International Meeting on Design and Materials

Buenos Aires, May 2007 - The Metropolitan Design Center (CMD), Ministry of Production, Government of the City of Buenos Aires, calls for participation  in the CMD Conference 07/ International Meeting on Design and Materials, to be held on July 20th and 21st in La Rural.
 
In its third consecutive edition, the CMD Conference seeks to address the processes of creating new materials and at the same time generating the exploration process that companies and designers develop and that allow symbolic, economic and social value to be builded from raw material.
 
The conference will include sessions with a special focus on “Material Research”; “New material development”; “Raw material development processes”; “Quality perception in materials”; “Transference of materials to other sectors” “Industrial and handmade production technologies” “Material exploration by designers” “Material semantics”, and “Material bionics”.
 
The CMD Conference is a platform for knowledge promotion and transfer where theoretical and project contents are combined. This lectures are framed in an annual event in which more than twenty panelists participate for an audience of over three hundred people.  It was created by the Metropolitan Design Center with the objective of promoting both metropolitan and regional strategic thought, and it is organized annually by the Design Network (Friends of CMD Association) with the support of associated businesses.
 
The 07 CMD Conference will feature the presence of renowned international designers, who together with the local panelists, will present cases that show research on new material, the use of existing material for different applications, the use of ecological, recycled or recyclable material, and other possibilities that arise in the development of new products, spaces or concepts.
 

Confirmed panelists include

George Beylerian, president of Material ConneXion Inc., a company devoted to research and compilation of materials for professionals in the fields of design, architecture and industry.  Its main feature is the Material library which houses over 3,500 new and innovative materials. Material ConneXion is based on New York, Cologne, Bangkok and Milan.  Its clients list include: Nike, Herman Miller, Adidas, Disney, Masco, Target, and Puma.
 
Carmelo Di Bartolo, strategic design consultant and director of Design Innovation, a laboratory of research studies specialized in innovation of bionic design. Carmelo di Bartolo stands out as a researcher in this field, which studies the forms and mechanisms of nature and its possible application in the field of design. He also founded the Centro di Recherche de Milán and directed the Instituto Europeo di Design in Milan and Madrid. His professional career includes research projects and product design for FIAT, De Pont de Nemours, Pirelli Artigo, Sony, Hunday Motors, 3M, Motorola Advanced Concept, Lego Futura and Gilette Co.

Jum Nakao, fashion designer and creative director of the Instituto Brasil de Arte y Moda  (Brasil Institute of Art and Fashion).  In his productions, Jum Nakao is able to reconcile the resources of digital technology with the sophistication of his unique handmade pieces. He directed important commercial projects for Bando do Brasil, Dupont (International Project Hotel Lycra) and the premium line JUM NAKAO for Nike, among others.

Estudio Cabeza, is devoted to the design and production of urban, institutional, and domestic furniture and equipment.  Most of their products demonstrate a great exploration of materials, especially regarding urban furniture, where materials interact and blend into the environment.
 

National cases

Patricio Machado (Arg - Neuquén)
He is and industrial designer who has settled in San Martin de los Andes, Neuquen, to set up a productive entrepreneurship from a design of his own.  That is how El Catango was born, a company that builds furniture that can be assembled and disassembled, entirely made in lenga wood (native species from Patagonia)
 
Pedro Reissig (Arg)
He is the founder and director of Vacavaliente, a project that consists in the creation of products from the unexplored possibilities of leather as a design material, without restricting to the traditional uses and fields. His interest in leather as a structural material and the identification of reconstituted leather as an unfamiliar material for design, are some of the reasons why Vacavaliente stands out in the market.
 
Designo – Objetos del sur (Arg – Río Negro)
This firm, based on Bariloche, aims at the creation of objects that recover the stories, materials and handmade labor from Patagonia. Its creative processes are mostly directed by the revalorization of regional material resources and the environmental awareness; they use the raw material that is available in the region: native wood species as lenga (Nothofagus pumilio), Coihue (Nothofagus dombeyi), Radal (Lomatio hirsuta) and Cypress (Austrocedrus chilensis); Caña Colihue (Chusquea culeou), the stone from quarries and costs of lakes and rivers and leather from goats and sheeps, tanned in the Patagonian steppe.
  
Planas Viau (Arg)
Planas Viau, directed by brothers Gustavo and Roberto Viau and banquer Carlos Planas, is a factory that combines ancient traditions of hand made glass object production with current technology. The company develops products in glass fusing and glass blowing techniques with its own crucibles and kilns. Planas Viau also works in collaboration with architects, designers and artists for special projects
  
Yerra (Arg)
Yerra is the word that designates the practice of burning a mark on livestock using a hot iron, and also the name Santiago Shapira chose for his exporting company of cowhide rugs. In collaboration with Argentinean industrial designers, he develops both the technology and a line of rugs and upholstery leather in different colors and patterns, of great success in USA and England’s market. The geometrical patterns and textures generated by the laser treatment grants Yerra rugs a distinguished and exclusive identity.
 
Juana de Arco (Arg)
Juana de Arco exists since 1998, and was one of the first clothing brands to settle in Palermo, when the zone was just starting as a commercial circuit. In 2004,  Proyecto nido was born with the objective of promoting the work of textile craftmen. In this project, several families of Florencio Varela´s Neighbourhood, who were left out of work in the 2001 crisis, develop rugs, cushions and other products out of textile waste from Juana de Arcos collections, through a brazilian technique called “cloth-tying” .
 
Federico Churba y Patricio Lix Klett (Arg)
La Feliz designs furniture, lightning and objects in the traditional technique of wicker made of a material that in not very conventional in the design field, yet very common for agricultural purposes: plastic wire.
 

Audience

The event is directed to all the players that intervene in the productive system, and constitute an interdisciplinary audience that surpasses three hundred people every year: pymes + important companies + micro-entrepreneurs + educational and research concerns + governmental organizations + independent professionals.
 
The CMD Conference 07 is organized by the Design Network (Friends of the CMD Association) and its contents are supervised by the CMD (Metropolitan Design Center).
 

ABOUT “PRIMA MATERIA”

This year the CMD Conference will be complemented with the exhibition “Prima Materia”, the first exhibition to present innovation in raw materials and new products.
 
The companies and design studios will present installations to exhibit their products, proposing new functions and technologies to be applied on the different materials and the products, revealing the potential of each raw material.
 
Addressed to an audience who cares for innovation, design, culture and new technologies -designers, architects, artists, businessmen, journalist and general public-, “Prima Materia” will bring together all the members of the value chain (manufacturers, distributors, suppliers and designers) in a cultural and reflective space.

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Early registration discount until June 15, 2007:
t: 054 11. 5235-8050
@: conferencia@red-d.org.ar
www.red-d.org.ar