Consorzio Vera Pelle / Andrea Ghizzani
I am a tanner in Tuscany, from a small town in Pisa between Florence and the sea. My father was a tanner before me and my family has always followed the antique
method of tanning leathers traditional to that area, vegetable tanning. For me it is a choice that reflects deep values, about place and tradition, and respect for nature and work with our hands. In 1994, a group of friends, all who work in their family tanneries, decided to create a consortium called the consorzio vera pelle italiana conciata al vegetale, to join our energies to communicate the story of our leathers to the world. Today we are 26 tanneries, and have a strong profile that defines and guarantees the qualities that make our leathers unique. I am happy to take part in the natural by design workshop, to explain why our leathers are a happy choice for natural and sustainable design projects, and to learn from young designers what are the demands for the future of design, because even an antique tradition is constantly reinventing itself to respond to new market needs and opportunities.
I brought with me a group of leathers that represent the purest of the vegetable tanned leathers. They are sourced exclusively from the byproducts of the alimentary markets, no animal has been killed for its hide. The materials that are used in the tanning process are strictly of natural origins, vegetable tannins that are byproducts of the woodworking industry from sustainably farmed forests. The most important of these tannins are the chestnut from Europe and the quebracho from South America. These tannins are the natural antioxidants found in also wines and teas and give the leather its characteristic warm pinkish color. This process is a long slow cycle, it takes from 40 to 60 days to tan a hide. The leathers are highly reactive to light, heat, and wear, they will change over time and every object made with them is imprinted with the history of its use.
Another really critical ingredient to our leathers is the water in Tuscany. It has qualities that give out leathers a unique hand, and cannot be copied anywhere else, even in Italy. We take care of our water, over 15% of the cost of our products covers the depurification our the industrial waters. We are proud of our system which is a recognized global leader in this field, during the most recent G8 conferences this year, the president of the Chinese delegation came to visit Santa Croce sul Arno to visit our tanneries and our depurifiers.
The water is really also a very personal concern for me because I am a long distance swimmer in the open sea. I train for races in the sea off the coast of Tuscany where the waters of the Arno empty into the Mediterranean .
Centro de Materiales del FAD.
Andrea Ghizzani: President.Consorzio
Válerie Bergeron / Mater. FAD Materials Center
ECO SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVES: Latest research from MATER FAD, selected by Camper Barcelona Design Center.
WILLIE BOOT
Recycled plastic
Company: Shile Plastic – UK
WILD RUBBER
Fabric with natural rubber
Company: Wild Rubber – Brazil
ACOUSTICORK
Cork and Rubber
Company: AMORIM – Portugal
NEDDLE FELT
Felt
Company: VFG – Germany
CUOIO RIGENERATO
Recycled leather
Company: Prodotti Alfa – Italy
Celery Design
We are here to design an object, an experience,
a business model, a pattern of behavior, a collective impact.
Design is at the core of our consumer culture. Intentionally or
not, there are designers behind every major global problem
we face. On the other hand, design gives scale to new ideas
and solutions. So we are exactly the right people to tackle
today’s ecological and financial crisis.
Where do we go from here?
It’s time to evolve our design thinking. The old obsession
with image and form is not going away, but we need to add
a whole range of other considerations. Of course, we must
consider the impact our design has on the eye, but also the
impact it has on the community of people, the humanity of
workers, and the health of natural systems. Green design is
an evolutionary process. We need super-charged innovation
and big evolutionary leaps at this point in human history.
This transition unleashes incredible creative and business
opportunity as we invent the future.
Where do we start?
Ecology is a fairly new lens for designers to look through,
so there are lots of untrodden paths to innovation. We can
start by moving resources from the waste category into the
innovation category. Plot the ecological footprint of any
person, company, or nation. Choose any part of the system
and start imagining better solutions.
We are searching for a type of design that is more good, not
just less bad. We must embrace the creative spirit and apply
it to a society that must learn to live within this. Nature’s
limits are like the edges of a sketchbook. There is infinite
room for creativity without violating those limits.
Green design is definitely not a one-size-fits-all prescription
for how everyone should live. It’s a celebration of ingenuity
and vision—of doing amazing things with limited means.
If you think of yourself as an agent of change, then you just
might be able to change the actions of your audience, and
our society at large.
Celery Design Collaborative.
Rod Deweese and Brian Dougherty: International branding consultants for innovative communication and development, specializing in ecosustainable projects.
Sustainable Creativity Workshop / Michelle A. Binczak
Inspiration itself is by its nature green: natural, ever-renewable, authentic. It originates in what might be called “wild mind” – a state where the imagination is free to play and explore. To invite this state, we apply techniques designed to stimulate somatic perception, activate intuition, awaken all the senses, and interrupt the abiding domination of the intellect. We approach the immediate natural environment as teacher and muse. Working with nature-inspired creative pathways, we unearth understanding and ideas that will find their way into a new and infinitely renewable green-energy design language for footwear.
