Marbled is the new green. Polymeric polychromy as a contemporary code of sustainability.

Abstract

The paper analyses the relationship between polychromy and the perception of sustainability in reference to historical practices, contemporary phenomena and new technological possibilities in the fields of product and furniture design and interior finishings. Specifically, plastic materials are examined as they are considered crucial in modifying, starting from the twentieth century, the cultural evolutions related to artefacts; as critical materials from an ecological point of view both for transformative processes and for the management of post-consumption ones; and as emblematic to represent a change, evident today, of conceiving centralized (and, at the same time, globalized) industrial production and its political-symbolic role in relation to ideals of diffusion of unified standards of quality and wellbeing. These models today are clearly in crisis. In an initial phase of fascination, in fact, these materials «proved to be able to reproduce, despite being poor materials, objects that were always been built with rich materials, hence their price accessible to all, the economy of entire product sectors, designed, produced and sold according to the demands of mass society. […] The aesthetical approval was, then (ed.), accompanied by the interpretation of plastic as a symbol of modernity, development and progress» (De Fusco, 2007). Today, the reputation of synthetic materials has profoundly changed : people are on average more aware of the negative impacts of plastic waste on the environment and it has been shown that consumers consider the contamination of water, air and food due to plastic pollution as harmful to human health (Kiessling et al., 2017, Joseph et al., 2016). In relation to this, initiatives have been launched all over the world, at local or global scale, for social activation and awareness, some of which have even led to a feeling of rejection of plastic (plastic backlash), and scientific studies and legislative interventions aimed at reducing or prohibiting uses of plastics considered environmentally dangerous have multiplied. Also in relation to the possibilities of collection, differentiation and re-processing, practices still tied to capitalistic and centralized logics are being strongly re-discussed, in favor, instead, as also happens in the sectors of agri-food and energy production, of more inclusive, distributed and interdisciplinary systems capable, perhaps, of generating social innovation, reorganization of territories and sharing of material and immaterial resources. This research proposes a reasoned mapping of such practices with the aim of representing a phenomenon that is now consolidated, widespread and historicizable.