Ideas and the Matter. What will we be made of and what will the world be made of?

The book presents the results of the two-year research carried by the MADEC team. The research was funded by the program FARB 2013 of Design Department of Politecnico di Milano, in order to start the activities of MADEC Research Centre of Material Design Culture, to replay to the question: What will we be made of and what will the world be made of? To identify the actual evolution of the relationship between sciences, knowledge, and design, MADEC team started in 2014 a wide debate with a series of contributions about innovation trajectories with well-known scholars of many disciplines, researchers, professionals, and companies. This public debate reported in the first section of the book opens new options and ideas for design action and practices, which was developed and reported in the other two sections of the book. These are, between the others, the definition of design approaches, and a new methodology of creativity-driven material innovation that, in a world full of opportunities but also problems to be solved, helps design to play a role of “giving new meanings”, through designing materials and things with a critical approach.