LUCA VENTURELLI DESIGN PORTFOLIO
Thingk 13
Product
Rgb 3
Furniture
SUMMARY
Vm design
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Libra 24
If design is design
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Mutable 28
Interaction
Visual
Service
Napaca 9
Tablette 33 Lamta 37 Ongoing projects
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RGB With Gabriele Leonardi Beatriz Tata Diaz Damla Tanriverdi For Master degree in PSSD 2016/17 Service design Community services Cultural events
RGB is a service project developed during the Service Design Studio course of the PSSD Master Degree at Politecnico di Milano. Our teaching team asked us to design a city service hub, a public space for people engagement designed for the community in order to offer an innovative mix of public and private services. So what is the concept behind RGB? RGB is an itinerant hub which offers citizens a place of connection for cultural events. The hub is not linked to a specific place, but dwells in the city by temporarily inhabiting a different abandoned place each time, in a continuous 48h event once every two months.
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The brief we received from the teaching team was to design a City Hub about cultural activities. In the first phases of the research we started by framing our analysis to identify similar case studies both via desk and field research. We then decided to create a graphic comparison between the different hubs to map the relations among them, their offerings and the use of digital media.
Process
NT NE
ENTERTAINMENT / PLEASURE
Diva Centres aim to provide access to comprehensive reproductive health services for teenagers in disadvantaged areas.
La Nuit des idées aims to promote the free circulation of ideas.
Drawings from users
Digital Presence and type of use
A collaboration between public and private that is obtained through sponsorship leads to having better resources to plan and execute better.
WEBSITE
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PUBLIC
EC IFI
SOCIAL NETWORKS
EN
Buka aims to identify partying as a distillate of human culture.
Chemistry aims to encourage respectful connections between beautiful spirits.
Critical Mass aims to give voice to cyclists in the urban transport discourse.
Interviews
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La Nuit des idées (The Night of ideas) is an initiative promoted by the Institut français, an institution in charge of implementing french cultural action abroad. 2017 was the second year of this special night during which many cultural events were hosted around the world with the aim “to involve major places of knowledge and culture in France and internationally in order to promote the free circulation of ideas together”. This year the theme was “One World” and events were both promoted by the Institut and suggested to the Institut. A jury in fact had to review all the applications sent by people around the world and chose the ones relevant to the topic of the night, hosted then on 26th of January. On the Institut website it is indicated that participants were around 180000.
Map
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LA PLACE
LA SCIGHERA
MEETUP
Paris used to be very rich and productive for what regards hip hop culture in the 90s. As the movement started to fade in importance in the beginning of the 2000, local hip hop enthusiasts started to raise the idea of building a cultural hub in order to keep it alive. La Place is located in a 1440 square meters building which includes two music/dance studio rooms, a concert hall, an atelier for graffiti and street art, a record studio, a bar and a incubator for hip hop entrepreneurs. In particular they provide the physical spaces to create, produce, spread and promote hip hop culture in all its different forms, from music and dance to street and visual art.
La Schighera is a social and cultural center in Milan. It has a strong political and ideological foundation in anarchism and liberalism but offers a variety of different activities, courses and events related to culture. The space offers a bar as gathering point for people to meet and then a big space for events and courses with a stage, and a smaller space that acts mostly as a kids area. In spring and summer they also open a garden to stay and relax.
Meetup is a response to the massive digitalization of social practices and places of discussion. It is a social network that connects people locally around specific topics and activities, and it is meant to enable a meaningful cultural exchange using the internet to get off the internet. Registered users can provide their address and location in order to visualize groups and activities related to that particular geographic area. Group activities are created by users who want to create interest around a particular topic and are then shared on the platform in order to engage other people in participation. When different groups grow around a similar topic they start to create community connections.
La Place aims to promote hip hop culture and music-related businesses.
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La Scighera aims to offer citizens a space to meet, learn and practice.
Meetup aims to bring people together to do, explore, teach and learn.
MORNING GLORYVILLE Morning Gloryville is a social movement and an immersive alcohol-free morning dance experience. It is a global community based in London that started from the needs of a generation of ravers that are now in their 30s and working, who don’t have the same energy, time and interests they had when they were younger. It offers energising music, visual entertainment, free wake-up massage, organic coffee and smoothie bars, yoga and personal motivation. Morning Gloryville aims to expand the hearts and minds of people.
