Dialogues between craft and design

Collaborative processes between artisans and future designers

Abstract

This reflection focuses on an academic project oriented towards social innovation that involved a partnership between the University of Beira Interior and Craft Lab Fundão, entities located in low-density Portuguese territories marked by problems such as demography, the ageing of their populations, and consequent concern with the continuity of certain artisanal practices in the near future. A methodology was designed based on participatory creative processes, on the learning of ancestral knowledge from artisans, on experimental prototyping shared by these masters, and future designers in the development of products with emotional value, bearers of meanings and, of a collective memory. The same exercise implied an initial reflection on techniques that over time have been applied in the production of artefacts at the service of agriculture or the kitchens of rural houses and that can be continuously reinvented in response to the problems of our time, considering the natural resources and cultural values of the context. On the other hand, it was intended to deconstruct a creative process inherent to the area of industrial design recurrently based on standardization/serial production and to stimulate other perspectives for future designers focusing on the development of identity products which can contribute to the resilience of the most isolated territories whose subsistence so often resides in the small-scale economy. The final prototypes and creative processes were presented to the public in the “Matéria Prima é a Gardunha” exhibition at Moagem, Fundão, demonstrating that craft can be reinvented through the crossing with design methodologies consisting of a more critical attitude that considers contemporary society and its needs, and design can be humanized as a result of a more intense relation with handicrafts considering memories and rich processes present in a heritage of vernacular objects.