“Rising Matter”

Pirelli, Rubber, Design and the Polytechnic Dimension in the Second Post-World-War

Abstract

The materials from the Pirelli historical archive constitute an interesting field of investigation. They made it possible to reconstruct some elements of the development process of professional practice and of the formation of the project culture in Italy. From their study emerge the signs of a material design method that focuses on the quality of materials, made protagonists by the sensorial and communicative enhancement of the products. The research analyzes the production activity of Pirelli in the period of the second post-war period, up to the end of the 1960s. In this “propitious period” for the Italian economic-productive history, Pirelli was able to open unprecedented spaces to an “innovative design intervention” generating design culture.
In the scenario of the company's large production and the design processes implemented, the research focuses on two types of products: hot water bottles and tires, which allow more than others to explore the aesthetic-communicative qualities of material design of Pirelli, in which technical-productive knowledge is confronted with the artistic-humanistic one, contributing to the evolution of “material culture”.