ITALIAN DESIGN THROUGH TIME

ADI(Associazione per il Disegno Industriale) Lombardia, Milan - Monday, June 6th, 2011

On June 6th we went to the office of ADI Lombardia. ADI is the Italian Association of Industrial Design. There I got a much better idea of what Italian design is. It has a high aesthetic quality but is also functional. Italian companies are very open to new ideas and ways of thinking, but they respect the past. Italian companies tend to be medium to small sized. This means that the lead designer is involved in every aspect of the company. Italians admit that their design system is very disorganized, but they believe that this structure gives them a unique network of manufactures, material distributors, model makers, graphic designers, artisans and so on. My personal observation is that Italian designers are passionate about and emotionally connected to their products and users. They design for the senses and with the goal of making the user feel something.

I also learnt a lot about how Italian design developed. It started with architects. After WW2 ended, Italy was pretty much destroyed and there was not a lot of money to rebuild. Thus, architects lacked an outlet for their skills. Also, the people of Italy wanted a new way of life. This opened up a new market. This led to architects creating “micro-architecture”, furniture and other products.

Here’s a little time line to show how Italian design grew and developed:

By Anne Charbonneau, Amanda Cox and Laura Van Staveren

Keywords: Design History