Teaching strategies for product design using biomaterials

Abstract

These pages describe some teaching strategies designed by a team of teacher-researchers from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina, with the aim of incorporating biomaterials into the product design workshop of the Industrial Design career. These proposals are accompanied by application tools that are essential for the implementation of each activity. The purpose of teaching design with biomaterials is to make students aware of the materiality in their future projects, in addition to raising awareness about environmental consequences of misusing available resources on the planet. Some testing experiences carried out during 2019, 2020 and 2021 in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism let the team realize some significant conclusions. The challenge of using discarded materials at home lets students recognize their local identities through the analysis of the material resources.