FOLIA
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
Folia is the immersive reality you need to find contact with nature. It is a 360° experience through which the senses and the power of sharing want to build a relationship of care and respect towards the green dimension that the urban and hectic life have put aside.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
FOLIA is a concept, a representation of nature. Here nature takes shape in a tactile diary that develops through two aspects: the materials it is made of and the experiences suggested within it. The tactile experience becomes sensorial and from the senses it reaches the intellect. Therefore, it is based on the idea of embodied cognition, because through contact with the materials that make up the diary, we want to generate internal states that allow people to reunite with nature.
On the first page of the diary people can write their name and from that moment the owner can be called Natur. The Natur is then asked to report an account of the experiences to allow him to be present in the moment in which he carries out them and with his feelings about it.
Examples of suggested experiences:
- seeds the Natur will be asked to plant
- meditation activities
- a playlist with pieces selected to stimulate a sense of reunion with nature while walking eg. in a park
- going to the park once a week and notice something new compared to the previous time you went
- choosing a tree and describe the changes that are perceived by going there once a month for a year
Etc.
People who will benefit from the experience will be united by this path and will feel part of a network.
Our purpose is to create an experience divided into two parts:
1. An individual one, the rediscovery of contact with one's body and nature, as an intimate experience
2. A collective one, sharing the individual experience and connecting to others through initiatives, meetings and workshops.
This means that, once the notebook is produced with ecological and recycled materials to have the lowest impact on the environment, the project will develop all thanks to the actions and activities of people, their desire to act as Natur and to share the principles of it with others. This is why FOLIA is by its very nature sustainable: for the materials it is made of, for its development in the form of experience it
Key objectives for sustainability
The theme of environmental sustainability is inherent in the object itself, because of its composition. FOLIA is mainly made of recycled paper, with other materials inside like jute, bamboo, cork, recycled aluminum, all tied with an plant-based glue. If some tactile experiences are elicited by the varieties of materials mentioned, others cannot be carried out without the owner of the diary doing this matter. The purpose is to make the consumer aware of this process, suggesting input to reuse the paper, try not to waste it and also restore value to the object itself: a notebook that you buy has its own dignity, while it is often treated as something on which to write a few pages and then buy another prettier one. That’s why the project can be exemplary in its context: there are many cheap notebooks that want to satisfy the customer for a pure materialistic logic.These are notebooks that satisfy the eyes by pretending to perform their task as blocks of paper on which to write, but the customer after buying one finds himself buying another and another, without even finishing the pages of the first. FOLIA wants to restore a balance between the purchased object and the buyer, focusing on the choice of buying this or that object and giving weight to this choice.The fact that some things are cheaper does not mean that they are zero impact. That’s why the materials of which FOLIA composes already represent the meaning of the project by themselves: materials with low environmental impact that are proposed as links with nature. Recycled paper, as we know, avoids the cutting down of new trees and promotes the recycling that follows separate collection. It gives meaning to the rejection of paper and takes on a "vintage" character that gives the notebook charisma. It will then be the contact with materials like bamboo, jute and cork of the internal pages that will make the reunion with nature even more direct: just close your eyes and focus on what they transmit to feel a Natur.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
FOLIA doesn't really have a meaning. The name is suggested by the sound of the word “Foglio” in Italian which means paper and “Foglia”, which is leaf.
So the sense is letting a natural item (in this case, leafs) being your piece of paper.
The diary is a sensorial experience, and the sensoriality is supported by the care of the materials that compose it and the techniques used in its creation. Embossing, study of colors and characterizing graphic elements make FOLIA an experience of total involvement for sight, as well as touch.
There will be an equally accurate copy / writing work within the dedicated pages and each of these will remind people how much the little things are able to give beauty to their lives.
Aesthetics add value to the object and push the owner to treat it with care, just as the relationship with nature must be built with care.
In this sense, its innovation lies in being a customizable experience with attention to the smallest details. The beauty of the diary creates an attachment to it which is then transmitted on the level of nature, and becomes the purpose for which people will want to seek those visual suggestions even outside the object.
Ultimately, FOLIA has to involve through its authenticity, which makes it a design product before than a notebook.
Key objectives for inclusion
Reinventing one's habit through the enhancement of nature, proposing a new user experience model and providing something analog before digital.
The goal is to create a community that converges around nature and the development of sustainability, so that people can share a common interest. People who benefit from the experience will be united by this journey and will feel part of a network. There will be an instagram page that will also promote new models and events in which FOLIA owners will be able to have a concrete activation.
The sense of community that we want to create through sharing is a fundamental means for the development of the project, because it allows you to consolidate the connection with nature that FOLIA has as its goal. Sharing becomes a means to perpetuate the practice of reconnection and the awareness of being people who can carry out concrete actions to feel part of nature in which they are actually already immersed without them realizing it too much.
Moreover, anyone can take advantage of the FOLIA project: from the youngest to the most adults, from individuals to groups. This makes the project absolutely available to everyone, without exception. There is no need for any prerequisite to carry out the activities, which will be simply illustrated in the dedicated pages. It will not even be necessary to have an initial desire to get closer to nature, because FOLIA’s challenge is also this: to bring even the most skeptical ones closer and make them come into contact with the awareness that nature is what we all belong to as human beings who are active nature every day. At that point, everyone will live the experience according to their age, their culture, their already present sense of connection with nature, high or low. FOLIA allows you to live an all-encompassing experience both for those who already hold dear the theme of nature and for those who approach it for the first time.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The three dimensions integrate because one gives the other a way to exist.
The sustainability of the materials guides the design, just as the design allows FOLIA to be sustainable but at the same time “desirable”.
Innovation is expressed in the dualism between utility and aesthetics, all thanks to materials that represent sustainability and which in general are not associated with refinement or value.
Another innovative aspect lies in establishing a sense of affiliation to the notebook in people who will transfer to the nature that surrounds them, so not to focus on the single experience, but to exploit its aesthetic sense. This will then push the Natur towards the object and consequently towards the experiences related to it.
