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- Bahar Barati
BaharEH Barati
Ph.D. Candidate - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Supervisors
Bahareh is currently working towards her Ph.D. degree on the topic of creative design with underdeveloped smart materials. In the context of Light.Touch.Matters, a European Union FP7 project (2013-2016), she has explored the situation of designing in “upstream” collaborative projects to enable “design-driven” material innovation. Her work acknowledges that looking at product design as an ad-hoc wrapping for some pre-determined material characteristics overshadows the importance of making and realizing in “negotiation with the material”. Giving power to this overlooked voice in discovering new possibilities with underdeveloped materials, her research put forward a number of theoretical and practical design supports (Hyperlink to the LTM design tool). The design supports particularly focus on characterizing and communicating the temporal and experiential aspects of these underdeveloped smart materials, as the development team explore the unique potentials of material-product development. Prior to this PhD research, Bahareh acquired her M.Sc. (cum laude) in Integrated Product Design from Technical University of Delft in 2012. In collaboration with Phillips Research (Eindhoven, the Netherlands), she developed a probe set for sensory evaluation of textile materials for her graduation project (Hyperlink to graduation project). In 2013, she was nominated for UfD-Royal HaskoningDHV Best Graduate Award. Bahareh is an alumnus of the University of Tehran and has maintained her contact with this university, through providing guidance and recently a workshop on interaction design (hyperlink to the news).
Current Project
DESIGNING WITH UNDERDEVELOPED SMART MATERIALS
February 2013 marked the start of Light.Touch.Matters, in which designers and material researchers joined forces to develop a completely new generation of smart materials that can sense touch and respond with luminescence. The base technologies are novel piezo plastics and flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Being thin, flexible and formable, these ‘light touch materials’ promise to revolutionize product design by integrating luminescence and touch in such a way that eventually the product becomes the interface (Project Link).
In this project, Bahareh’s reserach aims at supporting a more profound understanding of underdeveloped smart material composites and their potentials. To that aim, she developed functional demonstrators that instantiate the design space, physical probes that explicate the (material-related) design variables, and a hybrid tool that allows for higher fidelity experiences of these underdeveloped smart materials. Together these components constitute a design toolkit
Publications
Barati, B., Karana, E., Foole, M. (2017). Experience Prototyping’ Smart Material Composites. In Alive. Active. Adaptive: Proceedings of International Conference on Experiential Knowledge and Emerging Materials (EKSIG 2017), June 19-20, Delft, the Netherlands, pp. 50-65.
Barati, B., Karana, E., & Hekkert, P. (in review, available upon request). Understanding The Experiential Qualities of Light Touch Matters: Toward a Tool Kit. Journal of Artifact.
Jansen, K., Claus, S., Barati, B. (2017). Designing of a semi-transparent Electroluminescent Umbrella. In Proceedings of Smart System Integration.
Barati, B., Karana, E., Jansen, K., & Hekkert, P. (2016, February). Functional Demonstrators to Support Understanding of Smart Materials. In Proceedings of the TEI'16: Tenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 386-391). ACM.
Barati, B., Karana, E., & Hekkert, P., Jönsthövel, I. (2015, November). Designing with an Underdeveloped Computational Composite for Materials Experience. In Proceedings of EKSIG 2015: Experiential Knowledge Special Interest Group.
Barati, B., Karana, E, Hekkert, P. (2015, October). From Way Finding in the Dark to Interactive CPR Trainer: Designing with Computational Composites. In Proceedings of DesForm 2015.
- Barati, B., Karana, E., Sekulovski, D., & Pont, S. C. (2015). Retail lighting and textiles: Designing a lighting probe set. Lighting Research and Technology, 1-22.
Karana, E., Barati, B., Rognoli, V., & Zeeuw Van Der Laan, A. (2015). Material driven design (MDD): A method to design for material experiences. International journal of design, 19 (2) 2015.
- Alessia Romani
ALESSIA ROMANI
Ph.D. Candidate - Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Italy
Research Fellow – Politecnico di Milano, Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta”, Italy
www.piulab.it
Supervisors
Prof. Marinella Levi
Prof. Valentina Rognoli
Alessia Romani is a PhD candidate in Design at the Department of Design (Politecnico di Milano), and she currently works as Research Fellow at the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering “Giulio Natta” of the same university. Her main research interests focus on the interdisciplinary connection between Design, Materials and Additive Manufacturing. She aims at bridging design and engineering through the lens of materials and digital technologies. Also, she is interested in new design strategies and approaches to additive manufacturing, new materials and finishing for design and additive manufacturing, parametric and computational design, design for sustainability and circular economy.
