Design, Craftsmanship, Art: Liaisons Dangereuses?

The paper is the invited keynote address given at the opening of the “Imece 2009” Fine Arts & Design International Symposium, held in Eskişehir, Turkey, October 18-24, 2009. The paper describes design as a mediation culture, in the middle of two complementary and contradictory dimensions. On one hand a concrete discipline, focused on the technical dimension of the product development, shaping the materiality of artefacts, using materials, dealing with technology and production. On the other hand a "creative" discipline, focused on the invention of new meanings, dealing with the immateriality of needs and desires. Design is connected, with reference to previous and recent literature, with different factors and disciplines, suggesting the opportunity to look at it as an open and expanding field, and to examine some of the trajectories it is taking. Its development is thus described in terms of progressive expansion from a “solid centre” – which could be described as linked with the traditional interest in giving shape to new products – to much softer peripheral areas, where a wide overlapping with other disciplines can be observed. This can be easily seen in the progressive shift from the interest in the tangibility of industrial products, to the interest in a complex combination of material and immaterial factors and qualities, which must be faced with a new “strategic” attitude. Within this framework, the relation with arts and craftsmanship, as historical bases of the design culture, can be described at the same time as opportunities, and as problematic questions that should be addressed for the real growth of the design culture.