Resumen de Rhetoric of concrete artifacts.For a product design hinged on use, tangible identity, meaning stratification
The immaterial impact of technologies on people daily experience has enourmously increased over time. At the same time people are still immersed in the tangible properties of matter shaping products and product systems. The last three decades have witnessed the novelty of an all-pervading stream of conspicuously technological products, whose material substratum seems progressively reduced in favour of increasing immaterial and virtual performances. However, the claims of a concurrent design culture to be built on the all-pervading preminence of immateriality are rather paradoxically faced by the dominance of matter. To guide design novices to fully understand the opportunities of matter – as well as to cope with the counterpart of immateriality – is therefore assumed that education in design more than ever advocates an integrated approach developed on the terrain of the tangibility of objects and of the human dimension of the relation with man made things. Hence the selection of the themes of use, of the tangible identity of products, of their substance meant as material substratum and stratification of meaning.