She is actively involved in two main research projects: “FiberEUse - Large scale demonstration of new circular economy value-chains based on the reuse of end-of-life fiber reinforced composites” (H2020 EU Funded project - Grant Agreement N. 730323-1) and “+Ability” (Codesign of 3D Printed Customized Assistive Technology). She previously took part in “NNCF – Noi Non Ci Fermiamo” project funded by Roche S.p.A. (Codesign of Assistive Technology for Rheumatic Diseases).
Alessia is currently part of +LAB, 3D printing lab of Politecnico di Milano, and she has joined the Materials Experience Lab after the beginning of her PhD path. Her PhD research aims at investigating the interdisciplinary link between design, materials and additive manufacturing in circular economy contexts, fostering the exploitation of new circular materials and strategies in the design practice. Previously, she received her BSc in Product Design in 2015 from Politecnico di Milano, and she obtained her MSc in Design & Engineering in 2018 (full marks) from the same university with a thesis focused on the codesign of 3D printed customized assistive technology developed at +LAB. During her studies, she also worked as a designer in the household appliances and textile fields.
Through her research experience, she had the opportunity to merge design research and materials engineering, gaining expertise at the intersection of the two disciplines. She also collaborated as teaching assistant and co-supervised MSc thesis of the two disciplinary fields (MSc in Design & Engineering, BSc and MSc in Materials and Nanotechnology Engineering). Moreover, she has authored publications in peer-reviewed journals, participated at international conferences and organized workshops focused on 3D printing, materials and design.
Current Project
DESIGN, MATERIALS AND ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING IN CIRCULAR ECONOMY CONTEXTS
Considering the exploitation of fossil derivatives for human activities, the importance of sustainability is going to constantly increase in the next years. New circular economy models should be investigated to reduce the human impact on earth. As a result, design, materials and digital technologies play a crucial role in this change, and a wider range of circular materials and design strategies should be implemented. Nevertheless, their combined integration in the design practice is still challenging, and designers are not always aware of these possibilities. At the same time, the potential applications of these materials and their experiential aspects are scarcely considered in the conventional development process.
The aim of this research is to investigate the interdisciplinary link between design, materials and additive manufacturing in circular economy contexts. At a later stage, the goal is to foster the integration of new circular materials and design strategies based on additive manufacturing in the design practice. Starting from specific case studies, the research will be focused on the investigation of new circular materials and design strategies for additive manufacturing through a design engineering experimental approach. Afterwards, new experiential tools will be developed to exploit the potential of emerging materials and strategies for new design applications in circular economy models.
Publications
Romani, A., Suriano, R., Mantelli, A., Levi, M., Tralli, P., Laurila, J., Vuoristo, P. (Forthcoming, 2021). Composite Finishing for Reuse. In: Systemic Circular Economy Solutions for Fiber Reinforced Composites.
Mantelli, A., Romani, A., Suriano, R., Levi, M., Turri, S. (2021, Forthcoming). Additive manufacturing of recycled composites. In: Systemic Circular Economy Solutions for Fiber Reinforced Composites.
Mantelli, A., Romani, A., Suriano, R., Levi, M., Turri, S. (2021) Direct Ink Writing of Recycled Composites with Complex Shapes: Process Parameters and Ink Optimization. Advanced Engineering Materials, In press.
Mantelli, A., Romani, A., Suriano, R., Diani, M., Colledani, M., Sarlin, E., Turri, S., Levi, M. (2021) UV-Assisted 3D Printing of Polymer Composites from Thermally and Mechanically Recycled Carbon Fibers. Polymers, 13, (5):726. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13050726
Romani, A., Levi, M. (2020) Parametric Design for Online User Customization of 3D Printed Assistive Technology for Rheumatic Diseases. In: De Paolis L., Bourdot P. (eds) Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics. AVR 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12243. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58468-9_14
Romani, A., Mantelli, A., Suriano, R., Levi, M., Turri, S. (2020) Additive Re-Manufacturing of Mechanically Recycled End-of-Life Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymers for Value-Added Circular Design. Materials, 13, (16): 3545. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13163545
Romani, A., Orlando, G., Convertino, R., Zappalà, F., Baldassin, R., Pisu, M.G., Lorè, A., Digioia, S., Brambilla, E., Marcato, G., Agresta, I., Basciu, F., Fausti, V., Ravalli, G., Mantelli, A., Levi, M., Donati, C. (2019). CoDesign, Stampa 3D e Medicina per la Progettazione di Prodotti personalizzabili d’Uso Quotidiano. In: Reumatismo, 71:286-93. Società Italiana di Reumatologia (SIR), Rimini. (Invited)
Romani, A., Mantelli, A., Levi, M. (2019) Circular Design for Value-Added Remanufactured End-of-Life Composite Material via Additive Manufacturing Technology. In: Segalàs, J., Lazzarini, B. (eds) Proceedings of the 19th European Roundtable for Sustainable Consumption and Production – Circular Europe for Sustainability: Design, Production and Consumption, Book of Papers (1): 491-512. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.
