DESIGN ROLE WITHIN DIGITAL AND ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION AGE

Gorky’s statement can be tailored to the construction field: a project allows the customer to see with the image what he cannot yet perceive in the space, by providing him with something which is wholly abstract and inexistent. The creativity is then the cornerstone of designer’s work.
But can the designer save creativity and artistry even where the environmental problems and digital tools force a greater scientificity and strictness?
This SMC journal’s issue aims to define the design role in the ecology and digital era, by orienting the choices from time to time more addressed to the transition towards the two epochal characters. The word “transition”, a very up-to-date term, born with the meaning of a “… period which draw the passage from one civilization to another, during which new social and custom shapes, new cultural, literary and artistic conceptions and production mature”2, has in the twenty-first century started to assume a different sense, more oriented towards an actual revolution of living and working. Two components can be considered as the main drivers of this big change: the environmental derangement and the digital broad dissemination. Following these factors other alterations have been observed, which, besides being in some cases their direct effect, are also become, in turn, a great component of modification for many countries’ social shapes.
The globalization for example, a wide parameter of influence for society, has been proved to be an effective facilitator component for the digitalization, while sometimes has contributed to hinder rather than favour the environmental consciousness among various communities.