Start Over from the Four-Leaf Clover

Renato De Fusco's History of Design: Reduction and Artifice

Abstract

The History of Design by Renato De Fusco (1984) is, more than thirty years after its publication, still the only reference text for students and enthusiasts that is truly widespread in Italy. Such great diffusion among Italian readers makes it the “first” of its kind, if we use the literal translation of the word “classic”. But if the quantitative criterion is not sufficient to label a work as a classic, a further reason is the fact that the method of analysis and synthesis developed by the author is configured as a transmissible and repeatable system, out of the chronological contingency, allowing to include it among the models of recognized value and therefore worthy of being repeated.
The paper aims to reconstruct, through the cultural and professional experiences of its author and the relationships interwoven with the various cultural and disciplinary fields, the reasons for a critical and editorial fortune that continues to fuel the debate among specialists, but that remains – today – the only attempt made in Italy to fully order and schematize the history of design.