The Histories of Design.

Design without designers. Commonplaces, special crafts. With Chiara Alessi

Curated by Domitilla Dardi
MAXXI Auditorium – single ticket € 5,00 – carnet five seminars € 20,00 – free for myMAXXI cardholders
Purchase of a ticket entitles the holder to reduced price museum entrance within a week of issue.

Five seminars introducing the protagonists, the ideas and the projects that have transformed Italian design in recent years

In this series of seminars the protagonists of diverse seasons of design or historians and experts in the subject explore the issues paying particular attention to the Italian situation within the broader international debate made up of collaborations and joint ventures, through diverse materials and types of design: from furnishing to car design, from technological products to food design, from graphics to brand identity.

Factories, craft ateliers, on- and off-line shops, studios, workshops. What are the subjects and the trades within design today?
In a mix of storytelling and inquiry, the third seminar shall be trying to shed light on these displaced territories, imagining that the most interesting and up-to-date means of narrating Italian contemporary design in reality draws on a series of professions – including craftsmen, sub-contractors, technical offices, entrepreneurs, journalists and curators – who rotate around the figure of the designer and within which the designers themselves in turn make incursions.

Chiara Alessi is a journalist and essayist. She contributes to a number of the leading specialist periodicals and newspapers. She is the author of Dopo gli anni Zero. Il nuovo design italiano (Laterza, 2014) and Design senza designer (Laterza, 2016) a documentary essay on the “other” trades within Italian design.

The Histories of Design Project has been produced thanks to the support of MINI, MAXXI Public Programs Partner