PIANO CITY Piano City is a two-day festival of piano events hosted in public and private places around the metropolitan area of Milan, meant to spread musical culture and to involve all the citizens, from people who don’t listen to classical music to deep music lovers. Many concerts are organized in unusual places like houses, yards, stations, roofs, museums, schools, parks, where music is played from sunset to dawn and from dawn to sunset in a continuous way. There are also Guest Concerts, which are self-produced, proposed and organized by various realities such as schools and associations.
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LA NUIT DES IDÉES
Diva Centres are Zambian health centers by Marie Stopes International (designed with the collaboration of IDEO) where trained professionals provide sexual and reproductive health information and services to teenage girls in an informal environment that looks like a manicure salon rather than a health center. They are places where teenagers can talk about boys and sex among themselves and with young professionals in a relaxed place where no one will judge them. The spaces go along with the branding of four Divas that represent four different types of contraception methods.
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DIVA CENTRES
Critical Mass is a cycling event present in cities worldwide, which consists in gatherings of cyclists, usually once a week, that move around the city with the purpose of creating a “mass” against car drivers. It started in the 90s as a way to give voice to the lack of proper space for cyclists in urban environments and it maintains the aim still now, together with the idea of creating joyful and fun rides. Over time the event was further formalized, so for example in Milan the “mass” gathers every thursday in the same place at the same hour every week and performs a similar route every time, giving some limits to one of the most successful bottom-up format of social movements.
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CRITICAL MASS
Chemistry is a New York based organization that gives monthly gatherings centered around eroticism. Events are usually open only to members, and to become one a personal questionnaire needs to be filled for them to understand if the applicant values are in line with the Chemistry experience. It is not a traditional swingers party, it is “a celebration both cosmopolitan and bohemian where great music, exciting atmosphere, and beautiful, artistic, illuminated people as catalysts for a variety of spontaneous reactions: dancing, laughter, conversation, and intimate connection”. Sharing and intimacy, not sex, are at the core of the experience, which includes also an aperitivo, dancing to music and entertainment acts..
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CHEMISTRY
Buka defines itself as an “inappropriate (fuoriluogo in italian), temporary and itinerant situation of Club”. It can be described as an entity that appropriates places mainly around Milan to host events that retain the identity of the place. What all of them have in common is to be parties and to offer a quality selection of danceable live music. During the years Buka changed face many times. It started in 2012 in an old disused Milanese record label (C.G.D.) building as a subcultural underground movement focusing on electronic music parties that were the ideological opposite of what commercial dance nights represented. The two founders then moved Buka around Europe for some time, to return in Milan with the itinerant format, giving events in an ex-striptease in Via Padova and progressively spreading in many different places with tailored situations (Aperiafter, Fuoriorario diurno, Mondo among the others).
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BUKA
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Direct observations
OS
ED
FIELD RESEARCH
IME
FIX
SOCIALIZING / SHARING
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Whatsapp interview
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Mail interview
The spaces switch from being in just one geographical location to being spread all around the city. This initiative brings spaces, thus the cultural events closer to people.
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Alliance Française aims to promote French language and culture.
Th be e sp tha ing it aces t use hav inera go fro mo d a e alr nt. A m b re s it ead lte ein in at rn y g sit is t tract erant a his ativ fixe ua sp tor e sp d to t o c ive ins ion’s reate to th aces y are ace tea ma tru e u and be s d o in id st s ing a ers th fa rou ea a roun . The is is nd nd e d th aim the xp e loc erie atio nc n. e
BASE aims to gather people around culture.
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Facebook messages & posts
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E-mails
E P L AC E S
IM
SINGL
ITI
Online research
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BASE is a multifunctional hub for culture and creativity that combines experience and experimentation. It is located in the Tortona area in Milan which is known to be one of the most important design-oriented areas of the city. It is a place for fun, education and work and combines many activities like co-working, workshops, exhibitions, performances, lectures and various cultural events.
