COLOURS, SENSORIALITY AND MATERIALS Experience of an inductive activity of product design teaching

This paper will describe an experience of design teaching activity held at the Department INDACO of the Politecnico di Milano in the academic year 2008/09. It was organised and developed as integration to the typical didactic activity of a six-month design workshop. The aim of the activity was to introduce a different kind of learning experience to the classical design studio programme and process. It was meant to underline how important is to handle the sensorial component of design in the education of students. Just as it happened at Bauhaus [3] [4], it was retraced the path of knowing the materials through the expressive-sensorial aspects, so decisive for theemotional dimension of project and useful to determine the product personality. The methodologies of Basic Design will be mentioned, such as the concept of inter-subjectivity and also the pedagogical experience related to the sensoriality of materials. In this paper the results of activity developed with the students will be presented. The first exercise presented in this paper is to let student concentrate on the relation between colour, materials and their effects on senses. The exercise lasted one day (repeated twice) and was organised so to be an only inductive experience. The second exercise is about designing and composing an evocative material tables, made by samples that are able to communicate through their sensoriality the idea, image and sensation that belong to the final project: material mood board.