Plastic containers for everyday life
We are surrounded by objects and many of them have the ability to “contain” other substances, protecting, conserving, sorting, selecting then, enabling their transformation, giving them shape.
Just in the context of the home - among living room, kitchen and bathroom -, the universe of items, for longer or shorter time, apt to receive other elements, substances, materials, through their formal configuration, is boundless.
Can also be said that the family of polymers has been established, since the Twentieth Century, as the most convincing materials for carrying out these functions; thanks to the skill to be easy moulded, thanks to low cost, to physical and mechanical properties, plastics are the most suitable to configure useful shape of everyday life objects.
The course “Laboratorio di Tecnologie di Prodotto II”, Degree course in Industrial Design, A.A. 2011-2012, took by the teachers Raffaello Galiotto, discipline “Product Design”, Andrea Morgante, “Design Technologies” and Enrico Milani, “Methods of optimization of form”, has explored the generative processes of artifacts of daily life - specifically “plastic containers” - engaging students in formulation of innovative proposals.
The educational program has offered training practices and reflection moments, aimed at studying the design culture - essential intellectual process preceding production -, thus the ways of industrial production and then about the conscious use of resources. To the young designers-to-be is addressed the message to combine the trinomial “form / function / matter” in artifacts that can stand out in the artificial setting that surrounds us, with expressive values that reach also the pleasure of sight and touch.
As result there have been innovational proposals, having insight of latent needs, or small improvements in continuity with a tradition of production; students have created necessary items as much as accessories, which tell how they have to be used or conceal the use under a mask of empathy with the user, a style; both simple as complex solutions to solve problems of everyday life.
Before seconding the designer’s assertion, the “fifteen minutes of fame” which is inevitably the contemporary ambition, the specificity of this course was to show to learners an assumption of professional practical, well-advised, where the designer can acquire an identity and a specific role in technical offices or R&D departments, for instance, of small and medium enterprises, establishing himself as a key figure in determining the “jump in quality” in product and business culture, and triggering design-driven innovation processes.
To the Company VE. CA. S.p.a. from Albettone (Vi), specialized in the production of plastic household, a special thanks not only for supporting the workshop but also for offer herself as a model of industry experience as well as a potential subject of verification and testing of the new project proposals.

Veronica Dal Buono