Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Tangible Legacy of a Know-How

In the contemporary scenario, the principles of sustainability and the paradigms activated by the circular economy set at the centre of design issues, among others, the topic of production by-products, which means understanding how to use them and to overcome the notion of production residues as waste. As Ingrid Paoletti [1] suggests, it is necessary to think about by-products at the beginning of the design activity, that is, to anticipate the use of what she calls “residue”. Such premises lead to a focus on “designing with the residue”.

The contribution refers to the research topic of material design and frames a methodology related to the design and cultural organisation and interpretation of secondary raw materials coming from production residues. The “design in the metamorphosis of matter” refers to the possibility of interpreting production residues as a resource that embodies a form of knowledge [1], as a tangible legacy of the production transformations of matter [2] through the processes of a specific know-how.

The research field of investigation, in a broader sense, concerns materials as enablers of sensory relations between user and artefact, and therefore as enablers of cultural meanings. This becomes relevant if by “material culture” we mean the transition of the intangible aspects of a civilisation onto the tangible world around us, which can be said to sediment on the surface of objects [1, 3, 4]. Therefore, design is the discipline that allows us to develop such connections between the tangible and intangible, and providing design insights is fundamental to outline new production and consumption scenarios based on a systemic perspective, in which the outputs of one production chain become the inputs of another [5].

The study concerns the design for the sustainable management of production by-products in the tanning supply chain and is the outcome of a research project, funded by the Regione Veneto's FSE POR 2014–2020 through an inter-university research grant that involved the Università Iuav di Venezia and the Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, jointly with the partner company Dani, a tannery in Arzignano in the centre of the Veneto tanning district [6, 7].

1.2 Design for the Sustainable Management of Tanning Supply Chain Residues

The first step of the research consists of a review of best practices in terms of circular economy, so the production chain and the conditions of the local and national scenario as regards sustainability are analysed. In particular, the relationship with logics and tools for the valorisation of production waste and by-products is investigated. As a result, the hypothesis of a research path concerning leather production residues is proposed, aimed at overcoming the notion of the production residues as waste, supporting its valorisation as a material resource.

It is intended to propose examples and possibilities related to the integration of raw materials, semi-finished materials, or materials coming from disposed goods, within processes mediated by the development of an interpretative design key provided by the expressive-sensorial qualification of materials. The research focuses on promoting the development of leather manufacturing companies in Veneto through the valorisation of production residues and on innovating the production processes in relation to the synergy of methods, systems and skills involved in the disciplines of design and economics. This is implemented with the identification of the quantity and the quality of leather production residues to design a classification model that is the basis of a system shared by the supply chain, in order to collect leather production residues according to their quality, resulting in lower disposal costs. In this way, the research task may generate new design scenarios and enable the development of a set of indicators to measure resource savings through material reuse and recycling.

The main goal is to highlight the relationship between a local cultural identity and the globalised context [8], that is how processes resulting from the sedimentation of a specific know-how increasingly enrich knowledge by shaping the tangible surface of artefacts. Assuming these premises and in order to enable the territory to acquire values such as sustainability, identity and recognisability, the required shift is a cultural one [9]. This is intended to make the company aware of the design potential and tools useful to trigger innovation processes and added value.

1.3 Rethinking Materiality

In Veneto there is one of the most important districts in the world where big brands find small and medium-sized companies developing top quality products for the international market [7, 10,11,12]. The Veneto district is characterised by constant research in terms of innovation of internal supply chain relations, more sustainable technologies, and efforts in training through incubators for new skills [10]. The search for a sustainable industry requires significant investment in research for innovative technologies and production solutions. The issues related to processing and disposing of waste assume a significant role among the research areas related to the production sector, [13].

As a continuation and implementation of a previous research project that identified the re-use of production waste as one of the potential design approaches to investigate the meaning of “traceability for sustainability” [14], the study proposes to show how the integration of good practices for sustainability – in its environmental, social and economic multi-dimensionality – in the Veneto territory can trigger a technological innovation on the one hand, and a meaning innovation on the other, in response to contemporary scenarios that require a rethinking of materiality [1].

Specifically in tannery, the amount of waste and by-products along the production chain is very high: we are dealing not only with final leather trimmings, but also with by-products originating in all process steps of leather manufacturing. Today, there are several established procedures aimed at recovering and treating the resources involved in leather production. The protein residues from shavings, together with the flesh residues, are used for fertilisers and bio-stimulants. The upcycling of the finished leather and shavings, through a chemical process, allows proteins to be obtained that can be used in agriculture or in the leather finishing process. The dried chromium baths are treated to reuse 85% of the chromium already used. And the recovered salt is used for road de-icing [13].

