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 DEGREE COURSE IN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN AT FLORENCE UNIVERSITY


Florence and Tuscany have always played, both directly and indirectly, a fundamental role in the evolution of design culture.
Designers who have trained the Florentine school have worked with leading companies in Italy and all over the world: Alessi, Breda, Piaggio, Fiat, Agusta, Ferrari, Toyota, Ariete, etc...
Florence was the birthplace of Italian fashion with the legendary Sala Bianca at Palazzo Pitti and the success of figures such as Emilio Pucci, Enrico Coveri and Roberto Cavalli and names like Ferragamo, Gherardini and Gucci.
So, in October 2001, the faculty of Architecture of Florence University set up two new 1st level Degree courses, in Industrial and Fashion Design.
The courses, which last three years each - for a total of 180 University Trayning Credits (60 a year), are arranged respectively into three and four sections: technical in the Design of utensils, interior and furnishing items; technical in the Design of Fashion; products for television, film industry and theatre; textiles; accessories and gold jewellery.
The courses of Industrial and Fashion Design represent a valid way of confirming the peculiarity of Tuscan design and fashion, characterised, as always, by a scientific relationship with the local productive world, as well as by profitable links with the artistic and cultural sectors.

Experimenting and evaluating, or better perhaps, evaluating and experimenting are two tipical actions of the designing process.
Unquestionably, the designer's task is to move on from evaluations about the functionality of the product and about its easiness to be used and to consider the requirements of the market and the manufacturing process, determined by technological limitations, y the materials characteristics or by the cost. However, it is also the designer's task to go beyond these rules.
Designers should force them and try to designate alternative frameworks through their constant experimentation, otherwise their work is inevitably destined to yield to general levelling off of project and products.

The works presented in this stand were produced re-using waste materials of some Tuscan kitchen manufacturers (ex. Bottoms of boxes, door sections, panels and so on). They were projected and assembled by first-year students who attended the Experimentation and Evaluation Laboratory of the Industrial Design Degree Courses of Florence University (Professional module POR OB. 3) where I teach together with Roberta Baccolini and Ilaria Badeschi.
It was a didactical experience worked out according to the considerations explained above and planned to stimulate the approach of students to designing. This activity is naturally carried out balancing acceptance of rules (from market rules to the necessary manufacturing conditions) and their overcoming, represented for example by the designing of alternative eco-compatible frameworks.

All the projects introduced were exposed at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan 2002 and at the 66th Edition of the Mostra Internazionale dell'Artigianato in Florence.
Text by:
Giuseppe Lotti

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In cooperation with:
Elena Granchi
Sonia Morini

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