L'Apocalisse a Disneyland. Il design e la sfida ecologica nell’IDCA

Abstract

Born in 1951 on the initiative of the industrialist and philanthropist Walter Paepcke, the IDCA (International Design Conference at Aspen) represented by all means a privileged observatory on the culture of design throughout the sec- ond half of the twentieth century, not only in North America.
Although Paepcke’s initial intentions were openly business-led –an annual meeting between the world of business and the one of design, in its various fields of application – the issues related to design’s ecological and social re- sponsibility did not take long to emerge, especially from the Mid 1960s on- wards.
In the 1965 edition, entitled “The New World”, the chairman George Nelson took some steps forward in considering environmental issues; in “Order and Disorder” (1967) architect Alfred Caldwell’s criticism of modern lifestyle, ac- cused of “poisoning the planet and making it incompatible with life”, had a great impact on the press and, quite presumably, on Victor Papanek sitting in the audience.
The IDCA “The Rest of our Lives” of 1969 – shortly after the foundation of
the Club of Rome, and while Buckminster Fuller was publishing his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – took on more concerned tones, mostly for the increasingly clear awareness of the extent of the challenges to be face up to. Finally, the controversial 1970 edition, entitled “Environment by Design”, an open attack on the organizers’ elite was launched by students, environmental- ists and exponents of the radical left: ecological awareness was no longer per- ceived as a common premise , but as a field of outright ideological and political confrontation.
Based mainly on primary sources from the IDCA archive held by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, this contribution aims to shed light upon the way in which the Aspen conferences fostered the reflection on the relationship between ecological thought and design in those crucial years.