The research issue is whether there are ways to activate sustainable processes of innovation, to valorise production residues and to identify design possibilities such as to develop new scenarios in response to the context's needs. In other words, the question is whether material residues, which today are considered waste or are used in predominantly chemical reuse processes, can lead to design opportunities and be upgraded from waste to material resources, with their own dignity and design autonomy.

2 Sense Making Materials

2.1 Design Tracks

The research investigated how the topic is interpreted in other local, national and international contexts, leading to a collection of one hundred case studies that were systematised in order to achieve possible research frameworks.

Some specific design trajectories were identified:

  • the development of technologies for environmental sustainability, with actions aimed at encouraging the reduction of environmental impact and the valorisation of manufacturing residues in accordance with circular economy requirements;

  • the development of process technologies, with activities aimed at a considerable improvement and optimisation of production processes in terms of resource utilisation;

  • the development of product technologies, with initiatives aimed at supporting the development of new products with special performance features and high added value.

Two very significant best practices for the development of the research concern, in the first case, “Structural Skin”, the work of Spanish designer Jorge Penadés [15] who used leather scraps together with a natural binder, derived from the same animal bones, for the production of furniture products. The topic of the natural binder made it possible to broaden the considerations on the deeper meaning of the “sustainable reuse” of material residues used to generate new materials, as it is strictly related to the various binders that are used.

The second case is a local best practice from the Veneto context in which leather residues are no longer considered as leather itself: the Favini paper mill produces a number of papers using leather scraps instead of cellulose [16]. The paper mill implemented several similar processes using algae, or wool waste, or waste from the agro-food chain, and each of these examples results in a sensorially augmented paper with different sensory attributes depending on the employed kind of residues. Above all, it makes the user's experience with the papers particularly original.

As a result of this review, the main objectives of this research became clear: it attempts to highlight the relationship between local territorial cultures and the globalised context [8], in order to valorise production residues as a material resource with its own design dignity. It is possible by conveying how the sedimentation of know-how, inherent to a specific territorial, social and economic context, can stimulate innovation and knowledge, while acquiring physical form on the surface of artefacts.

2.2 Thinking-By-Doing

The research project continued with a hands-on approach with the matter, consisting of design experiments with the residues, by manipulations or technological transfers, so that a system of organisation and cataloguing of both the residues and the concepts that were developed could be set up, based on the definition of expressive-sensorial attributes. The integration of production residues within design processes was mediated by their expressive-sensorial qualification: an interpretative filter drawn from the studies inherent to the recent research topics of the so-called “design skins” [17] and the materials experience [18, 19], referring to the issues of the multi-sensoriality, the design of new materials or the innovative use of existing materials, showing how materials can be interpreted not only from a technical-performance point of view, but also by considering their expressive-sensorial attributes [20] in the relationship between the user and the artefact.

In a first stage, three macro-actions were established to define how to operate on and with residues, i.e. to add, to subtract, to mould. Each of them was subsequently defined more specifically, in order to generate specific sensory experiences, or sensory enhancements.

In the second stage, a number of different material concepts were developed, on the one hand using different types of residues, and on the other achieving different perceptual outcomes with the same input material used.

In the third stage, the qualities of all samples, both residues and concepts, were evaluated in a comparison with each other. This means that such a system offers a constant comparison between the samples (see Fig. 1). At the same time, the evaluations, which are qualitative, allow an understanding of how the samples relate to the sensory properties which are explored each time.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Cataloguing of by-products and material concepts through the analysis and comparison of some single sensory properties defined by oppositional pairs: transparent-opaque, soft-hard, smooth-rough. Michele De Chirico, Università Iuav di Venezia, data-visualisation support by Jacopo Poletto.

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2.3 Multidimensional Maps as a Cataloguing System

The proposed method allowed the author to prefigure a cataloguing modality that takes shape in a multi-level “talking” map [21], which provides us with different information: it is a sensory map, as it conveys the perceptual pathways and mutations of matter; a time map, as it traces the successions of the process phases of which the residues are the tangible outcome, that is, a trace of the metamorphoses of matter; and a matrix map that offers a series of suggestions intended as design possibilities for the development of new materials or new applications, which means a generative matrix that “succeeds in establishing a relationship between the past and the present, by providing […] a cultural experience that concerns both the production process itself and the context of use” [22].

In a first data-visualisation, one can observe the collection of material residues and material concepts, lined up in relation to the properties of transparency, softness and roughness (see Fig. 1).

