How to Choose? First Lesson on Material Innovation
- Efrat Barak
- Dec 30, 2021
- 4 min read
About a comment made years ago, seemingly casually, that contains a whole lesson about materials and people.
Many people ask me, "What is material innovation?" It's a fascinating and important field in today's world, but in Israel, it still has a limited presence. So, to explain, I decided to go back to what led me to my industrial design degree and a lecturer's sentence that I still remember and summarizes one of the central ideas at the core of the field of material innovation:
I always knew I wanted to pursue a field that combined creativity and practicality, something between art and engineering, and between biology and planning, and connecting it all together. Sometime in my teens, I visited an exhibition of the Dutch design group Droog, through which I was first exposed to the concept of "industrial design," and suddenly everything clicked; I realized that was "it." Since then, over the years, I followed what was happening in the field and did various experiments in design and materials, waiting for the moment I would reach my studies and be able to delve deeper. When I registered for my studies, I thought the degree would include chemistry and physics classes and was surprised to find that they were not (later I understood why, but that's for another post). Therefore, when I reached the "Materials and Processes" course in my second year, I was very happy about the connection to the content world I was looking for. Finally, I got a taste of the specialization I developed after my studies - Material Innovation.
The course dealt with the investigation of materials from a design perspective (for those unfamiliar with design studies, it's worth noting that unlike many other professions, design degrees are mainly practical-physical). There were exercises in the course with different materials, such as paper, wood, or metal, in which we were asked to try and break the known boundaries of materials using simple and available technologies. Working with familiar materials within clear boundaries was a significant learning experience from a design, innovative, and material point of view.
One of the things that stuck strongly in my memory from the course was precisely a small comment by the lecturer, Yossi Ben Aroush, at the beginning of a tour of workshops in South Tel Aviv. Just before the group entered the first workshop, Yossi stopped us and said that every craftsman works with 'their' material and they will do a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g with that material. "Look inside – and you'll understand." He was right.
At the carpenter's, except for the machines that were made of metal, all the objects in the space were made of wood. Even the legs of a broken fan were rebuilt from wood. At the metalworker's, all the equipment, including the team table for coffee breaks, was made of metal, and there was almost no presence of other materials. At the upholsterer's, fabrics and sponges covered the entire workshop, materials that were not seen at all with the other two. And so it was with everyone.
I understood the meaning of this comment even more deeply in the decade that followed, while dealing directly with professionals from the fields of materials and industry. I found that, in general, people tend to work with the material or group of materials they know best, and there is logic in that. Experienced experts and professionals are very familiar with the materials in their field and know how to extract optimal results from them easily and relatively quickly. Therefore, in most cases, the material they know will be their leading material choice.
This tendency has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, expertise, availability, and creativity are obtained, such as the fan legs mentioned earlier: the wood repair provides a functional and economical solution for the carpenter and, at the same time, the inclusion of wood in the device, even unintentionally, gives the fan qualities of almost-furniture. On the other hand, choosing familiar materials, in which expertise already exists, can be a stabilizing factor when done 'automatically' without examining other options. Thus, sometimes, out of familiarity and convenience, we may miss opportunities to improve and refine a project and not achieve full alignment with needs. In addition, relying on known knowledge limits exposure to the secrets of other professions, and in fact, narrows the range of possible solutions in advance.
How can expertise be combined with creativity and innovation without compromising? Similar to the field of design, the processes in the field of material innovation have two leading principles. The first relates to the nature of the process, which begins with in-depth research on the project alongside an open search for the widest range of solutions (even those that seem silly or illogical). This stage allows for thinking outside the box and exposing unexpected opportunities and possibilities. Don't worry, narrowing down the possibilities according to the project's practical capabilities will come later. The second principle is to be open to internal and external criticism throughout all stages of work. This principle is no less important than the first, as it allows maintaining balance and accuracy of goals and getting feedback on the validity and necessity of the decisions made at each stage of the process. When a correct material innovation process is carried out, existing obstacles can be overcome, new functional capabilities can be identified, products can be adapted to changing market demands, and new markets and opportunities can be opened.