This Is Industrial Design
06 May 2013
During the past April 25 and 26, the Andalusian city of Malaga has hosted the First National Congress This is Industrial Design in La Térmica cultural center. The initiative, organized by the Industrial Designers Association DIZ Málaga and supported by La Térmica and the Fundación General Universidad de Málaga, has been an interesting meeting point for professionals, academics and industrial design students who were able to discuss and exchange experiences through of a series of workshops, panel discussions and seminars.
Among the conference speakers were well-known top designers as well as emerging figures in the design scene. José Manuel Mateo, Gerard Moline, Carlos Alonso Pascual, Granada Barrero and Pablo Rohrssen offered his vision and experience of reality and future challenges of design in Spain and discussed the most appropriate strategy to promote, enhance and boost design culture. Creativity, innovation, competitiveness, engineering, reuse, sustainability, differentiation, solutions, biomimetics, functionality and optimization are among the concepts that have been discussed passionately on This is Industrial Design.
In a paper entitled Biomimetics & Design, Carlos Alonso Pascual offered his view on design as a problem solver activity and, what is more significant in this situation deeply conditioned by uncertainty and crisis, design as exploring new possibilities. In both activities, the study of nature is a very powerful engine for creativity and innovation, establishing connections, suggesting new solutions to human problems and fleshing transformative visions of reality.
From the chariots of Hephaestus "inspired by the bones of dead birds" that Homer describes in the Iliad, to the latest creations of the most renowned designers, Nature has been able to provide a framework for creativity and innovation extremely powerful. However, in the complex landscape currently configured, biomimetics must overcome to find solutions to specific problems to take nature not as a repertoire, but as a general framework for reflection and inspiration. As Carlos Alonso mentioned in an earlier interview:
Biomimetic research and Design research must evolve from simple emulation of living organisms into a more dynamic framework inspired by natural processes. They also must stop focusing on the solution of specific problems to venture into a much more complex, rich and interconnected territory: the exploration of possibilities.