UA
Alliance Française is a worldwide network of language centers that double as cultural centers. It works under the premise that in order to really immerse in a language, one must also immerse in the relative culture. One of the most active ones in terms of cultural activities is the one in Bogotá, Colombia. It is a place to promote French language and culture, as well as other local cultural activities such as concerts, film screenings, exhibitions, conferences, book clubs and photo clubs. They also have french language libraries for the people enrolled to the center. Most of these events are free of charge.
What people look for?
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BASE
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ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE
UN
DESK RESEARCH
Offering RA
We framed our focus from a general hub idea, of a place that promotes culture, to a broader concept of a situation that aggregates people through culture.
be Ther the twee e exis tre se hu n how ts a fi nd b no bu s are clos ne eq n-e t m . B ed uil ide xclu ainta eing and ibriu ntit siv inin op how m y, c e ta g a en t o on rge sp o a pen tro t to ec ll is ifi l an a d q prese c ye t ua r v lity e .
studies
Case
M U LT I P L E P L AC E S
PROPRIETARY APPS
Piano City aims to tranform Milan in a big concert hall.
P R I VAT E
Thanks to the research phase we could better understand our context of action, creating possible directions and gaining useful insights. We decided to create a moving cultural hub which could populate different abandoned places of the city in temporary events. The citizens could personalize the content of the activities thanks to a web platform, were they could collectively vote performances proposed from a pool of emerging artists.
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To access the platform the artists should register to the system and attend a 1 to 1 meeting with a member of the RGB team. The performer could then create a video content about his/her show to be uploaded online in a dedicated page. Here citizens could filter the different performances thanks to the various categories, the ranking and the time of the day. They could then vote one or more performances and share those contents on their social media.
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During the voting phases the artists could control their progress on the ranking in relation to the remaining days of the voting phase. If selected, the performers would receive a confirmation message and be contacted by the RGB organization to manage together all the different aspects of the event preparation, from technical support to curation of the performances.
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NAPACA With Gabriele Lorusso Luca Notarfrancesco For Fabric Action, design contest Branding Product collection Sustainable design
Hemp Body car - Ford Industries prototype - 1941
lack of circulation and actual application. It’s from this very paradox that we started our reflections on the topic. The purpose of our project is to create a wider communication and awareness tool for a material that has been ostracised far too many times because of his relationship with marijuana and that has been therefore industrially and culturally set aside.
Napaca is a project developed with Gabriele Lorusso and Luca Notarfrancesco for the MDW contest Fabric-Action. The brief asked to design products using hemp, focusing on the values of its properties. We took the design request from quite a wide angle: during our research we realised the applicative flexibility of the hemp but also its 10
To make our idea tangible we thought about avoiding a communication strategy linked just to advertising and to create NAPACA: a promotional kit to allow this material to come back into people’s daily life. The kit includes both products ready to use and objects to “build” in order to stimulate a reflection by doing; every element of the kit has the aim of highlighting a different property of hemp.
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Napaca was chosen as special project and exhibited at Milan Design Week 2017 and at Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive in Spoleto in August 2017. The project Fabric-Action was also published on Domus Green in September 2017.
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THINGK With Thingk’s startup team Digital devices Product development
block of unprocessed wood. The magic happens when something is placed on top of the scale: a segmented number appears at the top of the slab identifiyng the exact weight to be measured. By placing the scale on different faces as base, the object switches to different features, such as timer, unit configuration and app paring mode.
A great working experience I had is the one regarding Thingk. I first met one of the members of the team, Umberto Tolino, in classroom as a teacher. I later became a member of the startup together with Umberto, which is an official spinoff of Politecnico di Milano. The first object designed by the team is Slab!, a smart kitchen scale which visually appears as a casual
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The second object released by Thingk is Desk!, a smart deskpad artisanally handcrafted in Italy. Every object designed by Thingk has its own superpower, and the one of Desk! is the wireless charge. The pad may charge simultaneously up to two smartphones just by placing the phones on the leather surface.
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VM DESIGN With Blachere Illumination Italia For FENDI Salvatore Ferragamo
Visual merchandising Project management
After my graduation at Politecnico di Milano I’ve started working as a freelance designer and in that period I also collaborated with the italian branch of Blachere Illumination, a global corporation which is specialized in visual decors and light setups. In this page is shown one of the three most complex and outstanding visual designs I’ve been working on those months.
