Making Materials: The Case of Elaborating Qualities of Bioplastics

Date

2016-09-01

Author

Tönük Kruıthof, Damla

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

203
views

0
downloads

This article focuses on materials by taking an alternative route into considering their relationships to products. I draw on approaches from social sciences, especially studies influenced by science and technology studies, and conceptualise materials (and products) as made in their social and technical environment, and their properties as enacted in different environments of which they become a part, such as production and branding. Building on this framework, I focus on the production process in which materials, namely bioplastics, are produced and are transformed into products and so material-product relationships are formed, and new materials are substituted with existing ones. As such this study shows that actually products make materials as well, and that properties of materials are not intrinsic to them so as to be to chosen by designers, but that properties of materials are partly made in relation to the products into which they are made.

Subject Keywords

Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/48003

Journal

DESIGN ISSUES

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00417

Collections

Department of Industrial Design, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Material Semiotics of Form Giving: The Case of the Electric Turkish Coffee Pot Kaygan, Harun (MIT Press - Journals, 2016-03-01) The article discusses material semiotics as a valuable framework for the analysis of design processes, and focuses on form giving practices. For this purpose, the design processes of electric Turkish coffee pots are studied through interviews and document analyses. It is argued that neither form giving nor product form can be considered to be singular or stable throughout a design process, and that semantic and material relations that are built and maintained around the product form need to be traced for a ...
The Cost of 'Free' in Freelance Industrial Design Work: The Case of Turkey Kaygan, Pınar (Informa UK Limited, 2017-07-01) Recent studies have paid considerable attention to the precarious conditions of creative work following the expansion of creative and cultural industries. These studies have investigated the notions of freedom, autonomy and self-management in relation to contractual form of employment, and demonstrated how aspirations to and expectations of such notions within these industries lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction, for young professionals in particular. Although these notions are also shared within the...
The Institutionalization of the Industrial Design Profession in Turkey: Case Study - The Industrial Designers Society of Turkey Hasdoğan, Gülay Fatma (Informa UK Limited, 2009-12-01) This paper reviews the process of institutionalization in industrial design through an analysis of the Endustriyel Tasanmcilar Meslek Kurulusu [Industrial Designers Society of Turkey] (ETMK) since its establishment in 1988. From 1994 onwards, the ETMK has been the leading institution in promoting industrial design through the organization of design exhibitions, design awards and support of design competitions. Using the ETMK's documentation and insights from the author as the ETMK President, this paper anal...
Evolving Paths: Undergraduate Design Education through Graduate and Generative Research with a Particular Focus on Sustainability Doğan, Çağla; Turhan, Senem (Informa UK Limited, 2016-01-01) Design considerations that take into account the diverse issues of sustainability have become a central source of inspiration for third-year design students in the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University. These considerations include the development of products that can evolve in line with local needs, product maintenance, repair and upgrade, and the effective use of resources and have been integrated into various design projects relating to diverse product sectors (e.g. small ho...
Change in Industrial Designers' Jobs: The Case of Turkey, 1984-2018 Kaygan, Pınar; Ougur, Isil (Informa UK Limited, 2020-08-01) This paper examines the change in the forms of employment of industrial designers between 1984 and 2018 in Turkey. The empirical data come from the graduates of the four oldest industrial design departments in the country. Utilizing multiple sources, we collected longitudinal data on forms of employment and duration of jobs for a total of 1205 individuals. Drawing on this data, we present a descriptive analysis of the changing job patterns in in-house employment, self-employment, freelance work, academic jo...

Citation Formats

D. Tönük Kruıthof, “Making Materials: The Case of Elaborating Qualities of Bioplastics,” DESIGN ISSUES, pp. 64–75, 2016, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/48003.