ziyu zhou

Ph.D. Candidate - Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Italy

Visiting PhD student – Offenbach University of Art and Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main), Institute for Materialdesign, Germany

[email protected]

Supervisor

Prof. Valentina Rognoli

Prof. Manuela Celi

Ziyu Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design. Through analyzing the teaching and learning process on materials in design, she is devoting her research on exploring what materials and material education can bring to design students, and, most importantly, how do they work. She is committed to clarifying the explanation on relationships mainly between materials experience and the design teaching and learning activities.

Prior to this, in 2015, Ziyu obtained her Bachelor degree in Industrial design in Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. In the same year, she starts her Master study in Product Service System Design in Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Italy. During her study, she gained lots of experience and skills on product design and design thinking through a series of national projects / international design competitions. Also, she has proficient communication abilities as a designer through learning under differentiated cultures. In 2016, she attended the course “Designing Materials Experience” by Valentina Rognoli and started her story on materials and design fortunately. After one year in 2017, she got her Master degree through the graduation project: DIY bioplastic Club. With the integration of her knowledge in DIY materials, product design, service system design and interactive design, through designing a toolkit on enabling people to make their personalized DIY bioplastics, she started her research on how people view and use the materials experience to enrich their ideas and design.  

The main topics of Ziyu’s research and practice are situated in the intersection between: [1]The generic process, methodologies and spaces in educating design students on materials and through materials; [2] Emerging activities applying material experience into design education; [3] Development and creative practices in material-driven design; [4] Multisensory design with materials; [5] self-production, DIY, trans-disciplinary practices for materials generation.

Current Project

MATERIAL EDUCATION FOR DESIGN

The relationship between materials and design is already being clarified by many scholars. With the perspective-changes on material and design in the past and the present, material potentially influences on our views on design. Nowadays, the education of materials for design is not restrained in listing the knowledge about materials and their technical attributes which can fit design, but emphasized on guiding students to learn how to provoke experience to users, with different choices of materials or even create new materials. Sensorial-expressive characterization of materials is getting more attention from design educators and students in the start of material investigations. Starts from these viewpoints towards materials in design and design education in recent years, this research will take our sight onto how could material drive innovation and facilitate the higher design education, through inspiring students’ design thinking and gaining design their design abilities comprehensively.

Publications

1. Zhou, Z. (2020). Engaging Material Education in Design. The Design Journal, 24(1), 149-159. DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2020.1830549

2. Zhou, Z., Rognoli, V., & Celi, M. (2020). Features of material exploration projects emerged in design schools. In Conference Proceedings EDUNOVATIC 2020 (pp. 704-709). Redine.

3. Zhou Z., Rognoli, V. (2020). Designing Materials and Material Designers: Research by DIY-Materials Research Group. ZHUANGSHI Journal, 2020 (01. Total No. 321):17-23

4. Zhou Z., Rognoli, V. (2020). Material Education: New Training, New Skills. Chapter in MaterialDesigners Book.

5. Zhou, Z., & Rognoli, V. (2019). Material Education in Design: From Literature Review to Rethinking. In Fifth International Conference for Design Education Researchers (pp. 111-119). METU Department of Industrial Design.

6. Zhou. Z.; Rognoli. V.; Ayala-Garcia. C. (2018), Educating designers through Materials Club, 4th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’18), http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd18.2018.8206

Alice Buso

Ph.D. Candidate - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

[email protected]

www.alicebuso.com

SupervisorS

Prof. dr. Elvin Karana

Prof. dr. ir. Kaspar Jansen

Dr. Holly McQuillan

Alice Buso is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, researching Animated Textiles. Her PhD aims to unveil the potential of Animated Textiles for novel experiential and performative possibilities through the lenses of Materials Experience. Alice is originally from Italy, where she obtained a BSc in Product Design from Politecnico di Torino. In 2017 she moved to the Netherlands to pursue the MSc in Integrated Product Design at TU Delft. After graduation, she started to work at the same university as a researcher, extending her master’s final project on soft robotics for comfort applications. During this period, she developed an interest in understanding how emerging technologies and materials can be merged with design.

Current Project

DESIGNING ACTIVE EXPERIENCE PATTERNS WITH ANIMATED TEXTILES: AN EXPLORATION OF PERFORMATIVITY

This PhD research introduces Animated Textiles as an overarching term for textiles that are active, adaptive and autonomous not only through computational elements (e.g., sensors and actuators) but also through their inherent chemical, structural, or biological qualities. Thus, Animated Textiles expands the current definition of Smart Textiles, considering both the smartness of digital or physical components and the intrinsic mechanical qualities of textiles as equally significant in their final expression and function.

