Designing with Natural Materials

Graham A. Ormondroyd, Angela F. Morris

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429853487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Chemistry
• Index: Chemistry

In a world now forced to address the issues of sustainability, environmental impact, and the widespread pollution of land and oceans with manmade materials, alternative resources must be considered for the future of the planet. A vast array of natural materials is available throughout the world with properties that are often superior to the man-made alternatives.

Designing with Natural Materials fills the gap between the current scientific knowledge of the use of natural materials and product design and acts as a bridge between the two disciplines.

The book serves as an introduction to natural materials within the context of design. The chapters include case studies, research, and a historical perspective. It develops ideas of designing with natural materials in specific areas and looks to the future of new biobased materials and how these will influence design. The work offers insight to designers of biobased materials across a range of different design disciplines while also providing insights to scientists on the process of design, production, and the needs of a material beyond those traditionally analyzed in the laboratory. The final chapters touch on the use of bioinspiration and biomimicry in the development and use of biobased materials and how natural design will influence both material design and products in the future.

The book will be of interest to engineers, scientific researchers, professional designers, students, those working in industry who are considering using natural materials as an alternative to current unsustainable options, and anyone who has an interest in the subject.

1
An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Design

Bruce Wood

Glasgow Caledonian University

CONTENTS

The Aesthetics of Design

The Ten Principles of Good Design

Conclusions

References

The Aesthetics of Design

‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes’

Marcel Proust [1]

This quote from the 19th century writer and essayist Marcel Proust is particularly relevant for designers. Designers often create new products and services, which are appropriate and relevant for their time and for the market. The resulting design can be in themselves innovative in terms of technology and manufacturing; however, quite often, designs utilise existing materials and manufacturing technologies in a manner that creates a new product or service that had previously not been imagined. Designers are constantly seeking information on materials and processes that they can incorporate or utilise in a manner that produces a functioning product which brings together function, aesthetics, ergonomics, commercial applicability and many more, that provides a new product for the market place at that time.

Given the importance of design in the commercial success of product services and companies, there have been many authoritative bodies and writers working in this area.

First, if we consider some definitions from the Cox Review [2], the UK Design Council have provided some useful terms to consider:

‘Creativity’ is the generation of new ideas – new ways either of looking at existing problems or of seeing new opportunities, perhaps by exploiting emerging technologies or changes in markets.

‘Innovation’ is the successful exploitation of new ideas. It is the process that carries them through to new products, new services and new ways of running the business or even new ways of doing business.

‘Design’ is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end.

The UK government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) defines design in the business sector of Creative Industries;

‘We define the creative industries as those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’.^*

Then, design is a process whereby creativity is applied by individuals and teams to solve a problem or create new commercial opportunities. Designers are well educated in this process and utilise many techniques and methodologies with a view to achieve optimum solutions.

In the situation of ‘inclusive design’ where designers are working with non-designers on a particular project, it is important to ensure that all participants are aware of the general design processes and journey that will be undertaken to achieve optimum solutions.

Again, the Design Council provides a useful methodology for this process and journey. The ‘Double Diamond’ process provides a useful visualisation. See Figure 1.1 for the process and assists participants to understand where they are in the process journey and why certain activities take place at different times.

Other locations and industry sectors when attempting to visualise the design have developed similarly shaped diagrams and created their own versions relevant to their situations. All the diagrams follow a trend of divergence and convergence, which relates to the essential types of thinking required in order to be creative. Divergent thinking is characterised by certain types of thinking processes or behaviours with a view on creations, options and opportunities, asking very much the ‘what if’ types of question. A visualisation of divergent thinking can be seen in Figure 1.2, the main point of this process is to create as many ideas, options, opportunities and directions as possible in order to ensure that a wide range of ideas and options is being considered. Ultimately, this part of the process is expansive and relates to ‘imagination’; hence, the diagram is an open-ended funnel shape.

Clearly, optimal solutions will not be created by only imagining possibilities; to counter the open-ended nature of the divergent thinking processes, the team or individuals must engage in convergent thinking processes. The convergent thinking phase is about applying knowledge and evaluating the output of the divergent thinking phase. Diagrammatically, it is about moving from an open-ended start to a focus. It is here that all of the created ideas are evaluated against appropriate criteria; thus, a selection process(es) is applied using whatever knowledge base is appropriate. Figure 1.3 visualises this phase.

FIGURE 1.1
The Design Council double diamond design process (https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/design-process-what-double-diamond).

FIGURE 1.2
Divergent thinking characteristics.

These two phases of divergent and convergent thinking when shown together create the basis for a ‘diamond’ (see Figure 1.4), which can be applied multiple times to various phases of a project depending on its size and scope.

Imagination and knowledge are in balance and both are necessary, even Albert Einstein had a view on this.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

Albert Einstein

FIGURE 1.3
Convergent thinking characteristics.

FIGURE 1.4
Divergent convergent thinking diamond.

Referring back to the Design Council’s design process double diamond, the process outlines four main stages: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. While designers are familiar with this type of process and phases, they are also relevant to designers when they are considering natural materials.

Discover

• This discovery aspect opens up thinking focused on discovering possible solutions.

• In terms of natural materials, what materials are available, what form do they come in, is there a reliable source, how can they be used, what are the performance characteristics, what are the cost implications and many more?

Define

• Following the discovery phase, the results have to be evaluated against a set of criteria; in this sense, defining performance window that any material will have to comply with.

Develop

• Should there be material options, solutions will have to be developed that will allow material to be used in the product solution that in turn meets the performance and market place requirements.

• This development phase can be time consuming and in itself may require some additional developments in associated areas such as manufacturing.

Deliver

• Given that the previous phases have been successfully completed and there is a solution that satisfies the requirements, the objective is to deliver the solution in a reliable and repeatable manner and thus onto commercialisation.

• Given the possible variability of natural materials versus the more precise nature of the more often used manufacturing materials, these manufacturing materials have been processed in order to provide reliable repeatable performance at a specified cost.

The Ten Principles of Good Design

Back in the late 1970s, Dieter Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – ‘an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises’. Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design?

As good design cannot be measured in a finite way, he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design (sometimes, they are referred as the ‘Ten Commandments’).

1. Good design is innovative:

The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

2. Good design makes a product useful:

A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

3. Good design is aesthetic:

The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Editors
• Contributors
• 1. An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Design
• 2. Selection of Natural Materials Using CES EduPack
• 3. Natural Materials – Composition and Combinations
• 4. Designing with the Life Cycle in Mind
• 5. Restoring Credibility to Natural Materials
• 6. Natural Materials in Automotive Design
• 7. Rediscovering Natural Materials in Packaging
• 8. Designing Tall Buildings with Natural Materials
• 9. Emerging Nature Based Materials and Their Use in New Products
• 10. Bio-Inspired Design – Enhancing Natural Materials
• Index