DESIGN AND MATERIALS WORKSHOP - A METHODOLOGY TO CREATE CERAMIC PRODUCTS BY EXPERIMENTS WITH COLOURS AND TEXTURES

The workshop Design and materials - Experiments with colors and textures for the creation of ceramic products took place from September 5th to 9th, 2016 at FAUUSP and it was aimed at design undergraduate students. It was part of the event Materials and Creation in Design and Architecture: sharing experiences for the creative economy. This event was organized in partnership between LabDesign from FAU USP and Materiali e Design, from Politecnico di Milano. This event represented one of the planned activities of the research project on Materials and innovation for application in the creative industries in the fields of design and architecture: the Politecnico Di Milano experience brought to the Brazilian context. The workshop proposal was based on the model used at the Italian institution that brings together companies and academia in the development of innovative proposals in design and materials, glimpsing results for their use by creative professionals, such as designers and architects. In this workshop, one of the most important producers of ceramic coverings in the world provided information on their materials and characteristics of the ceramic tile manufacturing processes. The workshop involved the development of projects of ceramic tiles with reliefs for application on façades and walls in which aesthetic quality is accentuated by the incidence of light on the vertical surface. Furthermore, it dealt with the production of ceramic prototypes according to some fabrication parameters given by the company, as well as experiments with different materials to provide different visual and tactile features for ceramic. Eighty-five prototypes of tiles of 100 x 100 mm with varying colours, textures and reliefs were created. The visual evaluation of the prototypes evidenced a surprising roll of potentialities for the development of new products by the ceramic industry. The evaluation of the work and the learning process resulted in unanimous approval of the workshop model, the experience and the results. It also resulted in the incentive for this modality of short course with a large amount of practical and theoretical contents to be replicated.