techniques and fibers could be used to create home furniture chairs, pillows and so on. The final result could be a line of products based on natural yarns and materials, that focus on an ethical philosophy underlining the importance of the environment in which we live.
The paper focuses on the territorial dimension of the project; more and more frequently we are currently seeing the return and a new discovery of traditional techniques and manufacturing, which have re-appeared in the contemporary world with a new look and a new balance. As it is subject to changes in time, the set has to be interpreted as a variable heritage which should be preserved. Today the object of market and consumption is not only the simple possession of a specific product but it is the experience, the “story” that the customer can live inside the object, according to values of the manufacture that create add value to the existence.
Knit design involves many aspects and allows intervention and experimentation in every part of the production chain. It’s a complex project that matches an ancient know-how with design experimentation and technological innovation.
Through the analysis of a case history that involves artists, young designers, virtual communities and fashion brands this paper aims to understand, and return, how the knitting boundaries are expanding, changing a hobby into project, and what tools and methodologies a designer can use to set himself in the contemporary scenarios of production and consumption. All this by valuing the characteristics of an Italian industry which finds in craftsmanship its origin and its strength.
MIND’s goal is to implement strategies and shared policies so that a single well-structured network can present itself on an international level and attract the best talent and capital. The Municipal Councilor’s Office for Research, Innovation and Human Capital promotes MIND in conjunction with the offices of: Tourism, Marketing of the Region and Identity; Culture; and Business and Labor Policy. The aim is to consolidate Milan’s role as a global point of reference for education and research in design, thereby promoting the city as an international “brand for excellence”
A perfect environment for training young designers.
The city of Milan has always contributed substantially to the development of the world of design. Since from the second half of the 1900s, Milan has attracted important artists, top entrepreneurs, and many stu-dents - today, some 80% of design students in Italy are trained in one of the many Milan schools. All to-gether there are 10,000 design students every year.
This is because the city offers an ideal environment for those who wish to became designers there is no other organization in the world which unites so many schools, universities, companies, design studios, fairs and other design events. A symbiosis of elements found nowhere else, facilitating designer's training and career path.
Benefits:
For students: the chance to attend courses of excellence for free and to live one year studying and working in the world’s capital for design.
For schools: the chance to host select students based on their skills, regardless of their financial situation, and the chance to offer an academic and educational experience of superior quality, which would attract an even higher proportion of the best students.
For companies: the chance to come in contact with the young up-and-coming generation graduating from the best schools with top quality Master’s degrees.
For Milan: a new venue to increase recognition of Milan ever more in the design sector, and to enhance social and economic development.
Design-Driven innovation aims to release the potential of a new type of innovation based on a radical con-vergence between social and institution meaning.
In the contemporary world “come close” to design means investigate an approach connected to industrial project culture, transverse and multi discipline that can conceive project scenarios, wider and complex, with the purpose to transfer a “systemic vision” of innovation process, passing from product design to process design that can have possible effects on a “Products System” both physical and intangible.
From an international network to a Design Center.
This is now the challenge that all promoters and parteners of the project MIND deal for the construction of MID, the Design Incubator in Milan.
The general aims of the project can be summed up as follows:
- to promote design driven innovation;
- to facilitate relations and dialogue between the actors in the design system;
- to offer designers and new businesses services for the construction of industrial prototypes;
- to carry out research on specific sectoral issues by granting study bursaries.
We conclude by explaining the particle impact of our method for the community, for the institution in-volved, for the industries and for the Milano Municipality.
Twyle is a fashion game (actually is much more than that) and can represent such a modality, sitting at the cross point of creativity, social networking and gaming, proximity-based interaction, e-commerce. It’s a mobile application that connects the user, the product and the point of sale through a geolocation system. In the landscape of many recent fashion-centered social games, Twyle aims at fitting perfectly on every and each player like a sartorial garment, thanks to state-of-art, yet invisible, artificial intelligence.
