Exhibition, Anti-exhibition

On some of Pop and Italian Radical Design Expositive Matters, 1966-1981

Keywords: Exhibition Design, Photography, Italy, Mediation, Pop Design, Radical Design

Abstract

This essay reflects upon the role that the exhibitionary and photographic representation have played at a crucial stage of the definition of the international image of Italian design. Focusing on some shows organized in the period between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s – including the famous exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, at MoMA in 1972. Comparing the representation of Italian design offered by exhibition catalogues as well as by specialised magazines such as Casabella and Casa Vogue, the essay aims to highlight the role that exhibitions and photography had in the construction of the iconography of pop and radical design.

Author Biography

Dario Scodeller, Università degli Studi di Ferrara

Associate professor in the Architecture Department of the Università degli Studi di Ferrara. A licensed architect, graduated from the Università Iuav in Venice, and a design historian, he has worked professionally as a designer in the areas of lighting, exhibit and retail design. Since 2005 to 2015 he has taught in the Department of Industrial Design at the Università degli Studi della Repubblica di San Marino/Iuav di Venezia, where he became a researcher in 2012 and for which in 2014-2015 he directed the Undergraduate Programme in Design. He has taught at the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano, in the Master courses in Lighting Design at the Accademia di Brera and at the Architecture School of the Università di Udine. His publications include the monograph Livio e Piero Castiglioni, il progetto della luce (Electa, Milano 2003); Negozi, l’architetto nello spazio della merce (Electa, Milano 2007); Gaddo Morpurgo, pensieri, progetti, ricerche (Foschi Editore, Forlì 2008), Design spontaneo (Corraini 2017). His studies and critical reflections on design have been published in magazines such as «Casabella», «Flare», «Licht & Architektur», «Abitare», «Domus», «Luce & Design». He directed the office of retail design for the Coin group from 1998 to 2001, and served as a consultant for Fabrica (the communication research centre of the Benetton Group) for their exhibition projects.

Published
2014-03-15
Issue
Vol 2 No 3 (2014): Italian Design: Stories from Museums, Exhibitions and Archives
Section
Essays

Copyright (c) 2014 Dario Scodeller

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).