Metaproject

Preliminary statements

In 2007 a new project has been presented every 3 and a half minutes and the number of designers exponentially increases from one year to the next. It is more and more difficult to justify the search of new possibilities to be applied to the objects. We have by far surpassed the serial overcrowding of pop with an incredible and perhaps unrequested conceptual abundance: not only are the objects innumerable, but they are all bearers of various messages, of plenty logics and plenty points of view. The technology and the knowledge on average possessed by designers and architects leads almost necessarily to the creation of products of a certain merceological value, much more difficult is conferring symbolic value different from exclusivity.
The creation of value in the market comes more and more from the creation of symbolic value, based on experience, so much as to talk of an economy of knowledge in which the value attributed to an object depends more and more on the inner content in terms of know how and on the interpersonal meaning attributed to it.

The approach

These are only some of the data pointing out the increase of the complexity which is characteristic of the present socio-economical scenery. The exponential growth of flows of people, of ideas, of information has caused a radical change in the concept of the categories of space and time, principles through which people give meaning to experience, personal and collective. The progressive decreasing of distance, physical and social, among people has generated what we could define ‘global brain storming’: that is the situation in which more and more individuals, being able to accede, even on their own, a quantity of information ever increasing ,build paths of individual meaning, autoreferential adapting solutions to the complexity of the social system. This process, characteristic of post-modernity, acts simultaneously in a double direction: on one side, it sets the individual definitely free from ties characteristic of the past, allowing him to experiment experiences and paths of meaning ever possible otherwise; on the other it limits the possibility of crearting astable system of meanings through which to reach a coherent representation of reality.
The excessive fragmentation of meanings we are called to act upon in work and in interpersonal relationships limits the possibility of reaching a strong identities, able to resist against the numerous meanings attributable to experie.
To the great proliferation of ideas we are assisting, often coherent among them but isolated, is accompanied a big dispersion of creative energies caused by the fact that the excessive auto-referentiability does not permit a cumulativity and complementarity of knowledge, indispensible to manage the complexity of the contemporary socio-economical context and reach really innovative solutions.
The inconsistencies characteristic of post-fordism can be solved only adopting a new, reticulated paradigm, based on a type of rationality any more instrumental but reflexive, which takes into consideration the potential impact of the human action on the environment, social and natural, evaluates the importance of relationships through the complementarity of capacities and the process of propagation/democratisation of knowledge.

The meta-project

The scenario described in the last paragraph, in which the most important feature is a wide-range research of identity meanings, suggests nowadays not to focus anymore on objects and projects, but to put the attention on processes, i.e. on the relations thanks to which projects become effects and consequences. The Resign meta-project is prefiguring a sort of Copernican Revolution in which the design process is not anymore just a tool for production, but becomes a mean for the establishment of meaningful relations: "the sense of an object won't be observed from an aesthetic perspective, but will be found in its ability to function as a "creator" of dense relations, connotated by a high identity value" (Design 2.0 - Stefano Caggiano).Thus, such a shift in the point of view leads us to use the concept of meta-projects. In this way of thinking, Resign is a methodology that intends to adopt a design-sustainable approach both from a social and an environmental points of view.

This methodology is mainly based on three principles that come from the logic of reflexivity:

The importance of channelling widespread creativity into meaning paths that can be easily shared.
The importance, in a sense of identity and symbolic capital, of the existence of a network of dense relationship.
The necessity of review the design methods looking towards sustainability, considering ex ante the umpteenth potential re-use of an object and its impact on the natural and social environment.

Thus, REsign is “RE-use of signs”, a creative re-combination of signs embedded in wasted objects, which have been rejected by the main stream production process, aiming to create, thanks to the re-use, a new meaning, characterized by a high identity and interpersonal value.

REsign is a meta-project composed by:

An Atelier, where it’s possible to test the model of “Workshop 2.0”, based on innovative methods of working that take inspiration from a reflexive logic. These methods are focused on knowledge transmission and sharing, on democratization of knowledge itself, on revaluation of manual labour and on the creation of dense face-to- face relationships, with a high identity content.
A Network of relationships, based on the strategic importance of skills complementarity, especially when operating in a complex framework as nowadays. This network, in which the Atelier is a node, consists of links among actors that have different skills and come from different backgrounds. The high heterogeneity level among the involved subjects, when properly managed in a way to induce them to act following a logic of integrated system, becomes strategically important for developing a design method as the one pursued in the present case. In this way, REsign represents what emerges from the relationships among the involved actors and that overcomes their mere sum.

Network representation:

Goals

The Network provides the Atelier with inputs, in terms of learning, human and material resources, necessary to undertake the following activities/services:

Education: through seminars, workshops and laboratories directed to citizens and regarding the concepts characterizing the REsign approach.
Training: through internships and stage in cooperation with schools and studios of graphics, design and architecture.
Research: in order to increase steadily the knowledge owned by the Network actors, in the perspective of a non-stop improvement.
Professional advice and design (research’s spin-off): the Atelier has the goal of generating a creative enterprise engaged in the realization of objects and furnishing commissioned by other subjects.

Services and products of REsign will be brought onto the market through innovative channels, different form the mere selling (simultaneous exchange of equivalents) and centred on the creation of a diachronic and two-sided bond among involved subjects.

Format in Faenza city

Current Network

Contacts

Andrea Magnani
T. +39 3393022824

Giovanni Delvecchio
T. +39 3290966687

Location: via Mura Mittarelli 34
48018 Faenza (Ra), Italia

Web: www.resign.it
info@resign.it

A project by:
DO - nucleo culturale
48018 Faenza (RA)
Via Mura Mittarelli, 34
www.ildo.tv – info@ildo.tv