- Clarice Risseeuw
CLARICE RISSEEUW
PhD Candidate – Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Supervisor
Dr. Holly McQuillan
Dr. Joana Martins
Clarice is a PhD candidate at the TU Delft, exploring the potential of flavobacteria’s living colour as responsive medium. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design Engineering as well as a master’s degree in Integrated Product Design from the same university. During her studies in Delft and an exchange program at the NTNU, Norway, she was more and more attracted to bio design as it was the perfect way to combine her passions for design and nature. She started working with flavobacteria during her graduation project, in which she characterized, captured and communicated this organism’s vivid structural colourations. Afterwards, she joined Materials Experience Lab as a biodesign researcher of Caradt to continue her research. Still amazed by this beautiful microorganism, Clarice has now returned to the TU Delft as a PhD candidate, supervised by Prof. Dr. Elvin Karana, Dr. Holly McQuillan and Dr. Joana Martins.
Current Project
The PhD research focuses on exploring the potential of flavobacteria’s living colour as responsive medium. Bridging microbiology and design, we aim to take flavobacteria out of the lab and develop a living responsive material able to communicate through vivid colourations. Here we envision soft interfaces that can be activated by the user, offering unique possibilities for interaction design.
- Shahar Livne
SHAHAR LIVNE
Designer in residence
SUPERVISOR
Shahar Livne (1989) is an Israeli-born designer located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Her lifelong fascinations in nature, biology, science and more developed into intuitive material experimentation way of work during her bachelor studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Since 2014, Shahar’s body of work focuses on material research and her work process is characterized by trial and error experimentation in the search for interesting results. Some of her projects deal with obscure materials such as animals blood, man-made fossils, crystallization and more. Her projects starting points are often stories about places, cultures and everyday life, yet, materials are always in the center used as carriers of narratives. Shahar Sees herself as a conceptual material designer with an intuitive and research approach that materializes through written research and expressive objects compositions. currently, she works on developing her graduation projects from the Design Academy Eindhoven where she graduated at in 2017, investigating speculative material occurrences in nature.
Project (2018)
IN COLLABORATION WITH THE MATERIALS EXPERIENCE LAB
Environmental changes, deforestation and the spread of man-made pollutants are inevitably threatening the existence of natural materials and transforming nature as we know it. At the same time, new natural materials which are the result of environmental contamination are emerging, and man-made materials such as plastic are proliferating in our surroundings.
Investigating a post-plastic future, where the only place to extract petroleum-based plastics will be from nature in a new hybrid form, plastics will regain a new value, far beyond the way we see it in our current time.
By creating and developing Lithoplast- a speculative material which might be the result of thousands of years of natural metabolism and its encounter with the "golden spike" of humanity- plastics, Shahar embodies and research questions with this new raw material that can be processed in a similar way to clay and is acting as an ultimate symbol of the transformation of matter and the inevitable shifts of materials between nature, synthetic and cultural aspects.
In this project, Shahar would like to use the MDD method to explore whether Lithoplast is experienced as natural or synthetic and how she can systematically tailor its qualities to enhance or worsen the experience of naturalness through craftsmanship and design objects. - Yask Kulshreshtha
YASK KULSHRESHTHA
Visiting researcher - Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
PhD candidate -the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
SupervisorS
Yask Kulshreshtha is a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences. He is conducting research on building affordable, durable, and desirable homes using locally available mud and biological resources.
After finishing his bachelors in Engineering from BVM Engineering college in India, he moved to Delft and started an MSc program in Civil Engineering. In his master thesis, he developed a corn starch based material (named CoRncrete) and continued researching on it after graduating (with honours) in 2015. Yask moved back to Inda in 2016 to embark on a nine months-long backpacking trip in India. On this trip, he spent time learning the traditional building construction methods and used this knowledge to write a PhD proposal that took him back to Delft in 2017. Since then, Yask is carrying out multidisciplinary research at the intersection of materials sciences, civil engineering, geosciences, architecture, and design. He is fascinated by cow-dung and investigating the science behind its well-known water-resistant properties. He was recently awarded a grant from the Dutch science foundation (NWO) to extend his work on cow-dung and explore its application as an ecological brick that can regulate the indoor climate of buildings. Within this project, he is actively involved in research with the materials experience lab.
