Agosto R., Lamberti E., (s)object of migration (2017)

(S)OBJECT OF MIGRATION Riccardo Agosto Turin, Italy agostoriccardodesign@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Migration is a more and more popular theme in the last years.

It does not involve just society or nature, but also other panoramas not yet analyzed by this point of view. It’s the exploration the mission of our graduation project (summarized briefly in this paper). Using the ‘Exploring Design’ method and the tools of ‘Project sustainability’, we break the stereotypes related to this topic and we discover daily invisible aspects of migration. Starting from the word, we develope a divergent and side-thinking analysis about nature, society, products and data. The result is a key concept: the ‘Embodied Kilometers’. With this brand new tool, we look for real projects and we put together an alternative scenary.

From that, our concept born: OIIO migrant design factory.

An environmental and social friendly startup for automotive trash recovering, refugee education and upcycling design.

ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.m. Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g. HCI): Miscellaneous; Author Keywords

Exploring design; migration; regufee; sharing; startup; automotive; trash; innovation.

INTRODUCTION: THE EXPLORING DESIGN

For a better understandment of this paper we spend a few words about Exploring Design. This method is teached at Polytechnic of Turin and it’s explained inside ‘Man at the Centre of the project: Design for a New Humanism’ (1), a free book available online by Claudio Germak.

It consists in a three step process: step 1, designers get a spread ambit, like a word or an inaccuracy theme (e.g. wood). They have to solve the question: where to do? step 2, once analysed the macro-ambit, subdivided in micro-ambits and discovered new ideas or visions, they close the range of research to a more specific direction (e.g. scraps of wood and their reuse). They still not have a concept, the question is: what to do?

Finally the step 3, where designers imagine their own brief and start a project (e.g. solutions to recover scraps of wood to build new furniture). Now the question is: how to do?

Copyright {2017} ACM

Elia Lamberti Cuneo, Italy elia_lamberti@outlook.it

We followed a similar work process in this project. This let us to be completely free and open on new visions for such a strong theme like migration is.

BRIEF: THE WORD MIGRATION

The path starts from a single word, the spread ambit, given us by our relator Silvia Barbero: migration.

At the beginning we don’t know where to go, so we decide to start from the vocabulary definition of ‘migration’. Here’s a short version: “migrate: 1 move from one place to go live or work in another. 2 (of animals, etc) go from one place to another with season, esp to spend the winter in a warmer place” The description is perfect for the “classic” terms of migration, that is nature and society (we excluded more technical aspects like the ones in physic or geology), but the definition doesn’t consider mutations introduced by globalization in lifestyle and culture.

A new definition

Locked by standard visions, we moved to create a new inclusive definition to open new perspetives.

The migration is the act of moving of a subject (human or animal) or an object (product or data) from a start point A to a final point B driven by a motivation (conscious or inconscious) due to a dissatisfation state of being, that it wants change. The migration is always related to a perception of it on the arrival place.

This definition introduces new ambits into the dialogue, like products, data and everything that is not animated (e.g. culture or money).

Analysis of ambits is based on three parameters: movement, motivation and perception.

Movement can be physically different: heavy things travel around the world but also ethereal pieces of information can do it; Movement is matter of time: we can stay forever (years) or for a brief time (hours, days, weeks). In the end it has many orders of distance: it can be a trip from a couple kilometers to a thousand ones.

Motivation is the second parameter. Surely survive is the first and most natural kind of motivation. It moves most of animals to leave their habitats. It also pushes people to run away from their houses and find a new life in a safety place,

when war or dearth completely destroy everything around them. Economy is the second type of motivation. Many people choose to go abroad to have more chances to work and earn money. Quality of life is the third step of migration, because people can migrate just for improve their way of life and not for real economic or survival problems. At the end the most abstract cause of migration it is searching sprititual well-being and interior growth.

Third point is perception. How do people react at the arrival of a new migrant subject? Sometimes they aren't able to realize the event, sometimes they are stormed. The migration can be seen as an indifference thing or a positive one or negative one too.

Created a common language, we subdivide the reality in four areas and then in small categories and we summarize main aspetcs of each kind of migration using the following scheme (figure 1).

- qualitative migrants, looking for an higer worth of their work (e.g. brain drain, 3000 Italian researches goes abroad each year); - tourists (in 2015, 1.184 billion travellers around the world), looking for rest, different ways to live, adventure, etc; - workers, people move everyday to reach workplaces (e.g.

