Circumstances. From the inception to the establishment of the Design System at Politecnico di Milano

The chapter describes the main steps that led to the establishment, at the Politecnico di Milano, of the first Italian academic system of teaching and research entirely dedicated to Design, born from the intertwining with the historical realities of Architecture and Engineering. While framing and connecting the birth of the Design system to the peculiarities of the Milanese context and to the social contingencies and regulatory circumstances that favoured its development, the chapter brings out certain characteristics of the teaching of this discipline that are typical of the Italian reality and outline common traits in the various local realities, delineating a sort of Made in Italy of education: the historical delay with which this teaching has emancipated itself from the Faculties of Architecture compared to what has happened in other international realities; the original product matrix linked to the furnishing object and deriving from the architectural design culture that has always worked on the different scales of the project the cultural imprint given by the technological disciplines - in particular by Architecture Technology - at the start of this experience, in the majority of Italian universities; the strong connection with the heritage of knowledge and with the material realities of the reference contexts; design that is present in a mature form as a functional inducement, as a socio-technical system, as a widespread culture before the birth of its educational system, etc. The birth of design at the Politecnico di Milano, is also the story of the weaving of a network that, in the space of little more than a decade, led this discipline to take root in the main Italian universities.