The role of images in the dematerialisation of design presentations during pandemics

The Spring 2020 lockdown has forced a dematerialisation of project outcomes in the design schools’ university education processes. Final events, to which, in the past, the narrative function of the project was delegated, were redesigned. In this dematerialisation, the image role has changed: from the ancillary role accompanying the physical model to becoming the true and only protagonist of the project narrative. The case study chosen is the 11th edition of the Master in Transportation & Automobile Design at the Politecnico di Milano, which ended in July 2020. The exhibition of the thesis projects was transformed into an international online event. The narration of the projects involved the construction of a presentation centred on videos and images. The time available to the students to present their projects was shorter than usual due to the constraints of an online event, making it necessary to do much work to prepare the iconographic material and directorial. As the quality of the images and videos had to be high, training courses, not initially foreseen, were introduced to help students achieve the new objective. The material produced was also used to create a virtual exhibition on the master's website. The experience gained in the emergency caused by the pandemic will be helpful in the future, especially at the end of the twelfth edition of the master's course (July 2021), given the continuing uncertainty of the scenarios in which we operate because making images the narrative focus will allow greater adaptability to rapidly changing situations.