Studio Volpi to Red Dot Design Award Some days are gone since Gerardo (Marketing manager) and Ermanno (Engineers team leader) comes back from one of the most interesting event on international design panorama. Red Dot Design Award for sure is one of the worldwide most important design prize. Won this award by development of "Carthego", Saeco's vending machine, as well as be proud, permit us to participate to this event as protagonist. On july the 2nd night has taken place the prize giving in the Aalto theater of Essen during which has been awarded the "best of the best" and we can assist at the show of the Aalto theater's ballet which has danced on a remake of traditional irish musics. After that we went to the Red Dot Design Museum inside of Zollverein coal mine (presently UNESCO heritage site) where, as well as exposition of winner products, we had a delicious buffet with open bar and a extremely engaging party. "Unfortunately" for us Red Dot organization ask us to speak during the seminar "Smart Materials for Design and Architecture", then our party last less than what we hope as we can be smart for the day after work to this important appointment. In the morning of july the 3rd we came back to the museum to a full day debate on future and present materials innovations. International audience (many country of the world were represented), place of event (a ex-industrial area redesigned to be used as a congress palace) and seminar's topic (surely interesting looking at number of participants), have created a primary level mix. Researchers, designers, architects, engineers and, more generally, innovators, from all over the world took turns to explain their point of view about innovative projects, researches and future visions, talking about how materials will change toward self-sustainability but, at the same time, toward interactiveness between them and humans. By our part we presented a research, in cooperation with import ants partners, on household appliances where we are developing some materials (like smart glasses) that permit an aesthetic and functional improvement through the integration of function of interaction with the end-user. Presently we're trying to un-contextualizing architectural materials, where interaction between material and human is more advanced (you can see it just looking to the development that home automation has been in the last years), re-contextualizing and technologically adapting it in the industrial design context to make products increasingly integrated and interactive. We're proud to can say that our topic has attracted interest and has increased the debate. On the other hand innovation for us is more like a mission then a goal ;) Ps: Our congratulations to all Studio Volpi's team for this results after all the hard work!! To see all the images of the event go to our Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/StudioVolpi