DESIGNING AND INNOVATING WITH PAPER, BOARD, AND CELLULOSE PULP - PROGETTARE E FARE INNOVAZIONE CON CARTA, CARTONE E POLPA DI CELLULOSA

Designing a product is a process that starts from the intangible to come up with something tangible. Everything moves off from an idea that dawns on the mind. This idea establishes a relation between meanings and geometric forms, which seems to adjust to the context of the issue that needs to be addressed. Intangible ideas gradually start to appear and take shape as something tangible and defined. What happens between the appearance of an idea and its material representation is connected with a translation process; ideas are expressed with words, graphics, mathematical symbols, and physical models. According to Asimow Moris: “The mere act of giving an expression to a mental image makes such image real, turns it into an object that can be handled and exchanged for similar ones. The idea becomes a piece of information that exists as such. The piece of information can still be intangible, but is a further step towards the tangible”. Between the verbal description and the graphic expression, which are more straightforward as such and the result of basic speculation, the use of symbolic descriptions turns out more profitable, in that these allow to apply the logical principles of mathematics to organize ideas that are inaccurate, convoluted, and complex by their own nature and make them impossible to penetrate using the natural analytical skills of the mind. Says Asimow Moris: “The symbolic description becomes an instrument for the designer to use all the information surrounding the idea for an analytical prediction of the prototype’ sbehaviour. In this respect, the symbolic description becomes a mathematical archetype of the physical, still intangible, object”. By their own intrinsic nature, symbolic or analytical descriptions of the design idea are generally unfit to represent a whole project or the behaviour of an object or a system. Each symbolic description is applied to a single aspect, which may be physical, economic, static, etc., and represents this in a very simple manner: the whole set of descriptions is treated as an abstract analogue of the real object and describes the global situation. This analytical nature is typical of all types of representations, albeit to a looser extent: each time, a description of an idea is provided, which may be performance-related, material, aesthetic, quantitative, etc. All the information on the project converge in the final prototype, which is the ultimate goal. “Architecture depends on: Order, Layout, Eurhythmy, Symmetry, Appropriateness, and Economics (…) by Order I mean the selection of modules within the work, which may be the starting point to produce the corresponding entire work (…); the Layout concerns the arrangement of the parts in the right position, and the elegant effect due to appropriate adjustments to the work’s character (…); Eurhythmy is the beautiful and appropriate arrangement of the parts (…); Symmetry is the matching of the individual parts of the work and their relation with the general scheme, which depends on a specific part taken as a rule (…); Appropriateness is the perfect style achieved when a work is produced authoritatively based on well-established principles (…); Economics means the appropriate management of the materials and of the site, as well cost control and common sense in the production of the work”.