The map works through opposing pairs transparent-opaque, soft-rigid, smooth-rough, as can be assumed from the scientific literature concerning the materials experience [20, 23, 24]. In other data-visualisations, the relationship between the residues – on which the related process step is indicated – and the resulting concepts is also mapped. The consequence is that the original material concepts are also clearly related to those specific process steps. The example presented here concerns the correlation between the sensory attributes of roughness and softness (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Multilevel map indicating the correlation between different sensory properties and between a resource and a material concept resulting from specific design actions. Michele De Chirico, Università Iuav di Venezia, data-visualisation support by Jacopo Poletto.

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As it has just been described, if the relationship between material resources and original material concepts, resulting from specific design actions, can also be deduced from such maps, then it becomes evident how the comparison between resources is fundamental for a designer when not only choosing a material for a project, but also in the early conception of a secondary raw material [20, 25, 26].

2.4 The Place of Possibilities

Such a mapping of design possibilities does not simply reproduce the ordering principle of analytical knowledge, but seeks to record transformations by becoming “a framework that organises movements as changes” [21] and manages to project the designer outwards.

It is a cognitive map in which we find traces of hybridisations and potential design fields, bringing out the material as “matter of invention” [23]. In this way, the material map achieves a deeper meaning through the user's experience, in which the sensory paths become a “spatial-visual assemblage in motion” and “embody a sensuous assemblage” [21] in which the place of experience hosts the materiality of sensory interactions and the design potentialities themselves.

The map is a surface of combinatorial categorisation, it is made up of multiple relational itineraries that can be travelled forwards and backwards, at accelerated speed or in slow motion. One who travels on this map is free to wander within its perimeter, but also to leave it. There are no predetermined directions, just as there are no given design solutions, so the many possible routes lead to different destinations that are the result of experiential knowledge.

A space to be traversed in motion – at different sensory and cultural levels – that make the map a “cognitive prosthesis” [21], a spatial sensor for the designer, like a “prosthesis of concreteness” [28] through which it is possible to expand the necessary abstraction of the virtual models of the design tools (the two-dimensional interfaces) by combining them with physical modules in the shape of the materials gradients map. The relational approach in materials research can employ different perceptual modalities, making the system not only comprehensible and shareable, but also more engaging.

As Brunner [29] suggests, the search for an appropriate categorisation system can facilitate the recognition of the peculiar qualities of secondary raw materials to outline criteria for their knowledge, valorisation and use. Therefore, it is a process aimed at understanding their qualities and sustainable design potential.

As a classification model at the basis of a system shared by the supply chain of a specific territorial culture, such a tool represents an interceptor of values such as identity and recognisability of a know-how – in this case, the tannery one – whose residues become the tangible evidence and “matter” of the project. In this way, research activity can develop design scenarios thanks to new opportunities for the valorisation of material resources, according to the circular economy requirements.

3 Conclusions

Design emerges as a connector of material cultures and an opportunity to discover traditional know-hows at the intersection with original ones, in the sense of contextual design, with the meaning of referring to the social, economic and technological contexts and focusing on the role that design can play within specific contexts. This design approach allows us to outline research trajectories starting from what each context and territory offers in terms of identity, history and material culture, through critical considerations aimed at combining technology, practice and meanings with the productive system and the institutions of a territory [30].

By proposing a prototype that can be applied to other supply chains, the aim is to interpret production residues as a resource that embodies a kind of knowledge, as a legacy of the metamorphosis of matter through the processes of a specific know-how, which is to say a vehicle for the identity and recognisability of said know-how.

Such a methodological approach, which has been tested in this pilot case study and is developable to other case studies, aims at.

  • analysing and enhancing a know-how, embedded in a specific local, cultural, social and material context, through an ad hoc design method related to the use of production residues;

  • with the intention of interpreting these leftovers in design terms and of achieving “generative” design possibilities, whose interpretative filter is the user-artefact relationship and the multidimensionality – by which we mean the different levels of interpretation of a material: the geo-historical, functional, expressive, economic and sustainable ones [22, 25] – which can actually describe what we call here “the metamorphosis of matter”;

  • to revitalise existing systems for categorising materials, by envisioning a specific system dedicated to “second generation materials” obtained by the design with the recovered matter of production processes (as well as the author's current topic of investigation related to his doctoral research at the Università Iuav di Venezia), to activate, or re-activate, networks between companies and supply chains aimed at optimising resources in production chains and to facilitate research trajectories of “design in the metamorphosis of matter”.