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PAD dedicated the year 2020 entirely to women, their creativity and design action. The focus of issue 18, entitled “The Women’s Making”, was on the maker culture and its meanings. In this issue 19, the attention shifts to the field of Communication Design. The intention is to continue investigating the design contributions and views, expressions and cultural and political positions of women. We believe that the present issue can contribute to the international debate and widen its boundaries. The title of this second consecutive issue dedicated to women’s design intentionally quotes the text edited by M. Antonietta Trasforini, Arte a parte (2000). A collection of contributions that in its title wanted to highlight the marginality and omissions made against women artists in art history. This metaphor of the marginal place (“apart”) emphasises the “centre” partiality, that is to say of those who wrote history until now. This centrality of historical studies and its importance emerges in this issue of PAD, in which half of the essays have a historical approach...

Ross Stevens, architect, industrial designer of many mass-produced products – including washing machines (Fisher and Paykel), lawn mowers (Morrison), televisions (Thomson, Saba) and lots of stereos (Perreaux and Plinius) also as a co-owner of PureAudio – and professor of design is engaged to establish a globally recognized design research expertise on multimaterial 3D and 4D printing, at the School of Design Innovation of the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In the MADE lab (Multi-property Additive-manufacturing Design Experiments) students enjoy being free to explore multi-material printing and experiment with new design solutions. Meeting him on the occasion of the last World Industrial Design Conference and Industrial Design World Expo (WIDC 2019 & IDWE) in China, we were fascinated by his way of promoting women's work in the area of new digital printing technology. He helped us to understand the perspective of female students to generate novel applications of the technology to form complex and highly customized multi-material structures, assemblies, and products biology-inspired that cannot be made by any other means. He draws an analogy of women weaving and 3D printing as a complex process that requires patience and sensitivities to things like color, texture, and tactile qualities of the fiber. Ross thinks those sensitivities empower women in relation to this new emerging technology.

This article proposes an analysis of the relationship between women's creative practices in the context of Western world design history. The study, based on a review of the literature, highlights the evolution of the role of women in design, considering the relationship with technology. The result is an excursus of the women maker culture growing trough design from the 18th century up to the current times. During this path, despite the social constraints deeply affecting their life and work, women acquired skill and ability for the gradual achievement of a new individualism, and modernity of behaviour for women. The changing role of women making culture was more incisive in the first development of consumption in the 19th century to the consumer society and the breakdown of gender barriers as very recent history. Due to history, which has profoundly shaped the behaviour of women, to date, they tend to have an artistic approach to technology. Current times are characterized by a series of positive processes and actions that reveal social radical change and the emerging of the gender-sensitive design approach to pursue.

Women empowerment and gender equality are fundamental goals of sustainable development. Since 70s until now much work has been made to deal with this issue, but the gender hi- erarchies are remarkably resilient, and gender gap continued to be in many parts of the world. All this require not to reduce the attention on the issue. Thanks to the creation in 2011 of the UN Women the international community has supported gender-related agendas to ensure women have a voice and participate in creating a more equal and safe world. An essen- tial objective is to make visible the commitment of women in society and culture while at the same time making clear the male prejudice underlying traditional knowledge...

This article proposes an analysis of the relationship between women's creative practices in the context of Western world design history. The study, based on a review of the literature, highlights the evolution of the role of women in design, considering the relationship with technology. The result is an excursus of the women maker culture growing trough design from the 18th century up to the current times. During this path, despite the social constraints deeply affecting their life and work, women acquired skill and ability for the gradual achievement of a new individualism, and modernity of behavior for women. The changing role of women making culture was more incisive in the first development of consumption in the 19th century to the consumer society and the breakdown of gender barriers as a very recent history. Due to history, which has profoundly shaped the behavior of women, to date, they tend to have an artistic approach to technology. Current times are characterized by a series of positive processes and actions that reveal social radical change and the emerging of the gender sensitive design approach to pursue.