For the watchmaking exihbit of Baselword 2017 we realized a set of wall panels crafted from an handmade stainless steel circle. On top of the metal layer different sizes of custom PMMA spheres created a complex visual composition. 17
The second one is a couple of windows also realized for FENDI, installed in their flagship store in Milan for the autumn/winter 2016 collection. We took care of following the handmade crafting of the natural shaped neon tubes, of the concrete wall background and of the in store installation.
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And the third one is a single window for Salvatore Ferragamo displayed at Harrods London in the summer of 2016. In this setup we realized either the transparent bags, starting from a 3D scan of the real object and the black background wall structure.
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IF DESIGN IS DESIGN With the Obi Wan Kenobi team For Product design bachelor degree Web design Webzine Design debate
IDID is a website about design terms, their meaning and contradictions. The contents are accessible from an interactive alphabeth which links to terms starting with each letter, like in a Syllabus. We focused the design on appeal and usability, in order to make the website attractive but easily accessible.
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We chose to use short interview videos to define some terms of use in the design world. By involving professional experts we tried to start a debate around some of the most common disciplines and topics in the hope to make them personal and transforming them into subjective helpful thoughs.
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In each video section the header indicates the term in discussion and the design professional which presents his point of view on the subject. Every page features a resizable menu that links to the other project pages. We also start to develop a multi channel digital campaign to raise awareness around the topic and attract people on the webpage.
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LIBRA With Umberto Tolino, Ilaria Vitali For Takto Timepieces Watchmaking artisanship CMF & product design Manufacturing
What is time? And how we, as humans, perceive time? Is our perception persistent or variable during time? Time flows. And is gonna flow whatever happens, independently from human perceptions. The idea behind the shape of this artisanal timepiece is that we, as humans, could try to capture a moment; but time is still gonna flow. Visually this concept is represented by the contrast between the shape of the clock as an object, in which the circular layers of the dial have been suddenly freezed in the geometrical base and the hypnotic permanent motion of the mechanism, revealed from the glass elements.
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The final form of the object is the result of a complex visual research both in terms of comparison with the existing context and iterations in the design process. The creative path is been led by quick sketches and physical mockups, toghether with 3d modelling and renders. This allowed us to go back and forth between the tangible world and a digital enviroment, adjusting sequentially the models and the finals 3D files, giving to our client an outcome ready for the production process.
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This method allowed us also to focus more on materials and finishings, in order to identify the best solution to represent visually either the classic italian taste and tradition of artisanal processes togheter with the luxurious side of the brand, in a minimal and sintethized way. We focused our research on glass, metal, wood and marble in different essences and opacities and with various finishings.
As final outcomes we designed two versions of the clock: one combining white Calacatta marble, chromed and black gearwheels on a gradient frosted dial. The other with a brown Canaletto walnut base together with chromed and golden gearwheels on a crystal clear dial.
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MUTABLE With Umberto Tolino, Thingk For Mukako, italian ecommerce Kids playtable Product System design
with the kids who use it and to allow them to play different games by following their growth over the years. The set is composed by the table structure, a set of stackable board games, cloth bags to hold toys and accessories and three wooden chairs.
Playing is fun, so could be growing. Especially as little kids. I participated as designer in the development of Mutable, a wooden play table created for kids from 1 to 8 years old. The idea behind the project was to design a product which could change together
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The table top is designed to hold five layers of stackable double-sided board games which can be easily switched by kids to play in many different ways. The standard kit contains a LEGO play board, a blackboard, a scenario map and a puzzle. Every layer has a different scope for each side. For example the blackboard features a magnetic whiteboard on the opposite side of the layer. 30
To adapt the table to kid’s growth not only the content of games can be changed, but also the overall height of the table itself. To allow that, the parts that compose the legs may be quickly rearranged with a simple interaction to obtain four different heights in total.
A set of foldable hangers is placed close to the legs to hold different accessories such as pencils, markers, magnets and so on. No tools are required for the table assembly, as the number of compontens is sinthetized to the minumum and every different joining is obtained by combining and twisting elements with hands.
