VIRGILI
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Detailed Description
Martina Comola, Francesca Corona, Arianna Santoro, Alessandro Mongardi and Maximilian Schmidt form the Virgili team.
Virgili is a comprehensive system consisting of four components (Tactile 3D Floral Representations, Braille Labeller, Walking Stick Navigation Device, Specialized Navigation Tiles) specifically designed to enhance accessibility for visually impaired individuals in botanic gardens and parks.
Project Details
- Does your design take social and cultural challenges and human wellbeing into consideration?
The collaborative nature of its approach ensures the active inclusion of a diverse array of individuals, ranging from experts, park operators, visually impaired individuals, to fab labs. By directly involving these stakeholders, Virgilio fosters a more sustainable and inclusive realization and creation process. This concerted effort to engage different perspectives guarantees that the design thoroughly addresses social and cultural considerations while prioritizing the overall wellbeing of the people it serves.
- Does your design support sustainable production, embodying circular or regenerative design practices?
Virgilio was designed with the aim of ensuring accessibility and integrating into a natural context. The regenerative approach guided the design of the product system, which is based on the use of circular and sustainable production techniques. An important aspect is the construction of the product in a disassemblable and recyclable manner, allowing future reuse of materials after decommissioning. For example, the tiles are made from unfired earth using a wooden mould, while the squares are produced using 3D printing.The whole system is designed to integrate without disturbing the park's surroundings, aiming to promote inclusion. In this way, Virgilio not only provides accessibility, but also contributes to improving the overall experience in the park, increasing social inclusion and involvement of visually impaired people.
- Does your design use principles of distribution and open source?
Virgil is open because it wants to enable operators of botanical parks in person to make them accessible to blind people. It is assumed that the site will provide all 3D models and construction instructions. The operator can take two paths, either turn to the community and delegate printing and construction or go it alone or rely on a fablab.
The economic factor is a harbour point because it is only possible to hack a botanic park with a hundred thousand euros.
- Does your design promote awareness of responsible design and consumption?
The ecosystem approach is essential to Virgilio, as it recognises the importance of considering the complex interactions between cultural, natural and social aspects. During the design and development of Virgilio, we considered the entire life cycle of the product, taking into account the issues of visually impaired people, trying to take advantage of their interactions with the environment without affecting and going against the ecosystem of botanical gardens and their nature. This product could be a starting point for other similar initiatives
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