The Materials Library as an Interactive Device of Tangible Memory : how to Convey Design Potential in the Metamorphosis of Resources

Today there is a multitude of devices and tools to share technologically mediated memory practices that can be understood as agents collaborating in the “production of the world”. In the field of design of materials, materials libraries started out as cataloguing systems and then became the physical and digital place aimed at conveying material cultures intended as transitions of the intangible and semantic values of a society onto the tangible reality. By configuring repositories of tangible memory, as physical documentary heritage of a territorial and material culture, the role of design emerges in preserving, organising and transmitting the knowledge of the reality that surrounds us. This means transforming the current cultural spaces of the materials libraries to determine design trajectories aimed at making evident the unexpressed opportunities of the materials. The contribution is aimed at investigating the potential of a renewed service as a place of tangible memory, a generative device for conveying identity and valorisation of know-how, the genius loci, and the sense of materials as a potential and source of further design insights, by placing cultural heritage at the centre of the design approach. On the basis of the cataloguing of material samples as “materialised data”, a renewed interactive materials library service can convey the meaning of tangible memory to outline criteria for their knowledge, valorisation and use.