Material Tinkering for Design Education on Waste Upcycling

Oct 15, 2026

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Materials are central to design practice and increasingly important in design education. This paper presents material tinkering as an educational approach, focusing on upcycling waste into material demonstrators to evaluate their potential to become sustainable artefacts. It reviews objectives and global pedagogical relevance, then narrows to Italian experiences at Università di Camerino and Politecnico di Milano since 2015. The method moves from trial-and-error to demonstrator conception within an upcycling boundary.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages24

Reading Time1 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Materials as a Core Design Element

From Traditional Materials Education to Hands-on Tools

Designerly Ways of Knowing and Materials-related Frameworks

Materials Libraries and Project-specific Limitations

Maker Culture, Fab Labs, and DIY-Materials

Material tinkering for design education on waste upcycling Carlo Santulli, Università di Camerino, Italy Valentina Rognoli, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Abstract Materials are primary elements in the process of design and are gaining more and more attention in design education. The present work illustrates the practice of material tinkering, concentrating on its effects on design education, as regards the upcycling of waste into material demonstrators, deemed to assess their possibility to evolve into sustainable artefacts. After a general illustration of the scope and objectives of material tinkering, the exposition describes the recent experiences of this practice into design schools, highlighting its pedagogical significance worldwide, and in the particular case of the Italian situation. Finally, the exposition concentrates on the specific case of work carried out in two prestigious Italian Universities (Università di Camerino and Politecnico di Milano) from 2015. The paper tries to clarify its position and significance concerning previous literature, for what appears relevant to the education of designers and for their formation in the local context to be applicable worldwide. The research method evolves from trial-and-error, typical of experimentation on materials, to the conception of material demonstrators and suitability to be applied into products, having as boundaries the choice to use some kinds of waste in an upcycling philosophy. Keywords DIY-Materials, Materials from waste, tinkering, materials education, teaching the experimental method Introduction Materials are crucial elements in the design process. As a consequence of this fact, materials education is becoming more and more significant in the field of Design, because it assists future designers in becoming more sensitive towards the expressive and functional qualities of the material. Traditionally, learning about materials has been an intellectual and book-based activity. And it is still the case in most of the Design schools worldwide, and also in Italy. On the other side, though, the recent diffusion of different approaches toward materials and the rise of specific educational and experimental tools, such as materials libraries, followed then by Fab Labs, would add tangible and practical opportunities to enhance materials knowledge in the field of Design. In more general terms, designers need continuous education about materials, because new ones are developed every day, and also since we are rapidly evolving from industrialized materials towards customized ones. This change of perspective also involves selfproduction of new materials in a laboratory or workshop context, due to the effect of stringent necessities, such as re-integration of waste into the production process. This process is also virtuous in the way towards educating for sustainability and suggesting ways in which products and services are matching all essential criteria of the circular model (Andrews, 2015) . Materials knowledge implies internalization of facts, information, and skills, the combination of which would be able to produce designs using material possibilities to achieve the desired user experiences (Haug, 2019) . Concerning design education, for some years, there have been studies, research and projects aimed at teaching materials to design students with an approach as close as possible to their way of thinking and designing. The concept of ‘designerly ways of knowing’ has been coined by Nigel Cross (Cross, 1982) as the result of reflections, which started to emerge in the late 1970sin association with the development of new approaches in design education. It is possibly expressed by saying that ‘designerly ways of knowing materials’ are now required and start to become available. It was introduced by research on the expressive-sensorial dimension of materials (Rognoli & Levi, 2005; Rognoli, 2010), to other works focused on materials meaning (Karana, Hekker

FAQs

What is the focus of the paper on material tinkering in design education?

The paper focuses on how material tinkering affects design education by turning waste into material demonstrators, to assess their potential as sustainable artefacts.

Why is materials education described as increasingly significant in design?

Materials education is highlighted as crucial because it helps future designers understand both expressive and functional qualities, and because new materials continually emerge while design shifts toward customized and self-produced materials.

How does the research method evolve from experimentation to demonstrators?

The approach progresses from trial-and-error typical of material experimentation to the conception of material demonstrators suitable for product application, constrained by an upcycling philosophy using specific waste types.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by nayy☆