Materiali e processi del prodotto industriale_ Materials and Processes of the Industrial Design

This text is aimed to describe the relationship between materials and design. It refers to a period which starts with the birth of the first synthetic materials, during the Industrial Revolution, and arrives to the final establishment of synthetic plastics. Industry itself , and the scientific revolution which generated it between the 18th and the 19th centuries,had developed thanks to new materials which had made possible series manufacturing methods, replacing the ancient craft ones. The materials that ,more than others, got an important symbolic role in that period, were the metals such as steel and cast iron. The use of cast iron and of various metal alloys brought to a new kind of manufacturing which , discomposing complex aggregations into small chunks, was able to combine the big dimension of industrial architecture with the small one of series product. The process of renovation in the use of metals in the home furnishings, started with the Industrial Revolution came to an end with the Bauhaus. But the Industrial Revolution involved even the more traditional materials in the changing process such as the ceramics. The symbol of the transformations in this field is Josiah Wedgwood.He is the best representative of the symbolic figure typical of the period , the inventor-entrepreneur ,the one who was able to exploit his tecnical scientific discoveries from an industrial point of view. Then the text turns to the world of plastics.The focus is first on the distinction between the nature and the fields of application of natural and synthetic plastics and then on the description of the cutural climate in the late 19th century and in the first half of 20th century,when the first synthetic plastics appeared and imposed themselves. The script ends up with the use and the spread of synthetic plastics in the industrial design in the first decades of the post-war period.