As a mountaineer and skier, I have looked at cableways as a way of assistance: rectangular cabins with handholds, which rode upwards as steeply as possible. People pushed themselves inside with backpacks and skis and tried to get a glimpse of the view. In the cableway on the Piz Corvatsch you would even be pushed forward by the employees - which until then had only happened to me on Japanese subways during rush hour. Ropeways have now become viewing platforms, dining rooms, industrially styled business sections, however, in my perception, they have remained a means of transport for mountain regions.
Introduction
o. Univ.‐Prof. Dr. Roland Psenner, President EURAC Research
The student’s designs presented here prove that ropeways can be more than unadorned boxes, which bring us from the bottom to the top. They take us to the depths of the sea, reduce stress, revalue urban spaces, become greenhouses, meeting rooms, dream catchers, sports devices, open spaces, workplaces, works of art, landmarks and - to return to their origin - to means of transport, uniting all the advantages: environmentally friendly, fast, attractive, without waiting times and with minimum space requirement. Above all, they inspire our imagination and let us know what is possible. As a natural scientist, I believe that progress comes from applied basic research. The work in this publication reminds me that there are other sources of progress.
Design Thinking on Ropeways
An interdisciplinary design workshop with students of the
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano
The enthusiastic strength of ideas, are the real boost of progress
Dott.Ing. Sandro Lazzari, President Dolomiti Superski
Us tour operators of the ropeway sector, with the main purpose to give service those practicing sports and skiing, have always considered and used cable cars as a means of transport aimed at enabling access to the ski slopes. Thanks to these, we brought many people uphill to enjoy not only the fun of their favorite sport, but also to admire wonderful places and landscapes that otherwise would have never been seen, and be able to feel strong emotions whilst contemplating nature and its phenomena. Technique, technology and skilled engineers took us to places that seemed impossible to reach. We have thus discovered that ropeways are not only a means of transport, but they themselves can give particular emotions and feelings.
They can be used as a transportation, as means to an end, and for purposes we have not yet identified.
But what? Dolomites Superski thought that only fresh and free minds, not conditioned by past experiences, and without the concern of having to prove something, could imagine outstanding uses, in different fields and in ways never thought before. If some concepts are considered interesting and practicable, others will take the task of realization, but the imagination and the enthusiastic strength of ideas, are the real boost of progress.
Research and teaching shouldn’t stay in an ivory tower
Prof. Antonino Benincasa, Free University of Bozen - Bolzano | Faculty of Design and Art
Vice Dean for Studies and Degree Course Director BA Design
A fundamental principle on which the university ideal is based on, is the unity of research and teaching. In this context, however, a university, its students and professors should not live in an ivory tower. One of the goals of research is, of course, to contribute to society and to be publicly accessible. Interaction between universities and economic institutions are indispensable, as a university is not a sealed box but a public place. Teaching, research and society are interdependent in order to open up new possibilities and dimensions. This is precisely where the students’ projects shown in this publication come into play. They are ideas, visions and utopias, which were created in the interdisciplinary concept workshop «Design Thinking on Ropeways».
The works are set between the poles of research and teaching and were made possible by the support of «Dolomiti Superski». My teaching is characterised by the constant search for the new, for the visually still unknown, for aesthetically untapped form languages, for a new way of seeing things, to make the invisible visible, to make inaccessible things understandable. Together with the students, I go on a journey which could lead anywhere. The search for unity of form and function, following the apparent contradiction between functionality and utopia. All this is visible in the student’s work shown here, and who knows, perhaps one of the utopias created in this workshop will becomes a reality.
Asked to imagine, as freely as possible...
Prof. Emanuela de Cecco, Free University of Bozen - Bolzano | Faculty of Design and Art
Lecturer of History of Contemporary Art
Genova, the city where I grew up in, develops vertically. Its landscape is steep and in order to reach the highest peaks there are elevators and ropeways: those that the site «Touring Club» describes as being halfway between a train and a cable car. Instinctively, I would have associated a cable car with the mountains, but if in Rio de Janeiro you can find them whilst in Genoa not, it's possible, just for change, that the reason is money. These issues certainly did not get in the way of students attending this workshop, where they were asked to imagine, as freely as possible, an intervention to rethink and broaden the uses of a cable car.
And again, a cable car to live in a unusual way the waiting time in airports, a possibility to travel over a city, a club-cablecar and a museum-cablecar, a cablecar that camouflages in nature, one that enhances sensory experiences, another that gives way to team work, an occasion to exchange, a cable car that is immersed in water (in Messina's Canal) to enable people to approach the marine environment…
Mobility and design
Prof. Claudio Larcher, NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano
Course Leader, BA in Design
How do we imagine the mobility of the future? What are new possibilities for transport facilities going to be like? With these questions, students approached the project on cableways. The starting point was not just the design of the product, of a cable car or its interior, but instead it was broadened to the service design. Increasingly, the service design is superseding the product one and the students are the first protagonist of this change: owning a car is no longer important because the car sharing is replacing it on a daily basis. The second assumption of this design approach is «experience-based».
As the designer, Simone Micheli said about the hotels he has designed, «I am creating rooms, not for sleeping, but for establishing an experience that the client would remember forever». Likewise, moving on a cable car is not a displacement, but it become a remarkable experience! What is happening during this experience? Will you remember the trip? Here is the right design attitude that would allow exploring new scenarios. A third and final theme in the students’ projects is the increase of cooperations with several brands and sponsors, which are no longer intrusive advertising, but promoters of events and experience, in other words, a tool to change the perception of the cable car world.
Publication «Design Thinking on Ropeways»
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