Danese 1957 – 1991

An Experimental Design Laboratory

Keywords: Decorative and applied arts, Handicraft, Danese, Mari, Munari

Abstract

Among the historic italian design factories, Danese stood out for being, more than others, an experimental laboratory for design projecting. Bruno Danese and his wife Jacqueline Vodoz gave life not just to a business, but more importantly to an editor which interpreted the production of objects as a cultural operation. Even if such a story would be impossible today, Danese provided us with an original operational model, several aspects of which make it as lively as it has ever been.

Author Biography

Paola Proverbio, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano

Graduated in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano and received a PhD in Design Sciences from the Università Iuav in Venice. She teaches Theory and History of Design and Contemporary Architecture at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and at the Istituto Europeo di Design. A scholar of Design Culture, she focuses on the evolution of design, in particular with regard to the Italian industry of light fittings and to contemporary decorative arts – on these subjects she has also held courses at the Politecnico di Milano. Since 2010 she has been carrying out research on the relationship between product design and photography. She has served as a scientific consultant for the establishment of digital historical archives (Arteluce, Danese, Flos) and as a consultant for the iconographic archive of Domus magazine. She has collaborated with CASVA (Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts of the Municipality of Milan) for the study and cataloguing of design and architecture archives. Among her latest publications, “La ‘fotografia di design’ a Milano. Note per una storia fra gli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta”, in Milano 1945 – 1980. Mappa e volto di una città. Per una geostoria dell’arte (edited by E. Di Raddo, Franco Angeli, 2015); Design e immaginario. Oggetti, immagini e visioni fra rappresentazione e progetto (co-edited with R. Riccini, Il Poligrafo, 2016); “Come Angelica e Bradamante. Antonia Astori e Adelaide Acerbi, le donne della Driade”, in Angelica e Bradamante le Donne del Design (edited by R. Riccini, Il Poligrafo 2017).

Published
2013-03-01
Issue
Vol 1 No 1 (2013): Constellations
Section
Research

Copyright (c) 2013 Paola Proverbio

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons NonCommercial-NoDerivates 4.0 international License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).