Design Strategies in Space Design between University and Industry

Purpose of this research is to identify new modes of action to be adopted by designers working within university research facilities so as to open the places where training takes place to external production systems and society. The author's thesis is based on the belief that the scientific community working on industrial design must start to engage in project research and come up with solutions contributing on the one hand to the enrichment of project culture and, on the other, to the creation of the necessary premises for an opening up of university to industrial reality. It is as a matter of fact impossible to presume to develop project research without confronting a real buyer or assignor who shall pose the problem, illustrate the conditions relating to it (thus contextualizing it), and adopt a methodological approach based on dialogue and interaction with the industrial designer. The development of research in such a direction might enable universities to turn from seats of training and research to areas of mediation between technical and scientific know-how and society. The project experiences the author has had over the past few years draw attention to the importance of a strategic approach enabling industrial designers to become the key figures in the project and to choose as their partners those parties that have the right know-how and skills to take part in the planning process and in the development of new products. The thesis presented in this paper is supported by a case-study, developed within the author’s research doctorate in Industrial Design at Milan Polytechnic, investigating an original research area for industrial design, the aerospace sector, which will entail the identification of new interlocutors, and of common interests and differences between the two disciplinary areas, as well as the analysis of the space design requirements, so as to identify the peculiar contribution and the strengths of industrial design to space design. This approach has made it possible for industrial designers to progressively gain credibility and scientific weight with aerospace agencies and industries, who have begun to avail themselves of industrial designers in their research programs. We are now suddenly confronted with the figure of the ‘strategist/designer’ capable of playing an important mediating role in favoring mutually advantageous contacts between space agencies and enterprises not directly engaged in the field of space design, by making them play a role in the definition of product requirements and product testing. The methodology adopted in the case-study illustrated in this paper may be extended and applied to both national and international manufacturing and social realities and highlights the role the industrial designer may play as a scientific coordinator, within the university milieu, in the larger framework of an industrial project.