There is a vast body of research exploring the roles women can contribute to de- sign creation and crafting. In the past, historical studies have paid attention to the role of women in the applied and decorative arts, more than the role of women in design and technologies, giving men a more significant role in the manufacturing technological dimension. In recent years, the consumers, as well as the design- ers’ interest in handcrafting has grown in popularity in Europe, USA, and finally also in Asia, for many different reasons worldwide showing a rich phenomenol- ogy. Craft exhibitions, fairs, shows, and web platforms (like Etsy.com) have been making echo to the century Arts and Crafts movement. This new craft movement, characterized by a growing community of young women, has also been seen as a political phenomenon with some aspects related to a third wave feminist do-it- yourself. Beyond the political aspects, women crafting has been acquired more and more considerable cultural, social, and commercial values. In this article, we present a systematic analysis of the rich phenomenology of contemporary women crafting with the support of available evidence-based liter- ature concerning the role of women in today’s and future design and production. We organize our findings into clusters describing the key roles that women play in the design creation and crafting. We also put light in the future design connecting women thinking and craft sensibility to new technologies (like 3D or 4D printing ).

Nicole Hone is a young designer who completed her master's degree in Design Innovation with professor Ross Stevens as the supervisor, at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 2018. Her master thesis is focused on the design of or- ganic performance and the choreographed movement with emerging technologies. Her project Hydrophytes shows the feminine perspective on digital fabrication for designing alive physical objects inspired by research into the biology and synthetic biology to imagine solutions to the climate change problems of the ocean and marine species. Her futuristic creatures are made of multi-material 3D/4D printing and create immersive physical-based experiences through the video recording of their movements. The futuristic function of Hydrophytes encourages thought about the health of our future climate and the role of design in connecting man and nature. During the early stages of his project, experimenting with multi-materials 3D printing, Nicole found that the materials perform smoother and more organically in water as fragile parts are better supported. Having known that there were plans to redesign the National Aquarium of New Zealand, Nicole proposed to have a future-focused exhibition with moving aquatic creatures models that visitors could interact with. This idea, combined with her personal be fascinated with nature, lead to the concept of the futuristic aquatic plants, that include arrow pods, feather nurses, nomadic cleaners, haven flowers. Nicole chose to use PolyJet technology as it is excellent for printing small objects with fragile parts and complex organic forms with internal structures. We interviewed Nicole with questions focusing on her project and women's sensibilities in design and technology.

In recent years, design has turned its attention towards the Circular Economy where material issues are central. More and more companies and designers are turning their research towards ‘circular materials’ from the recycling of ‘technical materials’ or created from an organic base of processing/production or consumption waste and reintegrated into the biological cycle. The paper, focused on ‘bio-based circular materials’, presents the first phase of a research in progress, with the aim of mapping and systematising the strategies used for the conception, development, design, production and distribution of new materials and related products.

The Mediterranean scenario does not stop to attract our interest and attention. We believe it is essential today to generate a convergence of actions that promotes creativity and innovation in this region, looking at the future of youth, by breaking the barriers of differences and misunderstandings between the various national realities and making the most of the difference in understanding the other. PAD #16 issue deals with the design research and practices for the Mediterranean region, according to the vision of young creative innovators, in line with the previous #14 and #15 issues. It closes the trilogy of these last three issues to launch a new way of looking at the Mediterranean challenges. We decided to shed light on the potential of the new globalized generation who wishes to take control of their future. It is by supporting the innovation capacity of youth that we will be able to advance the actual Mediterranean reality and open new perspectives on the future...

During the last decade, smart materials and systems have increasingly impacted several niches, including ‘one-off/limited edition experimental fashion’. As the traditional boundaries between what is art and what was not supposed to be art are now turning into osmotic membranes, we will speculatively focus on how ‘smart material systems’ are highly contributing to outline a new creative landscape full of interesting and compelling issues. Introducing three different sub-niches of experimental fashion—multi-sensory dresses, empathic dresses, and bio-smart dresses—this article outlines the emergence of a new smart design scenario. Then, we critically discuss some of the implications of the developing research in terms of design thinking and design aesthetics. This paper aims to contribute to the topic of next design scenario, demonstrating how design research is increasingly affecting the extension of human perception, emotions, and the concept of ‘almost-living’ entities, projecting towards the redefinition of relationships with materials and objects.

Questo articolo propone un’ampia riflessione sul ruolo che il design agroalimentare e agroindustriale gioca oggi come punto di partenza per processi di rigenerazione dei contesti locali e di sviluppo sostenibile delle attività economiche a livello locale. La cultura del design, utilizzando gli strumenti della comunicazione visiva, del prodotto e del design strategico, avvia un ciclo virtuoso tra prodotto e territorio. I casi riportati riguardano esperienze di progetti sviluppati nel contesto mediterraneo.