This PhD aims to investigate the experiential potential of Animated Textiles, with a focus on their performativity, i.e., actions and performances a textile material elicits from people. Seamless connections between the material qualities and performativity, referred to as active experience patterns in materials experience (Giaccardi and Karana, 2015), can help Animated Textiles to be more easily assimilated in our everyday lives, as part of our daily practices, and keep them remain relevant for a longer time. Accordingly, Alice poses the questions: How do we design for certain actions in Animated Textiles? What role do textile qualities, both digital and physical, play in the interaction with Animated Textiles?

Publications

1. Buso, A., McQuillan, H., Jansen, K., Karana, E. (2022, June). The Unfolding of Textileness in Animated Textiles: An Exploration of Woven Textile-Forms. In DRS International Conference 2022, 25 June-3 July, Bilbao, Spain. [accepted]

2. Buso, A., Scharff, R. B. N., Doubrovski, E. L., Wu, J., Wang, C. C. L., & Vink, P. (2020, May). Soft Robotic Module for Sensing and Controlling Contact Force. In 2020 3rd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) (pp. 70-75). IEEE.

3. Buso, A., & Shitoot, N. (2019). Sensitivity of the foot in the flat and toe-off positions. Applied Ergonomics, 76, 57-63.

PROF. Valentina Rognoli

Associate Professor - Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Co-Founder and Co-Head of Materials Experience Lab - Italy

[email protected]

dipartimentodesign.polimi.it

Valentina Rognoli is Associate Professor in the Design Department at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano. Here, she studied, and began her academic carrier focused on Materials for Design. She has been a pioneer in this field, starting almost twenty years ago and establishing an internationally recognised expertise on the topic both in research and education. For her PhD, she undertook a unique and innovative study on a key but a little treated topic that is the expressive-sensorial dimension of materials of Design and their experiential aspects. This research has greatly influenced the teaching methodologies on materials at the School of Design.

At present, her research and teaching activities are focusing on pioneering and challenging topics as DIY-Materials for social innovation and sustainability; Bio-based and circular Materials; Urban Materials and Materials from Waste and food Waste; Materials for interactions and IoT (ICS Materials); Speculative Materials; Tinkering with materials, Materials Driven Design method, CMF design, emerging materials experiences, and material education in the field of Design.

At the institutional level, she was involved for the last two year in the Technical and Scientific Committee of the Product Design course as supervisor of the internationalisation process, and part of the Board of Professors of the PhD Programme in Design.

She participates as principal investigator in a European Project called Made, co-funded by Creative Europe Programme of The European Union, which aims at boosting talents towards circular economies across Europe (http://materialdesigners.org/).

Moreover, she is the author of over 50 publications. She organised international workshops and events, invited speaker and reviewer for relevant journals and international conferences. Many international scholars recognised in the scientific community follow, inspire and appreciate her research and educational approach.

Short mission statement

Raising sensibility and making professional designers and future designers conscious of the infinite potential of materials and processes.

Publications

1. Ayala-Garcia, C., Rognoli, V. (2017) The New Aesthetic of DIY-Materials,The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S375-S389

2. Karana, E., Giaccardi, E., Rognoli, V. (2017) Materially Yours. In book: Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design, Publisher: Routledge, Ed. Jonathan Chapman, pp.206-221

3. Parisi, S., Rognoli, V., Sonneveld, M.H.  (2017) Material Tinkering. An inspirational approach for experiential learning and envisioning in product design education, The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S1167-S1184

4. Rognoli, V., Ayala-Garcia, C. (2017) Material Activism. New hybrid scenarios between design and technology. Cuadernos 70 Journal, Universidad de Palermo, N 70-2018 pp. 105-115 ISSN 1668-0227.

5. Rognoli, V., Ayala-Garcia, C., Bengo, I. (2017) DIY-Materials as enabling agents of innovative social practices and future social business in: Proceedings of International Congress of Design FORMA 2017, Cuba. (On Press).

6. Ayala-Garcia, C., Rognol, V., Karana, E. (2017). Five Kingdoms of DIY Materials for Design. In Alive. Active. Adaptive: Proceedings of International Conference on Experiential Knowledge and Emerging Materials (EKSIG 2017), June 19-20, Delft, the Netherlands, pp. 222-234.

7. Sauerwein, M., Karana, E., Rognoli, V. (2017) Revived Beauty: Research into Aesthetic Appreciation of Materials to Valorise Materials from Waste in Sustainability 9(4), 529. April 2017.

8. Parisi S., Rognoli V., Ayala C. (2016). Designing Materials Experiences through Passing of Time, Material Driven Design Method applied to Mycelium based Composites. In: Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Design & Emotion, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 2016 pp.239-255.

