As part of the program “Architecture, Engineering and Design at its best” to promote abroad the activities and courses of Politecnico di Milano, on last February 24th I was called to introduce the PSS Master Course in Belgrade.
The program of this initiative was including an evening lecture at the Ozone Gallery (http://www.o3.co.yu/srp) as well as a one-day-long workshop at the Faculty of Applied Arts.
Thanks to the precious support given by Ivan Mangov and Marko Stanojevic both these events turned into a great success.
The presence at the Ozone Gallery of many students from different faculties demonstrated the constant attention paid abroad to what happens in Milan as a Design Capital, as well as the consideration toward Politecnico di Milano as a unique reference for didactics.
The PSS approach to design - introduced as “the combination of product, communication, services and location through which a company or an institution presents itself in integrated form to its reference market” (L.Collina) – awoke a great interest as an innovation holistic approach demolishing the boundaries between disciplines, as needed by the speed and frenziness of the actual global market.
The day after the lecture a cluster of students divided into 5 groups took part to the one-day-long workshop at the Faculty of Applied Art, a sort of real time simulation of the PSS Final Design Studio I coordinate at the Politecnico, which topic was “Bridging Belgrade”. This highly experimental workshop – held for the first time ever in this form – had the goal to make the students test the steps and procedures of a proper PSS project which was to be developed around the concept “brandscaping”, as a PSS proposal to “bridge Belgrade” into the future (conceptually) as well to solve the critical aspect of crossing the Sava and Danube rivers which created in Belgrade a unique urban and naturalistic environment.
With incredible enthusiasm and in just a few hours any of the group succeeded into proposing innovative solutions, strictly connected with the local cultural background but also displaying those lifestyle features able to focus the attention of a global audience into what could be a new Belgrade.
Solutions included a sort of pioneering “see sighting weel bridge”, spinned by the river currents to become the Belgrade’s symbol and promotion tool (by BEONISM Group), or a proposal for using semi-destroyed buildings from the recent war as locations for cultural and social events – so transforming painful memories into a glorious present (by CHAOSPIRACY Group), or rethinking the traditional rafts into projecting systems to colour Belgrade (the white city) with interactive graffiti (by GET IT Group). Again a system of cable cars to connect the different parts of the city as well as the different souls – the past of the historical center, the present of new Belgrade and the future of the area across the Danube river – providing a mean of transportation and a new way of experiencing the city (by NO NAME Group),  or a multilayered PSS proposal inspired by the Monopoli game, here in a Belgradese version, which supplied a versatile communication tool both on a virtual level - the game as a promotion - than on a real one - real scale huts for tourist info, restaurants and cafes (by GREENHOUSE Group).  

Definitively: Belgrade is in the game!

So you’re driving in your car one day, minding your own business and making a goofy face while singing to a song on the radio. No doubt you’re thinking, “It’s a good thing no one can see me right now.” A week later an envelope arrives in the mail from your city’s traffic division, with a photo capturing that goofy singing expression plastered on your face as you obliviously glided through a red light. (from Wired).

Award-winner director Adam Rifkin’s new movie “Look” is like to became a future reference for the actual notion of public-private and of privacy. From the website’s synopsis page: “The Post 9/11 world has forever changed the notion of privacy. There are now approximately 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States generating more than 4 billion hours of footage every week. And the numbers are growing. The average American is now captured over 200 times a day, in department stores, gas stations, changing rooms, even public bathrooms. No one is spared from the relentless, unblinking eye of the cameras that are hidden in every nook and cranny of day-to-day life. Shot entirely from the point of view of the security cameras. Adam Rifkin’s Look follows several interweaving, storylines over the course of a random week in a random city. Look is a film about the things that people do when they don’t know they’re being watched. Based on the premise that everyone has secrets, Look takes us on a voyeuristic journey into the most personal parts of ordinary people’s lives. Everyone is guilty of selective deception. We all hide aspects our lives from those around us. It might be as benign as picking your nose in an empty elevator or perhaps something much darker. Look poses the question: Are we always alone when we think we are? A high school English teacher tries his best to be a decent husband, a department store floor manager uses the warehouse for more than just storage, a Mini-Mart clerk has big dreams, a lawyer struggles with a sexual dilemma and sociopathic brothers ruin the day of random strangers they come in contact with. Look tells five private stories which unfold before the prying eye of the covert camera to chilling effect.  To make the film as authentic as possible, only unknown actors were used, and Rifkin shot no closeups. Here he describes the effect on viewers: “You are a spectator into these people’s lives so what it basically forces you to feel like is an accomplice sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way. You’re forced to be observing things that you sort of feel like you shouldn’t be observing. You’re looking at things that people don’t know are being captured (on film) and, as a result, it’s titillating. But it’s also at times shameful because you’re seeing things that you know you shouldn’t be seeing. And that was kind of a neat thing that emerged that I didn’t really expect was going to happen”.

Making some search about the topic of my course at Poli I had the opportunity to go deeper in some of my “side interests” which is food. I was always attracted by matching the highest loyalty to traditional recipes as well as making experimentation in new fields: for this reason I always payed attention to “molecular gastronomy” how is intended in the solid approach by Hervé This – a French physical chemist of INRA – more than in the one of Ferran Adrià which is the hip of the moment. Hervé This activity is driven by the question how our knowledge of chemistry and science in general can be used as a tool to enhance culinary experiences, rather than the purely empirical knowledge which more often than not dictates the rules in the kitchen. His research led to some discoveries as the perfect temperature for cooking an egg (around 65°C, the white coagulates, but not the yolk) or the use of an electrical field to improve the smoking of salmon. He also succeeded in making one cubic meter of foam out of one single egg white just by adding the right amount of cold water (based on the classical chef ‘s “secret” which is using iced container and a bit of salt to make the foam steady). These inventions-discoveries are often further-on developed by This collaboration with chef Pierre Gagnaire as you can see in the his website area “Arts and Science” (see “Le travail du mois”) where every new creation is propose month by month. One of the last book by This is titled “La cuisine c’est de l’amour, de l’art, de la technique”: isn’t it the same recipe for good design?