The MTRL 2020 Conference is coming to a close today, and it’s been a whirlwind of great interdisciplinary talks given by great lecturers.
First up:
Inna Alesina
Inna is a product designer and a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Inna talked about a return to older or existing materials, finding new uses for them, and the importance of process over final products. She is most famous for her want/need cup published on DesignBoom and slue of innovative products that use objects like old cd’s and cardboard tubes.
Second Speaker:
Emiliano Godoy
Sustainable design advocate, Emiliano Godoy, showed incredibly cool possibilities in environmentally-friendly materials from his sugar disposable series to his expressions in plywood furniture. *Did you know that human bodies are now so toxic that buried bodies poison soil and cremated bodies poison the air?
Third Speaker:
Chris Lefteri
Chris Lefteri is a London-based author, industrial designer, and curator of 100% Design. He discussed the importance of “story” to narrate intention of the use or to inform the use of materials. His books take the structure of cook books to explain materials in a language that relates to designers.
Final Speaker:
Michelle Addington
Michelle, a professor of sustainable architectural design at Yale and has background in materials, manufacturing, and engineering through her with DuPont and NASA. The premise of of her talk was that materials have a constituency and contingency, or a set of properties that are unchangeable and behaviors that are changeable. Contingency of materials calls for the work of designers to investigate and innovate.
Example of Michelle Addington’s lectures:
For creative people in the 21st century, understanding emerging and innovative new materials is a core necessity. MTRL 2020 is an event centered in providing the students and faculty of the University of Cincinnati and the surrounding community a common forum within which to achieve that understanding. With expert speakers in various fields of materials research, breakout sessions, a panel discussion, and a gallery exhibition of innovative materials, the three-day event seeks to heighten the level of awareness to the importance of materials knowledge across the design disciplines and the inter-relation of these materials with outside disciplines. In addition to suggesting ways that faculty might incorporate the dissemination of innovative materials-related information, application, and experimentation into their curricula, MTRL 2020 is intended to add momentum to the push for the creation of a permanent materials resource within the University of Cincinnati College of DAAP. -MTRL 2020