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In this context the engeneering process is been followed in every step to facilitate the transaction from the design phase to the manufacturing. We worked closely with the supplier chosen by our client to identify and choose technical solutions which could integrate seamlessy in the design without slowing the transaction process.
By reducing the number of components and the swarfs percentage in every manufacturing phase, either the financial cost and the enviromental path of the table kit could be lowered significantly. The environmental impact of the table is been a clear focus to work on, so we decided to choose wood varieties and paint finishings with the lowest possible impact on the global ecosystem. 32
TABLETTE With Gabriele Lorusso For Trentino 3.0 public contest
Wood design Bed furniture Product design
This project was developed for a Public contest about furniture making with traditional Trentino wood. After a brief research, Gabriele and me started discussing together and generating ideas. We thought to remove the side legs of the archetypal bed table shape and use a cushion to provide the ideal height and comfort during use. We made the form of the tray as easy as possible and added a layer of silicone on one side. The grip guaranteed from this plastic allowed a great stability and adhesion of breakfast items to permit a comfortable use. 34
On the other hand it provided no sliding when in contact with the cushion. We then decided to enrich the product with minimal illustrations emphasizing the detachable side and the object itself. The result is an essential product, which is designed taking in consideration environmental and emotional aspects of a material which is richly historical but full of possibilities for innovation.
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CNC MILLING
BOARD CUTTING
We went in depth in analyzing possible solutions for the manufacturing process, in order to SETS MILLING
EDGE ROUNDING
understand the critical points of a traditional artisanal way and of a CNC leaded manufacturing. This allowed us to refine the shape and suggest manufacturing phases in order to respect this noble material by minimizing the process swarfs.
SEPARATING PARTS
PAINTING 36
DRILLING CONNECTION HOLES
GLUEING SILICONE
ATTACHING PINS
ET VOILÀ
LAMTA For NEXT design innovation IOT device Product & graphic design Interaction
Lamta is a concept for the contest NEXT design innovation held by Regione Lombardia and Politecnico di Milano. The idea behind this object is to redesign the way in which we interact with common furniture products, such as a lamp. In this case the regular switch archeteype is been removed and the lamp is controlled by a touch surface on the whole cover or thanks to a dedicated smartphone app. The project is been selected and exposed during the Milano Design Week in 2016.
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The lamp interaction is based on a minimal physical interface. The four spiral arms are provided with a touch sensor on the whole surface and a tap on one single arm allows to switch the lamp on and off. A single long press on one arm gradually changes the intensity of the light while a simultaneous long press on two arms allows to change the colour tone. To reset the light to default just a double tap on one arm is necessary. The order and the disposition of the arms to press is totally free from constrictions.
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The app layout is minimalistic and simple, to be as intuitive as possible. The app itself is born to augment the capabilities of the physical object by giving the possibility to remote control it, to set luminous alarms and to set the “listening mode�. Listening mode is a particular feature that allows the lamp to change light intensity in relation with the ambient noise, by adapting the light to the actual context. For example by playing light effects during music listening or by progressively swithching the lamp off in a silent room. 40
ONGOING PROJECTS
I’m currently working on two main projects that I would like to mention. Both of them are under development and no specific detail can be mentioned. However I’m going to contextualize the working scenario and part of the process in the following pages, as I think that it could already be a relevant mean of my current working position as a freelance designer.
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COWORKING OFFICE
The first one is a project regarding the overall design of a coworking space, in which I’m taking care of the service design elements and how the different elements of the service itself are reflected on the architectural and branding aspects. The space is a 70 squared meters propriety in Porta Venezia, Milan, which is going to host 12 freelance workers and various events regarding the digital world. I’ve started to research both existing case studies and new meanings that this new space could carry, and went in depth with the rest of the team in analizing possible architectural and furniture solutions, a task which is been relatively agile thanks to my product design background.
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APERITIF EXTRACTS
The second is a mix between product, branding and strategic design for a young company based in Ortisei, in the northern region of Trentino Alto Adige. The main object of this work is to structure the design aspects of the newborn company in reaching the market for their first time. To do that I structured the corporate identity, a positioning strategy and the product and graphic design of an aperitivo created from a proprietary mix of fruits.
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Luca Venturelli +39 3338697140 luca.venturelli@mail.com www.lucaventurelli.com