6000 commuters, travelling 10km a day, run through 21,9 million kms in a year, about 550 times the euqator); - weekend migrants, people go shopping or visit places in saturdays and sundays (e.g. the art installation Flooting Piers

by Christo on the Iseo Lake has been visited by 1.2 million people in two weeks).

Products

Products are properly inanimated, so they can’t decide to migrate on their own. However our vision see in global trade and off-shoring, the will of migrate objects to reduce/increase their price or quality. That means goods travel just to obtain a diffrent status, like other migrants.

We distinguish between: - long-chain products, sons of globalization and ‘made in China’; - short-chain products, giving value to their territory and culture in a more qualitative way; - trash, the most invisible traveller of day life. Rubbish travel thousands of kilometers before finding its landfill.

Data

Figure 1. Scheme to describe each type of migration. In this esample area is zoology and type is natural.

AREAS ANALYSIS

There are four areas: zoology, society, products and data.

Zoology

Zoology represents each kind of biological migration (e.g. bird, sea-lion, salmon, seed or pollen). We identify two main classes: - natural, the common migration of animals or other subjects to warmer zones or breeding sites; - human-caused, the migration of a population forced by the human destruction of the habitat.

Society

Second area is society. There are six group inside, from survival-reason migration to spiritual ones: - refugees (over 65 million in the world), escaping the horror of war and persecutions (e.g. Syrian people); - economic migrants (between 1860 and 1885, 10 million Italian left their lives), looking for a wage or a good one (e.g.

Romanian caregivers in Italy);

Data are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. No one can see them, but everyone use them continuously. They are the fourth kind of migrant objects and they are: - money, the first true product that became digital. Now when we buy something online, our money is tranfered from a server to another on the opposite side of the planet in a second; - digital files, internet and social media create new typology of products like video, photos, banner, digital paintings.

They are able to be seen by a Russian like an American at the same moment; - culture, it’s transported by real and digital product (e.g.

McDonald’s like The Founder film); - services, an extraordinary example of migration from heavy world of property to volatile space of sharing data.

Everything is migration

The first conclusion of this research is that migration is an inclusive concept viewable everwhere on this little global village. Also if we stay still, the world around us keep moving faster and faster. So migration is a new standard of this reality, who is able to migrate him/she/it takes advantage and new opportunity from this.

EMBODIED KILOMETERS

Migration is a new standard, so there must a tool to read the quantity and the quality of that.

That’s why we decide to theorized the ‘Embodied Kilometers’ concept. They are inspired by other indexes of sustainability (as we told at the beginning, we try to read the migration from the point of view of design and sustainability), like the Ecological Footprint, Virtual Water and Embodied Energy.

'Embodied Kms' are the number of kilometers accumulated by a migrant subject. This number defines a quantity value and a quality value. The former is the simply the number of kilometers achieved during displacement, trade or travelling, so it's an objective value. The latter is instead a mix subjective-objective value. It is the result of a benchmark between sustainability, habitat benefits, emotion and pollution, energy cost, culture cost caused by the migrant subject.

randomly, trying not to close the range of selection to a specific topic. Using four ‘why’ we proceed to describe the examples choosen. The ‘why’ are: why migration? Why sustainibility? Why design? Why Embodied Kilometers?

Five group of cases emerged: - society, in this projects people works with migrants to help integration (e.g. Cucula); - mobility, the step to a green way to move is action now (e.g.

Z-Electric,vintage electric cars); - trash, projects looking for a solution to this problem avoiding further pollution (e.g. precious plastic project by Dave Hakkens); - data, web platforms where people can share their story, or a product, or a new discover (e.g. iamamigrant.org); - design & migration, a selection of projects joining together design and our new vision of migration (e.g. Freitag).

Made In and Made With

AUTOGENERATED PRE-BRIEF

Quality and Quantity

A this point we classify due categories of subjects: - Made in, subjects gaining or losing their qualities due to origin (e.g. made in China, made in Italy); - Made with, subjects gaining or losing their qualities due to history, kilometers heritage and emotions; Quality means a good ratio between subjects features and environmental/social impact.

Bicycles are a perfect example to explain better the concept (figure 2). If you need a new bike, you can choose to buy an imported ‘made in China’ one, or you can restore your grandfather one, or you can order a myBoo, a Ghanian bamboo bicycle that finance the local schools. In each case, we can identify a quantity or quality predominance in the heritage of kilometers and a category between ‘Made In’ or ‘Made with’.

