LÉCUME DES JOURS

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.