The Aesthetics and Performance of Biosourced Materials: Conceiving of Other Uses, Going Beyond the Logic of Substitution.

Overview of thesis 

The transition towards a post-petrol society is one of the main challenges of the contemporary moment, in which a large range of actors are currently attempting to participate. Activists/ sabotage, industrialists/ economy and legislation, scientists/ research. Each of these positions creates and feeds into an imaginary, and a dream, whether it is social, economic, or techno-scientific.  

Time has proven that a discourse of ecology and frugality is insufficient in reducing the production of plastic products. This reticence to reduce growth is demonstrated in the solutions-oriented position of industry, as it waits for a scientific revolution which will give way to a new material paradigm. 

A historic, radical and rapid paradigm shift in industrial materials already took place when plastics became the new norm. First used in order to replace materials made from animal products like horns or ivory, plastics were heavily developed during the Second World War thanks to research and financing in the war industries. These materials, poor quality to begin with, but full of potential, evolved over the years to become the emblem of technical prowess as we know it today. In contrast to all other materials, its “plastic” quality was such that it allowed designers freedom with form, colour, and performance. In this way, plastic was a new horizon of infinite possibilities, corresponding to the desire of modernity for a bright and colourful post-war future. Plastic was a “superlative material” lauded by poets including Raymond Queneau in his Le Chant du Styrène (1968) later adapted to film by Alain Resnais. Today, the world of styrene is much less optimistic. Plastics have become a threat to all organisms. 

In 2024, we are at the dawn of a paradigm shift for materials, just like that which industry experienced with plastic all those years ago. Yet this time, it is in a world that is all the more complex and globalised, deeply anchored in a consumer society. Consumers, designers, engineers, researchers, and industrialists all have their own vision of this emerging technological dream. In order to question the role of design in this moment of transition, and to speculate on the evolution of industrial objects, Etienne Axelos has chosen to focus his research on materials, working hand in hand with materials researchers at the INRAE. 

As we are at the beginning of this transition, these materials need to be developed in terms of their performance, plasticity, and shaping processes. Through a number of research papers on materials, as designers, we can speculate on the materiality of these new “potential materials”. The immateriality and the potentiality of these materials of the future, completely modify the traditional process of conception proper to designers, who typically intervene at a much later stage in a technical project. Designers are able to play and experiment with sufficiently stable industrial materials through production processes. Consequently, how might designers experiment with the materiality of a material that hasn’t yet been created? 

“Potential materials” force design to rethink its position in the development of a technical project, to adapt to new approaches concerning material centred design methodology, and to create new interactions with the necessary actors in this early phase of development.

PhD Supervisors

AUGER James (CRD) et GESSASMA Sofianne (INRAE). 

Co-Supervisors 

BEAUGRAND Johnny (INRAE) et FOUILLET Aurélien (CRD)

Funding
Thèse financée par L’INRAE dans le cadre d’un contrat doctoral type CCD.

Date of enrolment: septembre 2021.