Design Sprouts Material: a special event by Covestro and MM Design to explore the inseparable relationship between materials and design

On occasion of Milan Design Week, Covestro, one of the world's leading manufacturers of polymer materials and components, will participate in DESIGN SPROUTS MATERIAL, an event organized and hosted by MM Design. MM Design has been one of the most important international industrial design studios for over 30 years, with offices in Milan, Bolzano, São Paulo and Singapore. The exhibition Design Sprouts Material shows the inseparable and reciprocal relationship between materials and design, as well as their presence in people's daily lives, from work to leisure and from mobility to relaxation at the end of the day.

With this installation, MM Design, in cooperation with Covestro, offers an informative and experiential space to all visitors who want to interact with innovative materials, surfaces and colors. MM Design will present the new digital library mathub, which aims to consider product design not only as a formal approach, but also as a way to imagine innovative scenarios starting from carefully selected materials. Mathub provides the opportunity to offer the most suitable, safe and sustainable materials, as well as an extensive network of suppliers who can carry out customized processes for new combinations of materials. Visitors can also take part in guided tours at certain times.

Living, lifestyle, mobility

With Design Sprouts Material, Covestro unfolds the range of its high-tech polymers and tells the story of their relationship with finished products, giving visitors the opportunity to explore the different areas where these products can be found: Home, Lifestyle and Mobility. For each product, the journey from idea to material to finished object is vividly explained in a story to capture the essence of the design process.

In the Lifestyle section is the CMF (Color, Material, Finish) section, which describes how the combined consideration of colors, materials and finishes determines the experience everyone has with the design objects they choose and use every day. This new design approach, which focuses on the sensory perception of material and object, is a reference point for the activities of the Color & Design Center, an international research center for color located in the heart of Covestro's Italian plant in Filago.

To explain what the CMF approach means for design, Covestro will present its Aesthetic Configurator, a digital tool that allows experimentation with infinite combinations of colors, materials and surfaces, as part of Design Sprouts Material. Featured objects include the Fairphone 4 smartphone, shoes and fashion accessories, truck tarps that can be recycled into other objects, and an innovative model of a wearable smartwatch, all based on Covestro's Desmopan^® thermoplastic polyurethane.

The Mobility area is dedicated to materials and projects for vehicle interiors, an area that is developing extraordinarily in view of the transition to autonomous driving: In the future, the passenger compartment will become a living room on wheels, where comfort and the appearance of details and colors will become increasingly important. The polycarbonates of the Makrolon^® range and the polycarbonate films of the Makrofol^® range from Covestro are playing a leading role in this context, thanks to their exceptional versatility and ability to transmit radiation, both in terms of illumination and the flow of information from the outside to the inside of the vehicle. Covestro's thermoplastics are also protagonists in applications related to the electric car of the present and future, especially wallboxes, charging stations and examples of improved surfaces for data exchange in the residential and automotive sectors.

The Interior Furnishings area, on the other hand, will showcase examples of products made with innovative solutions from Covestro, such as the recyclable monomaterial carpet made from Niaga^®. It will be complemented in the Interior Garden area by a design chair and sink made from Arfinio^®. This is a revolutionary material and innovative technology that for the first time allows the use of aliphatic polyurethanes in injection molding (RIM). It allows the production of objects of any shape in a single production step, with clear advantages in terms of lightness, resistance and maintenance compared to other solid surfaces.