At this moment we discover 5 trend of the next future from this panorama: trash and opportunity, sustainable mobility, education, hand-crafting and refugees, sustainable business and storytelling. Adding the concept of ‘Embodied Kilometers’, finally our pre-brief borns. The aim is to developing a project able to join together all these aspects in a virtuous system.

OIIO MIGRANT DESIGN FACTORY

The answer to the brief is OIIO migrant design factory, a social startup concept.

We call it ‘migrant design factory’ because it wants be a crossroad between a design studio and a production center filtred by the ‘Embodied Kilometers’ concept.

It is a sustainable company. It hires refugees and it educates them (symbol of survival migration) and it use raw material and components from ELV (end-life-vehicles, symbol of daily, invisible and migration) to make high quality kilometers content products.

From quantity to quality passage appens thanks to a sustainable design process and production, able to valorize all the actors and giving new opportunities as to material as to people (figure 3).

Figure 2. Three types of bicycle and their ‘embodied kilometers’ analysis. Each of these products has a different impact on environmental, society and emotion of users.

SCENARY ANALYSIS

In force of this new concept, we pass to the analysis of projectual scenary. We choose to search case studies almost

Figure 3. Value chain.

INNOVATION SYSTEM

Four components cooperate in OIIO: work, material, process and sustainabily.

Work

OIIO imagines a strong cooperation among refugees, designers and artisans. In CO-Designing, designers will direct culture of refugees in new concepts.

In CO-Prototyping, designers and artisans will develop new products between tradition and innovation.

In CO-Production, all three cooperate to production with an education iter for the refugees.

Benefits are many. Refugees will have an economic income, a quality job, an opportunity to use new tecnologies, to learn and to easily integrate in a new society. Product designers will have new possibilities from the handcraft and industrial tecniques mix. Communication designers will have the same one from the richness of stories. Artisans will tecnologically update and they will create a new network.

Material

Car industry uses high quality materials and most of the categories of materials (plastic, glass, metal, rubber, etc.).

Only a seat contains nylon fabric, polyurethane foam, aluminium structure, iron springs and polypropylene covers for example. However richness is flattened during the recycling process. 25% of automotive shredder residue (ASR) is produced when body frame of the car is chopped to recycle metals. ASR is a mix of heterogeneous materials very difficult to differentiate into original classes. More than 70% is plastic of different type, the remaining percentage is wood, metal and paper.

OIIO aim is to remove before all non-metal parts to reduce the ASR and guarantee a purer recycling raw material. On the other side, OIIO will produce new products from what it collect. Analysing trash life-cycle in Italy, we find a broken ring where stop the line and start a new circle, buying to a very low price pieces from car wreckers.

Process

OIIO wants to collide the artisans classic process, like welding (for metals) and sewing (for fabrics), with the newest digital tools, like 3D printers, photography and videomaking. Further more there’s the will to experiment with ‘Precious Plastic’ machines to reform thermoplastic polymers that are many in car construction. The set consist of a schradder, an injection, compression and extrusion machines.

Sustainability

Five guide lines drive designing and production: - valorize: recovered materials must be protagonists; - deliver: design shape to recude volume and weight; - mainten, recycle, reuse: designing to;

- educate: from novice to expert, step by step; - health: avoid toxic material or process for people and environmental.

PRODUCTS

The production is based on three lines: - cool: products for vintage and upcycling lovers; - tech: products for technics and makers (figure 4); - open: designing and production services.

Figure 4. Two examples of products. A 3D filament made from dashboard and an easy chair made with a car seat. The right picture is a Rover Chair by Ron Arad.

CONCLUSION

The path from the word to the concept was so long, but it’s interesting how design can offer new visions of the world and connect so different areas and themes.

OIIO migrant design factory is not just these few word in this paper. We create the a basic coordinate identity, we analysis competitors, we think about the network and the future evolution of team and products.

Now OIIO is just a dream, but we believe in a more sustainable society.

For further information the full degree project (in Italian) is available free online at ISSUU.com (2).

REFERENCES

1. Claudio Germak. 2008. Man at the Centre of the Project: Design for a New Humanism. Umberto & Allemnandi & C., Torino, IT. 2. Riccardo Agosto. 2016. (s)oggetti della migrazione.

Online book. (2017). https://issuu.com/riccardoagosto/docs/_s_o getti_della_migrazione