Training Designers in Archeological Chemistry As Part of a Project-Based Studio

Abstract

There is a gap between the importance of certain archeological material sources and their perception, both by professionals and by the general public. Textiles, for example, are essential to understanding practices that marked daily life and rituals in the past, but they have often been extremely degraded over time, particularly in temperate climates. As a result, museums often choose not to display this material to the public. Research teams themselves find it difficult to work with such altered and fragmentary materials. Design could provide new means of visualization and presentation and contribute to the intelligibility of these finds. However, the development of suitable media by designers requires a good understanding of the underlying physicochemistry. Here we describe an interdisciplinary teaching initiative based on a doctoral project, the Archaeological Textile project studio, which we ran with design students. The studio was supervised by an educator team consisting of two chemists and two professional designers, with the participation of external scientists from research and cultural institutions. Seventeen projects were developed by 23 students from the first to the fourth academic year (L1 to M1). We discuss this initiative from the point of view of chemical education, as an original example of training higher education students who are not chemists using a project-based approach.