226 products and services, divided into 13 categories, selected by over 100 experts among 970 candidates. The numbers of ADI Index 2019 offer the size of this unique activity in the world, carried out by the ADI Permanent Design Observatory (Association for Industrial Design). The rigor of the commission, the level of innovation in the projects and the variety of categories analyzed, actually make ADI Index the benchmark for the design quality.
Made in Italy and Sustainability are the key elements in the selection of the ADI Design Index 2019 which, together with the 172 best projects of 2018, will be submitted to the international jury of Compasso d’Oro award in 2020.
An exhibition displays these excellence of design in Milan (October 15-20) and in Rome (November 23-26).
“Ethical, sustainable, technological, local, international, multicultural” these are the main adjectives associated with Italian design photographed by the ADI Design Index of 2019 are just some of the adjectives that can be associated with Italian design as presented in the 2019 ADI Design Index, the selection of top quality design projects and products fully confirms the multifaceted attitude of Italian design as capable of having an effect both within mass-production registers involving advanced industrial parameters (Industry 4.0) as well as part of small scale and extreme experimental solutions, in addition to impacting on the numerous small and large daily problems to which it seeks to give intelligent and sustainable answers.
Proposals coming across the whole peninsula, from furniture to food design – basic project categories in Italy – from materials to machine tools, from communication to exhibition design, without neglecting mobility (and specifically sustainable mobility), research for company, service design and for the person with a strong increase in social design and completed by two special categories:
- Targa Giovani which demonstrates the intense and highly focused training activities and varied approaches offered by Italian design schools. It also stands out from previous years on account of its adherence to the contemporary world’s leading social and cultural themes, to which the current crop of young designers have provided a number of brilliant solutions that are also more than valid from the industrial point of view.
- 1,300 kilometres of Made in Italy a new section that reflects the geographical expressions of this culture through the words of the presidents of the ADI territorial delegations, those groups through which the association closely follows design developments in every part of the country.
“The image presented is one of a top quality Italian manufacturing system in increasingly wider and diversified areas, but also a snapshot of outstanding development and evolution in terms of new challenges that social and service design is facing, providing original and often unexpected answers. – Luciano Galimberti, ADI President quoted –
“Design is now a powerful aggregational driving force, one of the very few in Italy capable of attracting brains. Thousands of young people from all over the world come to Italy to study and understand our design methodology yet this activity is not expressed through the simple transfer of know-how, but rather takes the form of a more complex and virtuous identification with Italian design itself. It is an activity capable of combining distant experiences and sensitivities and integrating them into our production system, thereby transforming everything into what we simply call Made in Italy”.
Among the selected products we highlight the projects that WOW! Webmagazine had already identified and posted as innovative:
Caimi Brevetti, Pinna, design Studio A+B (Annalisa Dominoni Benedetto Quaquaro)
Manerba, Undecided Sofa System, design Raffaella Mangiarotti e Ilkka Suppanen
Flos, Wirering, design Formafantasma (Simone Farresin e Andrea Trimarchi)
Biosphera Equilibrium, design Nexlogic, WOW! Webmagazine is partner of
Passoni Design, Genea, design Atelier Oï
Tinharè, Eutopia, design Francisco Gomez Paz
True Design Patch, design Defne Koz + Marco Susani
Arcipelago Italia, Italian Pavillion at 16th Biennale Architettura di Venezia, design Mario Cucinella Architects
On the occasion of the presentation of the 2019 ADI Design Index in Milan, the ADI Design Index 2019 Awards for Innovation will be presented to designers and companies chosen by ADI from among those selected by the Permanent Design Observatory.
The award winners are:
Genea Chair byPassoni Design (Design: atelier oï)
“Highly interesting for the innovative process that focuses on environmental sustainability through curvature of the wood using water vapour, FSC certified wood and water-based adhesives. Equally if not more striking is the ingenious colouring of the wood with wine-based paints which use tannic residues, and the use instead of leather of a sustainable product that is one hundred percent obtained from the waste product of apple processing”.
Multimedia Communication Resonating Trees by Margaritelli (Design: Marco Tortoioli Ricci, Francesco Gubbiotti – bcpt associati e Federico Ortica sound artist)
“An initiative that raises public awareness about the vitality of trees through a soundtrack connection able to communicate a new eco-sustainable perspective on the compositional potential of forests”.
Smatrik by Kartell (Design: Tokujin Yoshioka)
“A mould specifically designed for a particular form of injection technology makes it possible to create an overlapped and interwoven three-dimensional network, in which the layers of transparent or single-coloured polycarbonate create a one-time moulded structure similar to a wire mesh. Through a long process of study and design the difficulty of filling the mould of this unique structure has been overcome, producing for the first time a product in plastic at an industrial level with unique characteristics for design, resistance, durability, flexibility and production technology.
