Taboo Materials for a New Reality

In a world where the certainties about the more immediate future are vanishing at breakneck speed, design has to be capable of thinking boldly and radically. One of the areas where this radicality is most evident is in new materials. Sometimes, however, it is not the material itself that is new but the uses that can be made of it. Can we, for example, imagine a future world where organic-type waste such as hair, fingernails or blood can be used for making more sustainable and efficient objects? These are merely three examples of what Robert Thompson, scientific director of MATERFAD, calls “taboo materials”.

At this workshop we will learn to look in a radically new way at a whole series of prohibited materials and discover that they can be used for hitherto unthinkable purposes. Will we dare to ditch our moral and aesthetic prejudices and confront the challenges of a material reality that is both new and disconcerting? In the field of design, as in surrealist art, what may appear to be pure provocation may prove to be a genius idea.

This activity forms part of «When Design Exceeds Reality», a programme of activities curated by the FAD and staged in parallel to the exhibition «Objects of Desire. Surrealism and Design (1924-2020)», a show produced and organized by the “la Caixa” banking foundation and the Vitra Design Museum.