The Histories of Design

The Fifties and the Early Sixties in Italy, from the economic boom to the masters of design With Vanni Pasca

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.

In the first seminar Vanni Pasca will be looking at the 1950s, a period that saw Italy undergoing profound transformation.
New trains were born, scooters and the first city cars were seen on the streets, refrigerators, televisions, bathrooms and “American-style” kitchens entered the home. The traditional Italian home was now organized into zones (the night zone, the day zone and utilities). Typewriters and sewing machines became electric, plastics led to new families of light, innovative and colourful objects.
The designers, in reality the architects who from the 1930s had been looking to Europe and America, were called on to give form and meaning to the new way of life. And their response was to be recognised in the early Seventies in a landmark exhibition at MoMA in New York: “Italy: the new Domestic Landscape”.

Vanni Pasca, a design and design history enthusiast lectures at ISIA in Florence and the Accademia Abadir in Catania (of which he is also the academic director) and teaches “Design today between globalization and new technologies” at the Polytechnic in Milan.

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