Enzo Frateili, a Protagonist of the Italian Design Culture

Abstract

The theme we propose constitutes a sort of first experimentation for our magazine. The novelty is that of having built an entire issue around a single personality, an unusual fact - this one - not even for other periodical scientific publications. The individual portrait is better suited to the size of the volume, biography or monograph. In general, however, this happens when a good number of studies and reflections have accumulated on the protagonist or, more simply, when it is a recognized character and therefore "expendable" on an editorial level. Enzo Frateili (Rome 1914-Milan 1993) is instead a little known if not unknown to most people today, but in my opinion, he represented in the second half of the twentieth century one of the most interesting and vital voices in the culture of design and architecture. In particular, to remain in our field, Enzo Frateili has dedicated many of his intellectual energies to the history of (Italian) design and to the reasons and methods of history. He did so in ways that seemed to us worthy of being resumed and investigated, above all for the critical quality of his historiographical production, never limited to pure recognition of facts, but always fueled by questions and interpretations that make him a real “historian of ideas” on design ...