Frida Doveil, ambassador for Italian design summarizes for WOW!her conference on the occasion of Italian Design Day 2018 (March 2nd, 2018, Paris) and explains the ten attitudes to promote micro-sustainability awareness in the best possible way.
Much of the International success of the Italian design culture is the result of two factors: ’Excellence in making, which underpins the Italian design-oriented factories; and the role of the Designer-Thinker, namely a designer, who not only provides solutions but gives the matter a great deal of thought beforehand, acting on more than one front, in terms of technique, aesthetics and sense.
The short circuit between the two approaches has always been a constant in the Italian culture of design, and with excellent results, thus fostering spread, respect and recognition of first-rate design as a value.
So why talk about widespread micro-sustainability?
To be successful, every new culture needs to attain a widespread penetration and design, like Italian couture or gourmet food, can be an exceptional sower of a micro-sustainability that, if spread, acts as a driving force of a cultural change.
It’s time for changing the Italian Economic System into an outstanding witness.
Which attitudes can promote sustainability awareness in the best possible way?
I’d like to mention ten of them, already rooted in the history of Italian culture.
Forerunner attitude: A visionary design that introduces new paradigms.
Responsible attitude: A design expressing new logics of use and relates to the ethical position of enterprises, inspired by Adriano Olivetti.
Trigger attitude:. A design giving shape to technical innovations.
Storyteller attitude: A design working on visual paradoxes to give objects empathy, personality, maybe even a soul, to love.
Silent attitude: A design working on new, lasting archetypes; and upgrading the standards through new forms unrelated to style yet favoring new and lasting archetypes.
Respectful attitude: A design respectful of materials, enhancing and promoting a low consumption of rare materials.
Transfiguring attitude: A design transfiguring everything that is worn out, old, defective and no longer desirable, thus giving it a new aesthetic dignity.
Bio-oriented attitude: design concerned with biodiversity, especially the cultural one.
Fixer attitude: A design promoting repair logics to express a better relation with things
Charmer attitude: A hitting-the-mark design, making us love a good cause more than any complaint.
Text by Frida Doveil.
(abstract of the speech at Italian Design Day 2018 in Paris)
1 Planisfero Instabile, sketch by Frida Doveil for IDD 2018 Paris
2 Frida Doveil at Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris (IDD 2018) photo by Erik van Huisstede.
