Subject:

Loop for Future

Porcelain product development

Research of the hidden structures from our environment: natural or digital. Enlargement using digital tools. Implementation in porcelain.

Setting:

Guess 2035 we will be able to get some time-out on the moon. What would you take from home as a small souvenir? Something precious that fits in a carry-on suitcase and reflects our life on the planet Earth?

Is it something personal or an object that represents our social and technological development of tomorrow?

Is it something for everyday use, a souvenir, electrical accessories or medical tools? Does it have a function or is it a design toy?

The surrounding nature has always been considered an important source of inspiration for the design of porcelain products. With the progressive development of digital tools, new shapes and structures and new areas of application for porcelain are opening up.

The new technologies make it possible to enlarge hidden structures from the macro range and to depict them true to nature. We want to examine these hidden structures more closely.

Which new forms and functions can be derived from this? The combination of the digital and the analogue, technology and craftsmanship play an important role in this.

For brainstorming, we turn the well-known guiding principle into:

Function follows form

Material

Porcelain has a long European tradition and is considered a cultural heritage in Europe. This weather and heat resistant material combines aesthetic and practical properties.

Most often it was used to make tableware or vases: fragile and transparent for special occasions or practically rugged for everyday use.

The special characteristic about porcelain is its extremely white surface, which can reproduce the finest structures, strong materiality and sustainability.

Outline Planning

- Analysis of the hidden structures from the surroundings, if necessary enlargement from the macro area.

- Investigation of: shape/function/haptics

- Research of user needs in the future

- Porcelain : Material and its properties

- Design of a product in porcelain, with or without a function oriented for a mass-production.

- The design results will be used as a 3D printed model, an organic object or a model made in

plaster. The implementation in porcelain is required.

Premise

- Safe and ambitious handling of the common design tools (drawing, prototypes / preliminary models, 3D CAD modeling)

- Joy of experemental process

- Participation in exercises: mold building/ porcelain casting.

- intensive and systematic way of working