The bases of the game are simple: each player has to create and maintain his/her virtual wardrobe, by identifying real fashion products and describing them with keywords and data (e.g.: size or price) on the game platform. This closet is then connected to the player’s profile, and shared within the game community, so that other players can comment and vote each player’s choice.
Thanks to this simple scheme, the main goal (and reward) of the game becomes the reputation gain in the related virtual social network (real discounts and other kinds of rewards are also considered).
Trough the patterns hidden in the gameplay, each player is thus prompted to contribute to a database of fashion ‘pieces of knowledge’ (products, opinions, outfits...) each one described by both subjective and objective information.
Henesis and Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano have cooperated in the creation of Twyle to promote the continuous interaction between users and products, users and shops. The first layer of the application is on the game, on the interaction between users through simple photos pictures of outfits or garment, linked to the platform; through a system of "like", users comment and exchange images of what they wear and what products or brand. The second level refers to the geolocation system, in which the application identifies and proposes in real time to each player stores where “liked” (or similar to, thanks to the internal recommendation system) objects can be found.,
By working on top of the game database, a map of relationships between the players, the products, and the places (sources) is built. This third layer, this network of relationships, is in fact built, kept updated and explored by two artificial intelligence algorithms, the first is an expert recommendation system, the second focused on spotting trends and influences, and tracking the birth and evolution of new styles.
This is the ultimate goal of this platform: to leverage the capability of digital games and social networks in order to expose emerging patterns and trends, to connect young fashion creators and their first customers, to add a new perspective to the research of design processes.
creation of fashion products the concept of good design is now acquired, knitwear
is now facing its decisive change from hobby into project; the enhancement of craft
(Micelli S. 2011) does not refer to any nostalgia for the past times, and even better
in Italy it is a very fertile area to be innovated and experimented. The ability to
innovate and promote new points of view in design processes does not arise only
from a thorough understanding of specific areas, but also from a lifestyle open to
diversity, that society has to accept and recognize (Micelli S . 2011).
Today, the ability of designers to explore contexts in an original way, proposing
ideas and results that are not just technical solutions of established problems, sees
in creativity and in fashion design education the ability to solve problems through
materials and their constant innovation for clothes, to experiment or to look at old
problems in a different way with the aim of going beyond the usual “fashion” idea.
This paper is written at the end of an educational experience in the Knit Design Lab
at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano, where Missoni, the most important
Italian knitwear brand, together with Woolmark, the most influencing certification
body at an international level for the promotion and enhancement of Merino wool,
in collaboration with Knitlab, a digital platform for the learning of the traditional
knitting techniques active in the School of Design at Politecnico di Milano, realized a
project in which the knitting techniques have been the first tool for the creation,
design and prototyping of a clothes collection for the spring-summer 2017,
coherent with the brand identity of Missoni and with at least the 70% of merino
wool as a condition dictated by Woolmark.
The aim of the paper is to highlight the moments of convergence and
differentiation regarding the methodologies and the design process into the
different areas of design.
In this way today we can talk about knitwear design: a specific field of Made in Italy
completely changing: to become project, knitwear must produce garments and
collections enhancing traditional techniques while expressing the spirit of time and in which the manual technique becomes a research tool and method to deal with all
the aspects in their influence on the industrial production chain.
O artigo aborda estratégias aplicadas à ampla cultura do projeto industrial onde as atividades operam para que a realização de produtos, tangíveis ou intangíveis, digam respeito ao novo.
Investiga-se o processo de desenvolvimento mediante a adoção da cross fertilization como instrumento condutor de projeto. As intersecções que se praticam entre as diversas áreas promovem mudanças e apontam para uma trajetória de inovação. Os relatos abordam situações de design, que por seu caráter multidisciplinar, é uma área que permeia tantas outras e cujas pesquisas estão sendo aplicadas com eficácia em distintos campos do conhecimento.
