The Look of the City: for an Italian Design History of Olympic Events

The Case Histories of Cortina 1956 and Torino 2006

Keywords: Corporate Identity, Environmental Design, Olympic Games

Abstract

Few studies have been dedicated to retracing an italian design history of olympic events. This article aims to fill some of those lacunae studying the project of architects Albini and Helg and of graphic designer Steiner for the VII Olympic Winter Games in Cortina (1956), in which they were involved conceiving the city as an external display. Last but not least this article outlines the relevance of the XX Olympic Winter Games Torino: a large project of archigraphic and totemic elements to identify the event and communicate values of the host city, and thus being defined as the largest image project for an Italian city. By comparing the two projects this article contextualizes the attitude in approaching environmental design for great sports events by Italian designers.

Author Biographies

Francesco E. Guida, Politecnico di Milano

Architect, author, assistant professor at the Department of Design and teacher at the School of Design (Bachelor in Communication Design) of the Politecnico di Milano. PhD in Design and Technology for the Enhancement of Cultural Heritage, he has a 30 years long experience as a graphic design consultant.
Starting from 1997 his contributions on visual communication, public communication and sign system design are published in journals, books and conference proceedings. Board member of Aiap (Italian Association of Visual Communication Design), actually he is the coordinator of activities and researches for the Graphic Design Documentation Centre of Aiap (Centro di Documentazione sul Progetto Grafico, CDPG/Aiap). 

Gunetti Gunetti, Politecnico di Milano

She is an architect and a design research consultant based in Milan, Italy. She was awarded her PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication from the Politecnico di Milano, after completing a post-graduate course in Industrial Design at the SSDI School of the Federico II University of Naples. Since 2000 she has been involved in research projects in theory and history of Communication Design, also teaching at the Faculty of Design of the Politecnico di Milano on a regular basis. She also worked in AG Fronzoni’s famous practice-workshop in Milan, inventorying part of the archive. She is currently the acting curator of the Albe and Lica Steiner Archive, an important collection of artefacts managed by ASAB – Archivi Storici of the Politecnico di Milano.

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

Copyright (c) 2013 Francesco E. Guida, Luciana Gunetti

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).