Introduction to Italian Industrial Design

The course aims to investigate specifics that drove the birth and international success of "Made in Italy", now better defined as Italian style, through a re-reading of the principal evolutionary phases of the Italian industrial design sector and how this phenomenon declined in an original way the development and crisis of modern culture.

The course objective is to provide the cognitive foundations and the critical instruments necessary for understanding Italian industrial design of the product. The development of systems of industrial production, and the conformation of the business model and the economic and technological system will be considered: if on one hand, these phenomena demonstrate Italy's historical tardiness in the transition from artisanship to mass production compared to those European countries that drove the first and second industrial revolutions, on the other hand they declined for Italy a particular line of evolution that determined in time the success and recognizability of the Italian system on the world stage.

Required texts: Andrea Branzi, Introduzione al design italiano. Una modernità incompleta, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 1999, Milano. ISBN: 8880896237 or ISBN-13: 9788880896234
Renato De Fusco, Made in Italy. Storia del design italiano, Laterza, 2007
ISBN: 8842082554 or ISBN-13: 9788842082552
Vittorio Gregotti, Il disegno del prodotto industriale. Italia (1860-1980), Mondadori, Electa, 1986, Milano. ISBN: 8843512099 or ISBN-13: 9788843512096
Tomas Maldonado, Disegno industriale: un riesame, Feltrinelli. ISBN: 8807101424
ISBN-13: 9788807101427