Abstract
The present paper focuses on the strategies that are taken in the broad culture of industrial design in order for its activities to result in products, be they tangible or intangible, that thrive in innovation. It aims to inquire into development processes by adopting cross fertilization as the project’s driving force. Intersections between several overlapping fields of knowledge promote changes and hint at the direction of innovation. The following reports deal with design situations, an area whose multidisciplinary nature, permeated by many other areas, allows for the findings of its research to be effectively put into practice in several fields of knowledge.
development obeys a number of techniques and whose result is what we wear, the
products we use to cover and protect ourselves.
In the early twentieth century, thanks to the growing incidence of women taking part
in sports, there emerged a sort of casual clothing that was comfortable and reasonably
priced and, thanks to Jean Patou, knitwear becomes the unrivalled protagonist of
this revolution. At first and in Italy in general, this particular sector played a secondary
role, purely domestic, with design solutions that lacked a strong identity.
Domyos, to be introduced into the Brazilian market. This work arose from the need to understand
and show the variations between nations, cultures and social behavior and the way that this
directly influences fashion with regards to styling, usage, frequency of purchase, etc. The objective
is to allow coherent integration of specific Brazilian products that match the equivalent European
offer.
The production of these “research products” – trend books – represents a field of noteworthy interest, not only for the fashion market, but for many other design-oriented sectors that are progressively elaborating similar practices. In these, what takes on a greater value is the planning research project, instead of the finished product, since this becomes the instrument of the company’s strategy, whose potential effects do not regard a simple collection or family of products, but entire generations of products. The objective of this paper is to offer an overall view of these practices as well as to demonstrate the progressive convergence of sectors that are apparently very distant from one another, as for example, fashion and electronics, towards the said practices.
The paper focuses on the territorial dimension of the project, which is meant to be a resource for the development and support of local economies, helping them to increase the value of their cultural identity and their design process as well as production’s know how.
Considering such observations, we can identify a new trend aiming to recover settled in time values, through the strong relationship that connects an individual to a community and manual arts to history and local identity.
the paper focuses on the concept of Made in Italy interpreted not only as a value of the past that has been identifying as a typical creative process, a particular and daily way of designing things and a top manufacturing quality, but also as a resource to improve and innovate the italian mature design system and above all the Italian Fashion System.
Italian fashion products have always been characterized by an immaterial factor, the so called “gusto italiano” (Italian taste) or “stile italiano” (Italian style) combined with a material one, that is the high quality of the production. But nowadays duet economic and social global reasons, in the international scene they are losing their peculiarities and specificities, both tanbigle and intangible and the consumers from abroad are finding more difficult to understand and catch the italian distinguishing featurers of the national clothes.
the paper wants to demonstrate how the discipline of design can contribute to improve the creative process, the production and the communication of the Italian fashion material culture giving to the actors of the system tools and methods to act in their specific fields with the final aim of foreseeing and guiding the consumption of the fashion product.
in particular, in the phase of the creative process, design can rethink and replan it: a model in which all the components of the fashion product interact among them creating a simple equation, will be shown: the result will always be a different product, adaptable and flexible, thanks to the rational combination, design and manufacturing of its variables and constants.
In "Questions of Method" Sartre observes that the person produces the garment, which means that he or she expresses himself or herself through it. In this way, the garment magically produces the person: by transforming the garment, one transforms the body.
In current situation, the “system” of fashion, or rather that set of skills and activities that characterized Italian fashion has taken on new forms over time. Fashion, Eleonora Fiorani writes, is the form of contemporary culture, in its ability to fit into the dynamic individual / company. It is precisely the relationship between the individual / socio-economic system / product that has changed.
Which are the changes? What are they due to?
It’s important to emphasize the risk of a "sustainable fashion" understood as a pure virtuosity ethical expedient method to increase sales and to get a clear conscience.
Innovations move purely functional objects on a new plan, operating a radical step forward. The redesign changes the relationship between people and objects. In the fashion industry, the revolutionary concept of A Piece of Clothes (APOC), launched for the first time by Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara in 1999, creates clothes that are almost finished after the weaver or the knitting machine. Designed to reduce the waste of fabric, garments need seams and minimal finishes. This process eliminates the need to test fabrics and garments can be made on request, thus reducing also the space for storage. This concept is unique in fashion and represents a rethinking of fashion through the creative development of manufacturing technology.
