Materials Libraries: designing the experiential knowledge transfer through prototyping

Experiential knowledge plays a crucial role in exploiting new materials within real contexts, i.e., designing products and applications. As a result, understanding and transferring this kind of knowledge has gained increasing attention, as well as developing new experiential tools addressing this challenge. This contribution investigates the role of physical prototypes in designing new experiential tools for the knowledge transfer of emerging materials and technologies, i.e., Materials Libraries. The analysis is performed through a reflective practice approach based on two practical case studies dealing with new materials from waste for 3D printing. The former Materials Library focuses on the recycling of composite materials from products at their End-of-Life in industrial contexts, i.e., wind turbine blades. The latter one, RepMat Library, is an ongoing experimentation that aims to develop an open source Materials Library to collect new 3D printable materials and applications from waste-based polymers and biomass involving distributed networks and local communities, i.e., makerspaces and fablabs. After briefly explaining the two case studies, this work defines an outline proposal of the main contributions of prototypes in designing new Materials Libraries, which means: (i) generating and detecting the experiential knowledge to transfer; (ii) categorizing and defining the taxonomy of the tool; (iii) testing the experiential knowledge transfer; and (iv) speculating on new possible ways of using Materials Libraries. In short, prototypes were mainly used as a physical learning medium to preliminary tinker with materials and technology, as well as a validating tool for the interaction between the users and the library. Furthermore, prototypes may contribute to envisioning new ways of developing and using Materials Libraries to spread experiential knowledge, i.e., democratizing the design process of the tool by encouraging distributed, accessible, and collaborative work within local communities and distributed networks.