MATto - A NEW MATERIAL LIBRARYAT POLITECNICO DI TORINO, DESIGN COURSE

Key-note speaker abstract. MatTO is a material library which includes more than 500 samples of new generation materials, particularly used in the field of design and architecture. MatTO has been developed in the Politecnico di Torino Design Course, also with the help of the students, in order to keep designers up to date about the latest materials available for their projects. MatTO in 2010 has become a consultancy service supported by Torino Chamber of Commerce for the Small and Medium Enterprises (sMes) of the Piedmont Region in Italy. Up to now, for each MatTO material sample, an analysis sheet is arranged, which reports the technical (physical-mechanical) properties of the materials, its applications, the available format and a cost estimation. But the innovative aspect of MatTO is to provide meta-project solutions by identifying new materials or semi-finished products suitable for every specific need or request of each project, based not only on the technical and economical performances: also the sensory and environmental material properties are considered. The environmental profile is aimed at acquainting the decision maker with the materials’ environmental aspects by adopting a cradle-to-grave point of view. Consequently, an ecoprofile of MatTO material takes into account how the material environmental properties could change in accordance with the product requirements. As a result, MatTO is aimed at becoming a tool for the problem setting, by which the designers (and the students, and other figures involved in the product development) are assisted for identifying which material parameters influence the product eco-performances. The sensory profile could be useful for considering the human perception of material too. Specifically, the touch, sight, smell and hearing senses are taken into account with the help of specific tools (also patented by the MatTO group), in order to define a simplified “sensory vocabulary”, which could become a universal reference tool. In the vocabulary, the adjectives are specified according to a scale of values, which has been identified according to the results of different analysis sessions carried out by “tasters” (groups of 20/30 people, also students, untrained and trained, to test the materials and describe them using specific instruments). The scale of values immediately quantifies the characteristic described by the adjective. In this way, the designers could be guided when they are dealing with the expressive-sensory aspects of the materials. Consequently, by using these four research keys/point of views, technical, economical, environmental and perceptual properties, the most suitable materials selection provided by MatTO could be compared with the analysis of the traditional material provided by other well-known databases, and could become the key for future designers to improve the sMes development, according to the current sustainability and innovation trends.