“Network Design” a Multidisciplinary Project to Raise Awareness of the Indiscriminate Use of Plastics

Abstract

The University is a meeting place for the transmission of knowledge, but the fact of being able to transmit values that complement student’s training is beyond the exchange of information. Through the call for educational innovation projects, we have the possibility of carrying out actions aimed at solving specific problems by applying innovative methodologies. In 2019, at the High Technical School of Engineering and Industrial Design (ETSIDI) from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), a project was awarded in collaboration with the High Technical School of Architecture (ETSAM-UPM), the IADE School of Design, the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC), the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR), as well as the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). The project, called Network Design, is framed in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) environment, applying active approach methods to the problem of the indiscriminate use of plastics. We must promote in the students’ skills they will need later in their professional life. Considering that students of different degrees are used to working with problem learning methodology, we think that an approach should be given that goes beyond obtaining a tangible product. The proposal presented is based on the reuse of food container nets as an essential material to create an object, being a design product, a drawing, or a painting. The “Network” union with other universities encourages the work to be truly multidisciplinary and interuniversity, and that each participant collaborates to spread the project more widely by combining the different ways of tackling the same problem. It will seek to create harmony between the point of view of the materials’ specialist, the landscape painter, the set designer, the fashion designer, the industrial and product designer, and the interior designer. We look for different creation approaches with a common purpose that revalues each plastic. The motto is making beauty from the uselessness and one of the most important objective is encouraging awareness about the indiscriminate use of plastics through a design or an artistic approach.