Michele Armellini

Michele is an eclectic designer born in Tuscany. In 2013 he obtained a BSc in Industrial Design at the University of Florence. During the same year he enrolled in the MSc in Product Design for Innovation at Politecnico di Milano, where he graduated in April 2016.

Refurnished. A collaborative platform for objects repairing.

Relationships between people, the market and design are also radically changing thanks to innovation in the field of communications. Through the internet, it has become possible to self-manage transactions of goods and services without intermediaries, creating a new economic model based on sharing. Within the “shared economy” the value of property, which characterized the XIX and XX centuries, lost its meaning, leaving room for an Adhocratic system in which everyone has the opportunity to avail themselves of a good or a service only when they need. These features are also reflected in the design sphere: intellectual property gives way to intellectual attribution. Sharing projects facilitates the process of collective innovation, enabling anyone to contribute, through the digitization of design and production processes. During the development of this research, the theme of open source design, called open design, is the subject of the transition from the diffusion of bits to the diffusion of atoms through the use of widespread production. Digital manufacturing technologies allow you to process your digital files by making it possible to reproduce any artifact anywhere. Applying these considerations to the theme of object repair, a service has been developed, a collaborative platform that uses design as a tool to generate value, and whose ultimate goal is to make undesirable objects desirable again.