The new living Experience at Tecnargilla

The keys to understanding the trends of future seasons will be addressed at the eagerly awaited conference to be held at Tecnargilla on 1 October at 9.30 am.
To interpret the trends, Valentina Durante and Marco Mancin have analysed the various areas of futurology (demographics, society, economics, technology, politics, environment) to identify the aspects currently relevant to the ceramic sector: the influences of nature and sustainability, of science and technology in architecture and furnishing, interactions with virtual and digital worlds, multisensoriality and the need for total well-being, customisation and modularity of domestic environments.

Besides defining dialectic trends (for every trend there is always an anti-trend), the presentation will also discuss their duration, which is essential for estimating the lifecycle of industrial products. We can talk of:
- macro-trends: these last for several years, even a whole decade. They are often used as historical and cultural references, such as the anti-conformist hippy style of the sixties, "dress for success" of the eighties and so on;
- micro-trends: these last for a few seasons (although the concept of season varies according to the sector);
- fads: these last anything from a few weeks to a few months and arise from media, cultural or social phenomena.

The influence of generations plays a fundamental role in defining trends. Events, moods and fashions experienced at a similar age promote shared feelings and actions amongst members of the same generation. Interactions between generations are equally important. At any given time there are various generational archetypes, divided between dominant (who are reluctant to abandon their values) and recessive (who relinquish their values more easily).

Generations and trends influence each other to create needs, the responses to which are expressed as industry and consumer trends. If these responses come from the world of production, we talk of an industry trend; if the response is determined by the consumer we have a consumer trend, corresponding to the much-discussed phenomenon of "cool hunting".