Not ordinary = extraordinary. Design Department LABA Florence. Looking at the horizon with your head down?

VDW2019

Everything in its place, a place for everything – the project of things.
Design is a young discipline that is gradually building its statutes and perfecting its research tools. Just over twenty years have passed from the establishment of the first degree course in Industrial Design in Italy, a step that has helped develop this complex set of knowledge.
“Design” is a word used and “abused “, now there is no activity of a creative nature whatsoever be labeled with this generic term. Creativity is a style of thinking that is expressed in characteristic mental processes. It is not easy to give a synthetic and non-reductive definition of creativity: the ability to produce creative thinking, how to communicate or learn, is a half competence, that is a transversal skill, which can be applied to different fields (arts, sciences, technology , company …).
Each of us has objects that represent us and tell us over time not to forget and not forget. “Good desi­gn” is first of all design of the idea, as it is the meaning that shapes the object; it is based on the con­tamination between disciplines, because from this comes the identity of the project; experiments with languages and becomes a message. The designer’s task is therefore to devise concepts that spring from reflections on everyday life, from its interpretation and to construct a new product, with an intima­te utility, capable of varying with the changes in styles and fashions, but always remaining current, as it moves from needs and needs that man has always felt. The gesture becomes a stimulator of new ideas as it offers us the possibility of drawing an object starting from the movement inherent in it; in the same way, at the level of design mode, it becomes a new, unprecedented pretext to approach the project. Attention to gestures has also been fundamental to understand how the object is used, especially those natural and instinctive ways, carried out wi­thout awareness. The transformations that affect the market require new forms of thought and action methods from the productive world. As J. L. Le Moigne writes, “complexity is in the code and not in the nature of things … and therefore … if built, the most inextricable complexity becomes designable”. These aspects are the research developed over the years in the Laba design department of Florence, coordinated by prof. Minisci, and the same exhibition Not ordinary = Extraordinary, returns its forms and projects. An exhibition that is certain to understand what the implications of our work are, and to design visions of preferable and desirable futures.
“For me, design is a way of discussing life. It is a way of discussing society, politics, eroticism, food and even design. Finally, it is a way of building, a possible figurative utopia or of constructing a me­taphor for life. Of course, for me design is not limited by the need to give more or less shape to a stupid product destined for a more or less sophisticated industry; so, if you have to teach something about design, you have to teach something about life first and you have to insist also explaining that technology is one of the metaphors of life “… from a thought by Ettore Sottsass. Rethinking teaching towards a new rereading of identity. In Italy, more than in any other country in the world, we find a high presence of artistic professions that, rooted in the rich craft traditions of specific places, have produ­ced a close relationship between economic development and cultural identity. “Closing the circle” as Marco Zanuso argued, meant to feel the need to recover in the design culture a dimension of greater responsibility in which to return the idea of value replacing the idea of gratification; it also means that to a concept of technocratic culture it is necessary to replace that of a superior technology, of a cultu­red technology. Umberto Eco is right when he comments on the Proposta di autoprogettazione of Mari: “Everyone must design: after all, it is the best way to avoid being designed” (Umberto Eco, quoted in Enzo Mari, Auto progettazione? Op.cit. , p. 74.)

Angelo Minisci Professor and Coordinator of the Design Department
Laba Florence

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