9. Rognoli V., Ayala C., Parisi S., (2016). The emotional value of Do-it-yourself materials. In: Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Design & Emotion, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September 2016. Pp. 233-241.

10. Rognoli, V., Bianchini, M., Maffei, S., & Karana, E. (2015). DIY Materials. Special Issue on Emerging Materials Experience. Materials and Design, vol. 86, pp. 692–702; DOI 10.1016/j.matdes.2015.07.020.

11. Rognoli V., (2015). Dynamism and imperfection as emerging materials experiences. A case study. In: Proceedings of DesForm 2015 - Aesthetics of Interaction: Dynamic, Multisensory, Wise. 9th International Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement, Politecnico di Milano, IT; 10/2015.

12. Rognoli V., Karana, E. (2014). Towards a New Materials Aesthetic Based on Imperfection and Graceful Ageing. In: E. Karana, O. Pedgley, O., & V. Rognoli (Eds.) Materials Experience: Fundamentals of Materials and Design (pp. 145-154). Butterworth-Heinemann: Elsevier, UK.

13. Rognoli V., (2010). A broad survey on expressive-sensorial characterization of materials for design education. Metu, Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, vol. 27; p. 287-300. DOI 10.4305/METU.JFA.2010.2.16

JIWEI ZHOU

PhD Candidate - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

[email protected]

Instagram: @jiwei_zhou_ @the_tea_recipes

SUPERVISORS

Prof. Dr. Elvin Karana

Prof. Dr. Elisa Giaccardi

Dr. Zjenja Doubrovski

Jiwei graduated from Tongji University in Shanghai with Bachelor of Engineer in Industrial Design. She then completed “Design for Interaction” master track and obtained Master of Science at Delft University of Technology. Throughout her growth towards a designer and a design researcher she has been fascinated with materials and their relationships with people. Her bachelor thesis developed a clay-like material from tea waste from the tea industry in her hometown Sichuan in China. In her master thesis, in collaboration with Diana Scherer - who developed Interwoven textile grown from plant roots, she explored the potential of digital bio-fabrication with plant roots in weaving three dimensional artefacts (supervised by Elvin Karana and Jun Wu). As a designer she aims to create things that bring new perspectives and inspirations to both people and our society.Jiwei’s design practices usually departure from novel materials, with a special focus on emerging experiences and social implications they bring to human society. Her main research fields are bio-based materials, “growing design” and “living artefacts”.

Current Project

“HABITALITIES” WITH LIVING ARTEFACTS

As a PhD candidate at the Materials Experience Lab of Delft University of Technology, she studies "habitabilities of living artefacts". To raise critical questions about our social relationship with living materials, her current design practice investigates mediums and ways to augment the expressions of well-being of photosynthetic micro-organisms that are in a mutualistic relationship with humans, thus promoting "habitabilities" for both humans and our living cohabitants.

Holly Robbins

Ph.D. Candidate - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

[email protected]

Supervisors

Prof. Dr. Elisa Giaccardi

Dr. Elvin Karana

Holly Robbins is a PhD candidate of Industrial Design at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) where she works at the intersection of social sciences, humanities, and design. Her work focuses on shaping relationships with data-intensive objects (those connected to the Internet and that collect data) that are based on reciprocity. Holly’s work explores how design approaches can express the im/materiality of these objects- where the materials of these technologies can be just outside our grasp such as code and algorithms. Specifically, she explores how traces can serve to support the relationship between people and the im/material qualities of these objects.

As a part of TU Delft’s ID Studio Lab and the Connected Everyday Lab, Holly uses a research through design approach. She collaborates closely with students, professional designers, and companies to put her conceptual and theoretical work into designed objects. 

Current Project

DESIGN WITH (AND FOR) TRACES

As technologies become more and more complex, the tasks that they perform become masked in an effort to make them more usable. However, what’s lost with this masking is the ability to understand how they work and the role that they play in our lives. This is especially worrisome with connected objects that have the additional capabilities of harvesting data from people and for its connectivity to the Internet.  This leads to overconsumption, disposability, and ethical concerns.

This research project is the PhD research of Holly Robbins and considers how we can change the relationship that we have with connected objects and people. It uses traces as a design approach to engage people in the task the technology performs as well as in situating the technology in our lives. Traces have the potential to communicate the relationship between person and object which occurs with both digital and physical materials. This has implications for ethics as well as sustainability.

