The Italian Design Day is an initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation that involves Italian Embassies, Consulates and Cultural Institutes all around the world every year.
On the occasion of the Italian Design Day 2020, the Italian Embassy to Singapore organized on November 30th the online event “Innovative and sustainable tools in Design for cultural heritage” on the theme of new design technologies, such as digitization, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, virtual assistants applied to cultural heritage. On this occasion, Prof. Mauro Ceconello of Politecnico di Milano was invited as Ambassador of Italian Design.
After the introduction of the scientific attaché of the Embassy Nicola Bianchi, Prof. Ceconello illustrated how technology, in continuous evolution, can create innovative experiences and can provide contents to a constantly growing public, identifying strategies and means to communicate cultural messages and generating engaging edutainment experiences. In particular, new technologies have been applied for a better appreciation of the works of Giovanni Sacchi and Achille Castiglioni. Examples of virtual reality and assistants were shown as in the case of an exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci.
This was followed by a speech by Prof. Laura Miotto of Nanyang Technical University (NTU) who showed how design and culture are intertwined in many ways and how museums have become a special place of experimentation for this, in many cases going beyond the simple visual perception. In particular, she illustrated 3 different exhibitions she designed and curated in Singapore over the last 15 years with extensive use of digital technologies for greater visitor involvement.
Finally, Prof. Immanuel Koh of Singapore University for Design and Technology (SUTD) explained how Generative Design has emerged as a design paradigm by incorporating artificial intelligence to produce solutions that are not only sustainable in manufacturing, but also in the process. Prof. Koh also showed 3 of his projects, which demonstrated how machine learning can play a transformative role in the fields of predictive urbanism, generative architecture and augmentation of the museum experience.
The event was attended by a qualified audience including academics, researchers, heads of museum, exhibition and artistic structures who contributed to a very lively question and answer session in the final half hour of the event, also laying the foundations for possible future collaborations.
The event was organized together with Politecnico di Milano, NTU and SUTD.
Webinar video
