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Home > Focus On
When they invented design in Italy
Rome - (Ign) - It is difficult to establish the date of birth of Italian industrial design. Perhaps the 1930s, when Giò Ponti, the greatest Italian architect of the time, started designing low-cost furniture for La Rinascente department stores and porcelain dinner services for Richard Ginori. Or, if we think of the first Italian products destined for international markets, 1950, the year in which Olivetti decided to launch for the first time a product designed for mass production and for the mass market: the Lettera 22, the most famous Italian typewriter, and one of the most famous in the world. For its design, Adriano Olivetti decided to call in a famous architect, Marcello Nizzoli, one of the great names in Italian rationalism. His design resulted in an object which was not only to be useful, but also attractive. Four years later, in 1954, Giò Ponti helped set up the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (www.adi-design.org), which awarded the Lettera 22 by Nizzoli the first Compasso d'Oro, the most important design award in the world.
Half a century later, industrial design represents a fundamental competitive factor for Italian industry. Without design, Italian products would certainly not have achieved so much success, and it is thanks to design that they are so distinctive, with an unmistakable, often unique style, almost a signature. And today we can speak of a real 'design district', or as the economists say, a 'metadistrict', in Lombardy, revolving around Milan and the innumerable companies producing consumer goods. Many, following in the footsteps of Adriano Olivetti, have sought to introduce increasing formal value in their products, going beyond a simple aesthetic and formal vision to create a new way of designing and producing. Today, in fact, the design of an object, whether a piece of furniture, a furnishing accessory, a simple kitchen utensil, a tool or even an industrial machine, embodies design and technology, aesthetic form and technical features. Nor should we forget the competitive aspects, the final price, the intrinsic quality, ergonomic aspects and effectiveness. Basically, we are not dealing merely with a simple conception of an aesthetic nature, but rather with a fully integrated way of designing and producing, which involves a wide range of professionals, who work together to produce the final design.
It is estimated that today in Lombardy, the "metadistrict" of industrial design accounts directly or indirectly for over 20,000 jobs in terms of independent professionals and those employed in the design departments of a wide range of industries. If we consider the commercial value that Italian products assume thanks to design, we may suppose that the design industry in Lombardy accounts for €10bn worth of business per year. According to the economists who have analysed this particular sector, the prospects are for further growth, with the growing diffusion of design as a competitive factor. This is testified by the fact that there is now a group of Italian universities (www.sistemadesignitalia.it) offering training programmes aimed at promoting this new culture of industrial design. The initiative, launched by the Politecnico of Milan, in fact has attracted the participation of the universities of Palermo, Naples, Reggio Calabria, Genoa, Florence, Rome and Turin, leading to the setting up of a real network of Italian design.
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