Design and science hybrid approach for material experiences: reinterpreting Napolitan tuf

The paper proposes the story of an experience of research and experimentation in the field of upcycling the tuff, a natural and iconic material for the city of Naples, dem- onstrating how the intelligence of nature understood as an integrated system of porosity, ribbing, stratifications, colors can be used by design as a vehicle to communicate the iden- tity of a place and its history. In the Euploia project, tuff has been regenerated as a precious material, a material that bears witness to the ancient history of the city, since its first foundation by the Cumaean Greeks in the 7th century BC (Greco & Giampaola, 2022). By means of material experi- ments, the chemical-geological identity features were set off with the historical-cultural ones, translating them into lamps, tables, installations to bring visitors closer to the deeper identity of the city. Some of the projects were based on the reinterpretation of tuff from building waste as an upcycling material to produce new materials that conceptually ‘contradict’ the traditional idea of stone, in order to highlight the importance of reducing the extraction of virgin stone by favouring design-driven forms of recycling of discarded stone. The indoor and outdoor furniture projects and installations were developed by proposing a contemporary conception of reinterpreted tuff that abandons its usual properties, becoming soft, trans- parent, textile, luminescent.