ETH Meets You at the Milano Design Week 2022
7-12 June 2022 - How to design a new Material Age: today’s materials transform entire industries and the way we live our lives. ETH Zurich exhibits exciting new materials at the Milano Design Week. Discover their fascinating properties: metals that float on water, self-healing silicone, flexible wood and many more.
Imagine a material so light that a tablespoon of it weighs less than an ant and yet has the surface area of two tennis courts. This aerogel enables artificial photosynthesis: like a modern tree, it converts CO2 and water into energy by using sunlight. Scratch-proof screens, lightweight bicycles or breathable contact lenses – most modern everyday products rely on materials with unique properties. At the "Material Shapes the Ages" exhibit, you can see, touch and interact with the smart materials developed at the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich and meet the material designers.
How Material Shapes the Ages
Materials have had a profound impact on humanity. We have named historical periods the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age because the development of new materials has always led to technological progress and deep societal transformations. Today, new materials continue to have a considerable impact on our quality of life. Without them, there would be no smartphones, no energy-efficient houses, no lithium-ion batteries, no dental implants and no artificial skin.
Designing a new Material Age
The 21st century presents major technological challenges that we will be able to overcome only by developing sustainable materials. For example, plastics are used to such excess that they have now become a global environmental problem. This presents a challenge for materials science and has led to a worldwide change in thinking, making sustainability a key aspect of research.
Scientists on Site at the Exhibition
Julia Carpenter is just finishing her PhD in the Complex Materials Group of the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. She is working on the manufacturing of ultra-light-weight metal foams. Her research has inspired her to start her own company. Julia Carpenter completed both her BSc and MSc at ETH with some time spent at the Imperial Collage in London and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2019, she represented ETH Zurich’s RETHINKING DESIGN exhibition during the world economic forum annual Meeting (WEF) in Davos.
Nicole Kleger is just finishing her PhD in the Complex Materials Group at the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. In her research, she set a strong focus on biomedical materials, and is focusing on the preparation and properties of lattice structures generated by 3D printing. Such structures have high potential for medical implants, such as bone defect replacements. Driven by the lack of printable, high-performance materials, she developed a process which combines traditional molding with 3D printing of sacrificial salt templates. The highly promising results and feedback from the medical industry motivated her to commercialise her technique in the framework of a start-up.
Alessandro Dutto is carrying out his PhD in the Complex Materials Group at the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. He works on 3D printing of living inorganic materials and is co-founder of the ETH spin-off external page FenX, whose mission is to transform low-value materials into sustainable insulation materials for the building industry. Alessandro completed both his BSc and MSc at ETH Zürich with exchange periods at Seoul National University in South Korea and at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.
Stefano Menasce is carrying out his PhD in the Complex Materials Group at the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. He works on the synthesis and 3D printing of self-healing soft polymers based on dynamic covalent chemistry. These soft materials have the capacity to self-repair at room temperature in only few minutes, and open to the possibility of developing artificial skin for prosthetics or soft robots that are able to self-repair when damaged. Stefano Menasce completed both his BSc and MSc at Politecnico di Milano, with exchange periods at Universidade de Coimbra in Portugal and at ETH Zürich in Switzerland.
Venue: House of Switzerland at the Casa degli Artisti Milano
Venue
external page Casa degli Artisti
external page Via Tommaso da Cazzaniga e Corso Garibaldi, 89/A 20121 Milano, Italy
Exhibition Hours
June 7-12, 10.00-20.00
House of Switzerland Milano
The pop-up external page House of Switzerland in Milan at the Casa degli Artisti is located in the heart of Milan’s lively pedestrian zone and historic design district, Brera. It will host external page creative exhibitions of institutions, schools and Swiss brands, offering an insight into the Swiss design industry.
Contact
ETH Zurich
Office of the President
Rämistrasse 101
HG FO 36.1
8092
Zürich
Switzerland