Giulio Carlo Argan and Design

Between Industry, Art, Society and the Reasons behind the Project

Abstract

The essay explores the role that Giulio Carlo Argan had for understanding and developing the culture of design. This path is guided by the reading of the book edited by Claudio Gamba Giulio Carlo Argan, Progetto e oggetto. Scritti sul design, published by Medusa Edizioni in 2003. It is the first and only work that selects the critical insights of the Italian art historian dedicated to design from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. A collection that problematically reflects the connection between industrial design, art, craftsmanship and industry, so much so as to represent a sort of model for understanding the historical debate born around these issues in Italy. It is also a classic model as a tool that is still able to generate unprecedented keys for reading critical and historiographic research on these topics. Naturally, Argan's words are not without illusions and failures of which he was sometimes an exclusive witness by virtue also of the well-known political affiliation. However, the bearer of a wider policy of the artefact project that suggested that design could be a cause for progress and a factor in social development.