DIY-Materials as Enabling Agents of Innovative Social Practices and Future Social Business

In the panorama of materials for design, a novel phenomenon is emerging. We already individuated it and called DIY-Materials. In the developed countries (mostly in Europe and North America), DIY-Materials are the response to an increasing standardized industrialization in the field of materials and technologies. Thanks to the democratization of technologies, today more people, designers included, have access to technology to create, edit, print, modify, share and act on anything, even on materials. The contemporary diffusion of making and the maker`s space phenomena also known as FabLabs are spreading a kind of low-tech approach conversely to the classic industrial one. The designers, as well as the people, demonstrate more often a will to return to do things by themselves; by touching the source of a form, feeling the emotion of a particular surface effect, or the surprise of an unexpected color, one can gain control of any single creation. The aim of the paper is to speak about DIY-Materials and define a new framework to explain their possible role as enabling agents of innovative social practices and future social businesses. We will present concepts like DIY practices, Material Activism, Creative Communities, Social Business and Social Innovation about materials. It is our assumption that the DIY-Materials can also arise from the creativity of a community in which the designer acts as a facilitator. The definition of DIY-Materials becomes richer as it includes the materials as ideas that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are both good for society and enhance society’s capacity to act and create social businesses.