VISTA ALEGRE: TO TRANSPOSE FORM TO EXTEND USE

TO TRANSPOSE FORM, TO EXTEND USE
This is a research project in the field of product design, concerning material culture, production and consumption, and the sustainability of Vista Alegre porcelain industry. It is an experimental work focused on an industrial reality with a strong manufacturing tradition at risk of extinction. The work with Vista Alegre is suggested here as a case study for the importance of its legacy and the surviving high-quality manufacturing production, along with a major industrial sophistication, where at same time an historical tradition is still very alive.

The questions raised concern the longevity of objects in use - and not on the shelf, the renewal of its meaning through time, and its translation into new markets and today’s cultural diversity. We focus this research mainly on two empirical and theoretical issues, meeting the functional and cultural aspects of objects. First, questioning the understanding of functionalism in a modernist perspective, perspectives in opposition to the contemporary view of versatility of cultures and its translation to contemporary practices. Then to study key concepts for the permanent renewal of meaning concerning different cultural contexts and values through time. This research aims to develop in-depth knowledge about the formal legacy of Vista Alegre; as well as the vernacular tradition of porcelain, historically strongly connected to Portugal; to rethink the traditional production of Vista Alegre through its formal ‘translation’ into contemporary cosmopolitan culture; to work from the conceptual duality ‘form-use’, proposing the revision of design methodology based on the duality ‘form-function’, in order to extend the use and lifetime of objects.
This project aims to develop pertinent and applicable projects, providing a new approach to tableware and homeware manufacture and industrial production; to design objects of cultural value for everyday use within the panorama of contemporary material life.


REFLECTIONS ON USE
Although the concept of functionalism is at the origin of design practice and on the emblematic relation form / function, or into motto 'design is about solving problems' arising mainly with the mechanization of production and the industry for mass production, if we go further in time we may find more interesting questions to rethink, and values ​​or design conceptions that are closer to the contribution we want to give to the world in which we live in today, than those who have remained in the design principles over time. Because our relationship with nature, truth, utility, beautiful or the sublime, in the construction of artefacts, are still possible parameters of reflection about the material culture we produce today, and that can lead us in a more concerted way in the search for new, more harmonious and coherent design solutions.


REFLECTIONS ON FORM, CONTEMPORARY MATERIAL CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY
This research suggests that the focus on cultural studies has shifted from the private sphere and 'groups of taste' to a more dynamic and diverse world marked by more mobility but also by the conflict management and social inequalities. And it has shifted from identity issues to issues proposed by a postcolonial cultural era and the search for new utopias or alternative systems that sketch images for a more tangible and collective future.