2022 Edition

Making Materials is a research group of Politecnico di Milano dealing with materials and design. Why did we open the Making Materials social profile? Because it would be stupid not to. Our account was born nearly a year ago in an atmosphere of distance and blended learning. We taught a course on nanotechnology and functional materials and wanted to share the same experience of proximity both with students in attendance and the ones at home. At the same time, we could not use physical samples of materials, so it would have been hard to introduce the students to some of the features. So we started to share extra content from our course to spread knowledge and reach more people as possible. After that experience, we thought that the Instagram profile would be an opportunity to share not only the students’ activities but also for disseminating our research projects, interests and vision. We started to publish some posts to describe our research, share pages, inspiring posts about sustainability, along with our content. Every day the team deals with materials sustainability, working on packaging projects, teaching students, looking for new sustainable materials.  On Making Materials, we share some of our new materials, our selection from the FuoriSalone 2021, our events and news about sustainability. Moreover, we try to find the perfect material to celebrate a particular festivity. For the future, we want to expand content by publishing more of our research, trying to arrange interviews with some of the designers or companies we share material interests with, and becoming a reference for our students but also for designers and curious people on the topic. The pandemic has accelerated the process of dematerialization, and modern life requires speed. The way of learning has changed from a traditional one, more physical and in-depth to learning by doing modality, more experiential and dynamic. Now we are facing another change: in the era of digital learning, we can reach people with pills and small insight every time they use their smartphones during their free time.