Objects' Life (creative genesis, production, durability, processing and disposal) is an integral part of the environmental system and, as such, the result of design solutions that have to program the system of production, in this sense we can say that in recent years and with the evolution of technology, many tools have become available by introducing new parameters and production systems and complex cross. But the improvement project can not merely be an extension of the options, the project must take on new ways of 'being", new development opportunities and new fields of activity on which to apply creativity to build objects whose added value is not the price but the way in which it was created.
The alternation of fast fashion is no longer a scandal compared to the rapid depletion of resources, but rather becomes the "pretext" to create something new, the product life is extended, by its own properties determine the continuous re-project.
The paper aims to investigate the perspectives, current and future scenarios according to the design-oriented design, whose purpose is to ready - (re) made: rethinking fashionable object considering the whole cycle of life as a resource. A change in the way of understanding the goods which are no longer disposable items, but objects with a history and potential that should be exploited.
Besides the primary use granted by the designer, the object will depend on many others who are assigned by the requirement, culture and experience of its owner.
The starting point has been Ernest Hemingway’s novel of 1952, “The Old Man and the Sea”; the author, tells us about an old unlucky fisherman named Santiago that one night takes off alone for the open sea on his sailing boat, looking for fortune. But Santiago at the end of the story approaches the pier just with a fishbone.This element is the center of Hemingway’s story, and it becomes the winning-defeat symbol of life: this idea leads to the Concept of the project and to the research of the stitches that have been used. In order to find a balance between the “handmade” parts and the “industrialized” ones, the garment has been made both with crochet and with a Brother knitting machine.
For the “handmade” parts, two wood instruments called “forcelle”, made of a central base piece and of two shafts around whom the works develops, were assembled. The result is a series of knots and loops that recall the image of a fishbone. For the machine parts it was created a stitch that could give the same idea using the holding cams.
The main construction of the garment comes from the sailing boats. Looking at the history of navigation and at different types of sails, such as the squared, the gaff and the lateen ones, various modules shaped as them were developed.
Combining them on an ideal woman’s body, gradually the pattern of the dress was decided. The loops of the handmade parts have been joint together in order to recall the shapes of the sails and also the ancient method of interlocking the nooses of the ropes used to stop the sails at the mast and at the yards. In the final garment, there can be recognized different techniques and different modules.
The materials used are all natural. The machine parts have been made with pure boiled hemp and the handmade ones have been made in linen. The choice of this two kind of fibers is strictly related to the project, since those were the materials of which the fishermen’s ropes were made of.
The idea of the project can also be applied to other design fields. The same techniques and fibers could be used to create home furniture chairs, pillows and so on. The final result could be a line of products based on natural yarns and materials, that focus on an ethical philosophy underlining the importance of the environment in which we live.
The paper focuses on the territorial dimension of the project; more and more frequently we are currently seeing the return and a new discovery of traditional techniques and manufacturing, which have re-appeared in the contemporary world with a new look and a new balance. As it is subject to changes in time, the set has to be interpreted as a variable heritage which should be preserved. Today the object of market and consumption is not only the simple possession of a specific product but it is the experience, the “story” that the customer can live inside the object, according to values of the manufacture that create add value to the existence.
Knit design involves many aspects and allows intervention and experimentation in every part of the production chain. It’s a complex project that matches an ancient know-how with design experimentation and technological innovation.
Through the analysis of a case history that involves artists, young designers, virtual communities and fashion brands this paper aims to understand, and return, how the knitting boundaries are expanding, changing a hobby into project, and what tools and methodologies a designer can use to set himself in the contemporary scenarios of production and consumption. All this by valuing the characteristics of an Italian industry which finds in craftsmanship its origin and its strength.
MIND’s goal is to implement strategies and shared policies so that a single well-structured network can present itself on an international level and attract the best talent and capital. The Municipal Councilor’s Office for Research, Innovation and Human Capital promotes MIND in conjunction with the offices of: Tourism, Marketing of the Region and Identity; Culture; and Business and Labor Policy. The aim is to consolidate Milan’s role as a global point of reference for education and research in design, thereby promoting the city as an international “brand for excellence”
A perfect environment for training young designers.
