Le Corbusier between L’esprit de géométrie and esprit de finesse Tonino Paris [Editoriale] [diid 59_15] If we were to search for a key figure who could represent the natural connections between architecture and design in the lay meaning of the term ‘design project’, that key figure would most undoubtedly be Le Corbusier. He was the…

For a design “prophecy” beyond architecture Giampiero Bosoni [Thinking] [diid 59_15] The point of departure is the observation that a complete, five-year degree course in InteriorDesign has been on offer at Milan Polytechnic’s Design School for more than a decade. This paves the way for a backwards examination of the intertwining that links the design…

Definitions in architecture and design Renato De Fusco [Thinking] [diid 59_15] The essay in question observes how the present crisis involving architecture and design insofar as directly involved in the “production” of material culture, is due to the lack of suitable cultural “definitions” able to guide the study of current and future phenomena. In modern…

Architecture and Cities: from object design to relational design. From the figure to the process Manuel Gausa Navarro [Thinking] [diid 59_15] The last decades have supposed an impressive leap of scale, and leap between scales, in the understanding and perception of our living and production spaces: networked [1] cities, territories, environments, but also “geographies”. Scenarios…

Globalisation and poiesis of the objects Vittorio Gregotti [Thinking] [diid 59_15] The design crisis being experienced in the fields of architecture and design is the result of a crisis of the social tasks entrusted to architecture and design bymodernity. They have degenerated into a sort of “stylism” disease which ends up corrupting architecture when architects…

Monotheism versus polytheism Andrea Branzi [Thinking] [diid 59_15] The crisis of the uniqueness of design came to light clearly during the 1960s with the emergence of a growing social conflict and complexity. Planning, architecture and design split fromeach other to become sciences working together to achieve a new organisational model for urban centres, against the…

Design and architecture: public places and common interest Vincenzo Cristallo [Thinking] [diid 59_15] The essay presents the diversity now existing between design and architecture, in the name of a specialism which demands separation and an ideological assumption which pretends distance between a topical world, included in a space, and an atopic world in a vacuum….

New archigraphs. Design and writings exhibited in the contemporary landscape Carlo Vinti [Making] [diid 59_15] Is there a contemporary interpretation of the tradition of archigraphics? And if so, what role does design play in this interpretation? Archigraphics, in the strictest sense of the word, concerns the design of inscriptions included in an architectural work. It…

City design. From a sign of qualifying intensification to social strategy Carlo Martino [Making] [diid 59_15] Nowadays, city design, which once referred exclusively to objects aimed atmaking functional and highlighting urban quality, is called upon to perform broader, different functions that are closer to service design than product design. From contrasting the dispersion processes of…

When design was a bat Fiorella Bulegato, Elena Dellapiana [Making] [diid 59_15] The guiding role, not only in design processes but also processes regarding changes in the public’s tastes and sensitivity, may be the least explored among the numerous impressive, stimulating and seminal aspects of the circularity between architecture and design, but above all between…

Material Media: Digital technology in architectural and design production Amleto Picerno Ceraso [Making] [diid 59_15] Architecture and design are called upon to totally review the opportunities digital technology has to offer with regard to the production of various objects. At the present time, its impact in the field of architecture is only showing the enormous…

Public space, limitless design Claudio Germak [Making] [diid 59_15] Contemporary public space, a delightfully architectural issue on the one hand, reflects urbanity’s complex relations on the other, where the beloved topics of new design such as functions, the desire for socialisation and the connection cult live side by side. Public space increasingly seems to be…

Forms of participation involving architecture and design Pier Paolo Peruccio [Making] [diid 59_15] The article aims to focus on the relationship between participation, architecture and design and respective forms of hybridization. Specifically, having defined participation in the field of design as the area of negotiation between civil society, institutions, designers and users aimed at generating…

Architecture versus design. Amid iconism and production Spartaco Paris [Overstep] [diid 59_15] The paper looks at the phenomenon of an increasingly broad area and interest occupied by design, at the same time as a reduction of architecture by civic art to an emulator of some historically product-specific phenomena. An investigation of the phenomena’s surface shows…

Fragments and fractures. Design culture in the kaleidoscope of time Federica Dal Falco [Overstep] [diid 59_15] The essay examines the fractures and phases of the design culture of the 1900s that exemplify the relationship between architecture and design in relation to its assertion or negation as an expression of a set period’s style. The proposed…

Prejudice-free architecture Nicola Flora [Overstep] [diid 59_15] A group of one hundred and twenty-four residential units – studio apartments for students (or singles) – designed by the thirty-year old Swedish architect, Andreas Martin-Löf go to create a new block in an upcoming area of Stockholm. The plan is straightforward: to design a considerable number of…

Cities in movement. Moving around the city versus the city that moves Laura Daglio, Giulia Gerosa [Overstep] [diid 59_15] Significantly, the twentieth century started with themanifesto of Futurism, a blatant tribute to the explosive dynamismof technological change in its cultural repercussions and consequent progressive revolutionising of the perception of time and distance, thus denoting one…

No limits! Surfaces as design spaces Enza Migliore [Overstep] [diid 59_15] Surfaces, as a field of investigation on both the design and architecture planning approach, allow starting from a historical, shared and understandable distinction between them to demonstrate its current, but not sudden and unexpected, passing.We assist to a dissolution of the purposeful and semantic…