Current Project
COW-DUNG MUD BRICK INSTALLATION
The project aims at creating an installation that transforms from one form to another by gradually disintegrating under the influence of rain and wind. This installation would be built on a biological cow farm in Delft. The installation aims to invoke people to re-think natural building material as an eco-friendly alternative to concrete and fired brick construction.
PUBLICATIONS
Marsh, A. T. M., & Kulshreshtha, Y. (2021). The state of earthen housing worldwide: how development affects attitudes and adoption. (Aceepted in Building Research & Information)
Kulshreshtha, Y., Mota, N. J. A., Jagadish, K. S., Bredenoord, J., Vardon, P. J., van Loosdrecht, M. C. M., & Jonkers, H. M. (2020). The potential and current status of earthen material for low-cost housing in rural India. Construction and Building Materials, 247, 118615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2020.118615
Kulshreshtha, Y., Schlangen, E., Jonkers, H. M., Vardon, P. J., & van Paassen, L. A. (2017). CoRncrete: A corn starch based building material. Construction and Building Materials, 154, 411–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2017.07.184
Paassen, L. van, & Kulshreshtha, Y. (2017). Biopolymers: Cement Replacement. In Cultivated Building Materials. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035608922-013
- Patrizia D’Olivo
PATRIZIA D’OLIVO
Post Doc - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Supervisors
Patrizia has recently joined the Material Experience Lab as a PostDoc design researcher to investigate the concept of ‘Material Branding’. Her research interests and experiences lies both in the material and interaction design domain.
She held a BSc in Industrial Design (cum laude) and a MSc in Design & Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Her exploration of the material world began during her master graduation project where she focused on the investigation of sensorial properties of materials and she dived into the discipline of Sensory Metrology. The project, a collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and the Sensomines group of the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Étienne, was founded by the OSEM program of the French Ministry for Industry. The result of the project, named ‘Sensorialist’ has been awarded with the Targa Giovani in the ADI Design Index 2013 (www.adidesignindex.com/en/sensorialist), selected for the XXIII Compasso d’Oro Award competition and presented in several conferences.
In 2014 following her interest on materials but attracted by the possibility to merge it with interactive technologies, she joined the research project ‘Material Practices of Connectedness’ under the supervision of Pr. dr. Elisa Giaccardi and Dr. Elvin Karana at the Delft University of Technology. The project resulted in ‘Geist’ a family of connected objects for people living outside their native country to help them to develop and maintain a sense of belonging and identity. (www.tudelft.nl/io/onderzoek/research-labs/connected-everyday-lab/geist/).
The curiosity towards artifacts capable to exploit the materiality of technology as a means of interaction between people dealing with disruptive situations brought her to start her PhD journey on the topic of “Tactful Objects for Sensitive Settings”. Her work has been carried out in a multidisciplinary project named ‘Meedoen=Groeien!’ (Participating is Growing), a collaboration among the Connected Everyday Lab (connectedeverydaylab.org, TU Delft), the Prinses Maxima Centre for Paediatric Oncology (Utrecht) and HandicapNL. Through a Research-Through-Design approach, she focused on understanding how a New Normal can be built in response to life-disruptive events using tactful and responsive interactive artifacts; and how those artifacts can be designed in order fulfil this goal. She specifically explored the potential of interactive artifacts in supporting the psychosocial wellbeing of families dealing with the demanding and stressful condition of childhood cancer. The work, helped in framing Tactfulness as a foundamental expressive quality for the materiality of technology used in sensitive settings and defining guidelines for the design of innovative interactive artifacts attuned to sensitive settings.
Current Project
MATERIAL BRANDING
Understanding how material experiences are constructed concerning a society’s norms, beliefs and culture is particularly important in introducing new materials to societies. Material can elicit different experiences when applied in different products and these experiences are highly affected by the way a product and its material are narrated when its first launch. This way of narrating and introducing a material is what we labelled as ‘Material Branding’, and it is the concept that we are going to explore in this project. Specifically, throughout this exploration, our aim is to provide an understanding of the collective effects of different material/product/narrative aspects within a digital domain (e.g. company websites, design blogs, etc.) for newly Bio-Fabricated materials, namely materials made by living organisms, such as fungi and bacteria.
- Valentina Rognoli
PROF. Valentina Rognoli
Associate Professor - Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Co-Founder and Co-Head of Materials Experience Lab - Italy
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
Ayala-Garcia, C., Rognoli, V. (2017) The New Aesthetic of DIY-Materials,The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S375-S389
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
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Material is a Medium. It communicates ideas, beliefs, approaches; compels us to think, feel and act in certain ways; enables and enhances functionality and utility. Materials Experience emphasises this role of materials as being simultaneously technical and experiential.
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