RUSAL as a classroom: industrial design classes in a hot shop

Future industrial design professionals prepare to defend their first project. At the end of this month, they will present to the commission their own designs of various transformable products, including stands for gadgets, furniture, light fittings, as well as trade and exhibition equipment made of aluminium.

In order to get to know more about metal, which will become the main material in design work, the designers visited RUSAL's workshops.

The Industrial Design profile was opened at the School of Architecture and Design only in 2021, preceded by almost a year of negotiations and agreements with industrial companies in Krasnoyarsk Territory. Metallurgists were among the first who indicated the need for specialists in industrial design in connection with the entry into the market of finished products made of aluminium and applied to SibFU.

According to Polina Zvonareva, assistant professor of the Department of Design, despite the fact that industrial designers usually work in tandem with design engineers, the students still need basic knowledge in the field of materials science, metal processing technologies, production processes, and so on.

“An excursion to a real production facility cannot be replaced by a classroom lesson. This is an opportunity to see live how the metal is cast, try it by weight, evaluate the colour, texture and plastic capabilities of the material. This is an important part of training a specialist in industrial design. In the near future, classes will be held in industrial workshops for woodworking and working with plastic.” said the lecturer.

Press Service SibFU, 23 november 2021