The city of Milan has always contributed substantially to the development of the world of design. Since from the second half of the 1900s, Milan has attracted important artists, top entrepreneurs, and many stu-dents - today, some 80% of design students in Italy are trained in one of the many Milan schools. All to-gether there are 10,000 design students every year.
This is because the city offers an ideal environment for those who wish to became designers there is no other organization in the world which unites so many schools, universities, companies, design studios, fairs and other design events. A symbiosis of elements found nowhere else, facilitating designer's training and career path.
Benefits:
For students: the chance to attend courses of excellence for free and to live one year studying and working in the world’s capital for design.
For schools: the chance to host select students based on their skills, regardless of their financial situation, and the chance to offer an academic and educational experience of superior quality, which would attract an even higher proportion of the best students.
For companies: the chance to come in contact with the young up-and-coming generation graduating from the best schools with top quality Master’s degrees.
For Milan: a new venue to increase recognition of Milan ever more in the design sector, and to enhance social and economic development.
Design-Driven innovation aims to release the potential of a new type of innovation based on a radical con-vergence between social and institution meaning.
In the contemporary world “come close” to design means investigate an approach connected to industrial project culture, transverse and multi discipline that can conceive project scenarios, wider and complex, with the purpose to transfer a “systemic vision” of innovation process, passing from product design to process design that can have possible effects on a “Products System” both physical and intangible.
From an international network to a Design Center.
This is now the challenge that all promoters and parteners of the project MIND deal for the construction of MID, the Design Incubator in Milan.
The general aims of the project can be summed up as follows:
- to promote design driven innovation;
- to facilitate relations and dialogue between the actors in the design system;
- to offer designers and new businesses services for the construction of industrial prototypes;
- to carry out research on specific sectoral issues by granting study bursaries.
We conclude by explaining the particle impact of our method for the community, for the institution in-volved, for the industries and for the Milano Municipality.
Twyle is a fashion game (actually is much more than that) and can represent such a modality, sitting at the cross point of creativity, social networking and gaming, proximity-based interaction, e-commerce. It’s a mobile application that connects the user, the product and the point of sale through a geolocation system. In the landscape of many recent fashion-centered social games, Twyle aims at fitting perfectly on every and each player like a sartorial garment, thanks to state-of-art, yet invisible, artificial intelligence.
The bases of the game are simple: each player has to create and maintain his/her virtual wardrobe, by identifying real fashion products and describing them with keywords and data (e.g.: size or price) on the game platform. This closet is then connected to the player’s profile, and shared within the game community, so that other players can comment and vote each player’s choice.
Thanks to this simple scheme, the main goal (and reward) of the game becomes the reputation gain in the related virtual social network (real discounts and other kinds of rewards are also considered).
Trough the patterns hidden in the gameplay, each player is thus prompted to contribute to a database of fashion ‘pieces of knowledge’ (products, opinions, outfits...) each one described by both subjective and objective information.
Henesis and Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano have cooperated in the creation of Twyle to promote the continuous interaction between users and products, users and shops. The first layer of the application is on the game, on the interaction between users through simple photos pictures of outfits or garment, linked to the platform; through a system of "like", users comment and exchange images of what they wear and what products or brand. The second level refers to the geolocation system, in which the application identifies and proposes in real time to each player stores where “liked” (or similar to, thanks to the internal recommendation system) objects can be found.,
By working on top of the game database, a map of relationships between the players, the products, and the places (sources) is built. This third layer, this network of relationships, is in fact built, kept updated and explored by two artificial intelligence algorithms, the first is an expert recommendation system, the second focused on spotting trends and influences, and tracking the birth and evolution of new styles.
This is the ultimate goal of this platform: to leverage the capability of digital games and social networks in order to expose emerging patterns and trends, to connect young fashion creators and their first customers, to add a new perspective to the research of design processes.