Publications

1. Robbins, H., Giaccardi, E., Karana, E. (2016). Traces as an Approach to Design for Focal Things and Practices. In Proceedings of NordiCHI’16: 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. October 23 – 27, 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden. ACM, 2016.                                                                                                                                                                       
2. Robbins, Holly; Elisa Giaccardi; and Elvin Karana. “Politics of Impermanence: Traces of Use as a Design Strategy for Technologies.” Workshop: Things Fall Apart; Unpacking the Temporalities of Impermanence for HCI. NordiCHI’16: 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. October 24, 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden. ACM, 2016.                                                                                                                                                
3. Robbins, Holly; Elisa Giaccardi; Elvin Karana; and Patrizia D’Olivo. (2015). “Understanding and Designing with (and for) Material Traces.” Studies in Material Thinking 13(01).                                                                                                                                                                       
4. Robbins, Holly; Elisa Giaccardi; and Elvin Karana. “De-Commodifying the Device: A Materialist Design Approach for Communication With and Through Connected Objects.” Workshop: The Future of Making: Where Industrial and Personal Fabrication Meet. Critical Alternatives 2015. Aarhus, Denmark. August 2015.                                                                                                                                  
5. Robbins, Holly. “Disrupting the Device Paradigm: Designing for Mutual Praxis in Connected Objects.” Participatory Innovation Conference 2015. The Hague, The Netherlands. May 2015.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
6. Giaccardi, Elisa; Elvin Karana; Holly Robbins; and Patrizia D’Olivo. (2014) “Growing traces on objects of daily use: A product design perspective for HCI.” Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems. ACM, 2014.

FEDERICO TREVIA

Researcher - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

[email protected]

[email protected]

SUPERVISOR

Dr. Elvin Karana

Dr. Jan Carel Diehl

Federico is currently working on project DELTAP at the Industrial Design Engineering Faculty of TU Delft, in collaboration with the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at TU Delft. Project DELTAP focuses on developing an integrative approach for smart small-scale piped water supply in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta. The focus of Federico’s research is on the exploration and use of local materials (both natural and waste-based) in Rajshahi, Bangladesh, as resource for DIY-materials, together with the integration of the water system in the community. Main areas of interest are fulfillment of system requirements, water distribution in the village and social adoption.

Prior to this Federico received his Bachelor degree in Industrial Design from Politecnico di Milano in 2011 and his Master degree in Design For Interaction at TU Delft in 2013 with a graduation project at Philips Design. After his studies he has been working for different sized companies and industries both in Italy and The Netherlands, spanning from education start-ups and product design studios to industrial groups and advertising agencies.

Working as a professional designer he gained experience in human centered design, product design and conceptualization, process visualization and project management.

Materials exploration, use and enhancement has always been at the heart of his projects, in the quest of defining how to convey experiences through shape, form and texture. In his career Federico was involved in projects related to the discovery of textile’s transparency, perception and reflectivity for space design; wood selection, shaping and treatment for public space and interior design projects; aluminum treatment for texture, shape and finishing in luxury product design; paper and cardboard investigation and treatment for packaging design.

Current Project

DIY MATERIAL EXPERIENCES IN DELTAS

In this project, Federico Trevia explores how (new) materials are experienced in BoP countries, specifically in Deltas in India and Bangladesh; as well as the dynamics of the society and the organization to be taken into account in the development and implementation of DIY material practices for locally produced products. 

PUBLICATIONS

1. Evelien Van de Garde-Perik, Federico Trevia, Adam Henriksson, Luc Geurts and Helle Ullerup (2016). Getting a GRIP at the Design of a Nature Inspired Relaxation Space for Work-Related Stress. International Journal of Arts and Technology, Volume 9, Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJART.2016.078612

WASABII NG

PhD Candidate – Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.ngwasabii.com

SUPERVISORS

Prof. Dr. Elvin Karana

Prof. Dr. Han Wosten

Prof. Valentina Rognoli

Wasabii Ng is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.

Under the Materializing Futures Section, Wasabii explores the design potentials of mycelium-based materials, with a particular interest in tuning their experiential qualities through unusual techniques (such as sound), which offers immense possibilities for cleaner production and the design of novel responsive artefacts. Her research brings together research techniques from biology and design in a unique iterative manner. She works under the supervision of Prof. Elvin Karana, Prof. Han Wosten (Utrecht University) and Dr. Valentina Rognoli (PoliMi). Wasabii also has an affiliation with the Biobased Art and Design Group at the Avans University of Applied Sciences, guiding students and researchers on designing with mycelium-based materials.

Previously she graduated with a First-Class Honours BA in Textile Design at Chelsea College Of Art, University of the Arts London; and she holds a MA in Information Experience Design from the Royal College Of Art (RCA) London. Her work has been internationally exhibited and runs workshops for educational purposes. Her previous grants includes projects such as Cuddly Fungi (funding awarded Creative Stimulerings Fonds) and Another bite of the cherry (H2020-SC6-CO-CREATION-2016-3 Project number: 763784).