new simplicity?

international furniture design conference

the future of design in an increasingly complex world

27/29 August, Helsinki Finland

a natural approach to industrial design:

Argenic Design

Celestino Soddu

professor of industrial design at Milan Polytechnic, Italy

email celestino.soddu@polimi.it

Enrica Colabella

professor of environmental design at Milan Polytechnic, Italy

email enrica.colabella@polimi.it

Internet WEB:

http://soddu2.dst.polimi.it

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C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

Before the industrial era every object was

unique, unrepeatable and strongly connected to

the identity of its maker or user

unique and unrepeteable

like

natural objects

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

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C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

In the two centuries of the Industrial Era

by now at a close

objects were produced

using the mass-production line

as undistinguishable multiples.

This approach was based on presuppositions

that today have lost their force

and are no longer respondent to the potentiality and expectations of man of XXI century:

1. Identical mass-produced objects

cost less than unique individually produced objects.

2. The optimization of function

leads necessarily to a "unique" design result.

3. The quality of a design idea

is the final result

These 3 approaches are now obsolete

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

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C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

1. Identical mass-produced objects cost less than

unique individually produced objects

is no longer true

Digital manifacturing technology allows us to realize

at the same operational cost

unique objects or repeated objects

The cost differential belongs to the commands

to the reprogramming action

that we must perform in the robot,

in definitive

to the design work

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

the challange

If design is an operative metaproject

it can generate the design results

as unexpected different scenarios

formalizing them as

reprogramming actions,

in real time,

of the digital control machines, of the robots

the additional cost,

if it exists,

belongs only to

the design operation.

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

The optimization of function

leads necessarily to a "unique" design result

is not true

The mith of the optimization of a product has been debunked.

We cannot identify a given design result

as "necessary"

once we have discovered the role

of the subjectivity

in designers and customers.

The production of identical multiples is

an impoverishment, without benefits

of one of the final qualities of the object:

the UNIQUENESS.

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

the challange

to rediscover the possibility

of linking the object to

to different human individuals,

and to their

diversified exigencies

to rediscover a fundamental function of the object:

the capability of increasing

the identity and the uniqueness

of

each human individual.

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

The quality of a project is not deducible

from the final single result

it is not emulable by a computer:

the IDEA

as subjective construction of a hierarchy

of possible relations and interferences within an object

an idea is not the fruit of inductive or inferential processes,

but of adduction,

that is of the interpretative processes

which define human subjectivity

it is emulable by a computer:

the PROCESS of BUILDING single possible OBJECTS

because this process is an inferential synthesis,

like the consolidate procedure

of Artificial Intelligence

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

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C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

the challange

once the IDEA is conceived

the idea could be explicated and communicated in two ways:

1. with a series of projects (as till today we normally do)

2. with a subjective operative metaproject

A subjective operative metaproject

is a computer program

utilizing artificial intelligence to explicate the idea

capable of emulating electronically

the processes of building scenarios

and of managing these scenarios in the manufacturing sequence.

This is what is meant by

Argenic Design

the increasingly complex generative design

of new naturality

and simplicity

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

The example: an Argenic Design of a series of chairs.

The achieved goals are:

1. The idea is recognizable notwithstanding the differences among the individual chairs.

2. The Argenic design has not been realized through a data base compilation: we have not used, in the code, a sequence of pre-defined shapes but a series of generative procedures.

3. The logic that guides to the codes of generation and control is an emulation of the subjective procedures that we, as designers, normally use. We have represented and used this logic in a fractal way, from the overall form to the detail, so as to produce chairs that are identifiable in terms of the idea and design logic that we have adopted, but with the impossibility to foresee the final form.

4. The system emulates normal procedures of chairs design. These procedures are activated by codes that emulate the evolution of design as dynamic chaotic system, therefore a system highly sensitive to the starting data.

5. Each chair is unrepeatable, as in all scenarios produced by dynamic chaotic systems. So we can reach the uniqueness that is one of the objectives of an Argenic Design.

new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

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C.Soddu, E.Colabella - a natural approach to industrial design: Argenic Design

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new simplicity? - Helsinki 27/29 August 1997

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