Our feet are our connection to the planet. We begin with the foot itself, walking barefoot and in various fashions: walking on the toes, on the heels, the inner edges of the foot,
the outer edges, walking with toes in, toes out, shuffling, stamping. Using parts of the foot not normally employed for walking, the exercise offers immediate physical awareness of the importance of the foot to the stance, to movement, and to how one feels. At the same time, relearning the grammar of the feet, the foot is awakened; the entire sole feels alert. Rhythmic footstamping echoes traditional rituals found in many parts of the world, in which the energy of the earth is brought up into the body – in the most physical way possible, we activate our direct link to the planet. Our senses extend our connection to the planet. Many of us are accustomed to using mainly our eyes to experience the world, and even our vision is circumscribed by habit: we don’t see all there is to see. In this exercise, we walk quietly into the landscape, awakening and exercising our senses one by one. We listen, we smell, we taste, we touch. We explore and discover the richness of the world, allowing intuition to guide us, noticing colour, pattern, texture, line, hearing the
crisp crackle of a leaf against a background of softly interwoven insect sounds, pursuing new sensory encounters that capture our interest. Our flowing, encompassing multi-sensory awareness opens to all that surrounds us, enabling us to become one with the landscape, to be nature. Align with nature for infinite inspiration. As we walk, we gather objects that appeal to us. Choosing one of these objects for its pattern of energy or growth, we learn the pattern by studying it closely, somatically internalizing its tempo and flow. Then, using both hands, we draw with charcoal on paper, with our eyes closed, expressing the energy in gestural line. The encounter is between the designer and the inner dynamics of natural form. Finally, eyes open, we improvise with the mark, extending it, developing it, exploring it to see where it will lead. The final phase of this exercise consists of taking the mark we have developed, and allowing it to evolve into a shoe, as if the earth itself, and this particular natural force in particular, had given birth to a shoe.
Sourced directly from nature via the conduit of the designer’s imagination, the object emerges as the result of the encounter with the landscape, and appears as inevitable as any tree, fruit, wildflower, or stone. Inspiration-gathering is the first step in the design process. Later come the incubation phase, the refinement stage, testing for functionality, submission to questions of commercial feasibility and technical viability. We must balance the imaginative, the conceptual and the technical to create an object that fulfills
all that is asked of it and more. The shoe born from a sustainable creative process will be both a perfect response to the foot and aligned with the planet across
which we walk.
Michelle A. Binczak
green art expert / editor; International trend consultant, expert in creative processes for design.
The earth and feet and the space between / Erika Nerozzi
I am a scientist, I am very curious by nature. My main work is research in
the field of posturology. I conduct my work in Bologna in Italy and have also
worked extensively in Canada on research programs. I started out teaching
swimming and judo, and I watched people and how they moved and used
their feet and held their bodies, and asked myself, “ why?“.
There are so many aspects that influence how we organize our bodies
to stand without falling down, and move through space. This system which
defines what makes the human different from other primates, to be able to stand
up right as a biped and the ability to use language and tools, is called the BODY
SCHEME. This is not a fixed organization, but dynamic, and responds to many
things from the physical, structural to emotional and cultural inputs.
Our perceptions, the input we get from our senses, is what allows us
to move. In fact, without perception there can be no action. The foot is
an amazing organ that sends messages to the brain and has a really wide
range of movement possible as a response to this input. So really looking
at the foot at the beginning of the process of designing shoes seems like a
natural way to go about it. We made foot moulds for each of the designers
of their own feet, and it became obvious at once how different each foot is.
Then we worked on how the foot moves, the active phases of gait, and the
different structures within the foot that gives it its form and balance.
The question came up, what is the ideal shoe, from the point of view
of the foot? I think there isn’t one fixed solution. The foot is happy changing
position, and moving on different types of surfaces, as long as it isn’t
squashed into a space to small for its bones to move. Sometimes you need a
structure that grabs the surface you are walking on that can give you traction
and support, other times you want a smooth surface with a smaller contact
that allows you to spin easily. One of my favorite activities is Latin American
salsa dancing and I need beautiful shoes that are smooth on the soles to let
me really move to the music.
I think we need to look at different solutions for footwear also based on
the age of the wearer. I look a lot at the problems that the older population
has…50% of women over 50 have a kind of painful collapse in their
metatarsal arch which changes their ease in movement, if their footwear
doesn’t help to compensate this change. One problem I have seen is that
many people become much less active socially because of this; it creates a
perception that they are old and can no longer be as engaged in life,
they don’t go out, they give up favorite activities. And much of this could
be helped by their footwear, they need beautiful shoes too!
Erika Nerozzi
Expert in anatomy, posture, gait and feet.
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