INTRODUCTION TO PRODUCT DESIGN
Discovering the design process.COURSE DESCRIPTION
The course will enable the participants to get through the experience of working at “Bottega”; a full immersion activity with a mix of lessons, lab-experience and a team workshop.This course is structured as a workshop and entails a practical approach to the “building” theme.
The course is intended as an artistic intervention of micro-architecture. The AtelierFORTE’s motto is “Verum in Somnis”, that means reality in dreams, with the intention of connecting the ralm of imagination with everyday reality.
AtelierFORTE’s didactical approach consists in the classical method of working at “Bottega”; a full immersion activity with a mix of lessons, lab-experience and a team workshop. In the past “Andare a Bottega”(i.e. being trained in a professional workshop led by an expert) was an extremely rare opportunity to share and hand down knowledge before the birth of Art Academies. The greatest artists of the Renaissance acquired their own knowledge through this “Bottega” experience. Generations of designers and artists have experienced this learning method, from Leonardo da Vinci to Botticelli, from Raffaello to Perugino that have brought Italian art to its highest levels. AtelierFORTE tries to follow this tradition and proposes the same teaching method based on practice and empiric studies and inspired by the famous latin proverb “verba docent exempla trahunt" (words teach, examples lead). Through practice and by following the example of a master, students will have to deal with topics from the ArkiZoic style, from the heuristic method to order and hierarchy, from zoomorphism to nature’s mathematics. From an operative point of view, the project will be centered on manual work (students will face all the issues related to the realization of iron sculptures) and on the students’ ability to transfer on a paper booklet all the dynamics and processes they have learnt during the course (they will have to create their own note-book binding together all the sheets and to prepare the cover).
Students will learn how to work with wood: they will cut wood boards, assemble them with bolts and nuts, brand them with a number to allow an easy assembling-disassembling process.
Various product design issues will be dealt with: from door-opening-window up to the heating elements (such as the installation of a wood-stove sauna).
Deal boards of various sizes and lengths (up to more than 5 metres) will be used.
Students will also have the possibility to work iron (to build hinges and linking elements by welding together and cutting iron profiles). Part of the work will also be devoted to the realisation of ladders, scaffoldings, stagings and to learn to use knots, levers and lifting blocks.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
Market trend research, material sourcing in Italy and creativity are used to design a model. Working as a member of a team, students will create a concept and develop one original prototype design.The course will introduce the participants to the Project and Design Culture of “the making-of … the art of doing”, in the sense of the Italian “Bottega” similar - back to the past - to a real creative laboratory, following the learning method adopted by Leonardo da Vinci, typical of the historical Humanism of the Italian Renaissance cultural movement, more than six centuries ago.
ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Students will have to be motivated and curious, ready to work individually and in groups and willing to carry out manual work (cutting, assembling and disassembling wood, welding iron profiles…).Flexibility and adaptability.
Active participation in the entire course will be highly profitable for the students.
In general, no specific skills are required besides a level of education equivalent or above high school level, some basic drawing skills, word processing skills, capability and control of a personal digital photo camera.
The course is also open to first and second year university students with different design backgrounds as well as fashion, communication and visual arts, who desire to enrich their knowledge and understanding of Design.
OUTPUT
1. Creating a Personal Notebook.The notebook will be the chance to keep the memory and the elaboration of personal contents and the experience in the lab.
2. Creating an Art-Design piece.
The active and creative experience of working with hard and soft materials in the AtelierFORTE workshop.
