Today, Thursday, March 14, 2024, marks the eighth edition of Italian Design Day, the event that promotes Italian design abroad
Thursday, March 14, 2024, marks the eighth edition of Italian Design Day, an event created in 2017 with the aim of promoting of Italian design abroad, thanks to numerous initiatives taking place on the same day around the world.
Promoted and organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ministry of Culture – Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity, in collaboration with Fondazione ADI Compasso d’Oro, Associazione per il Disegno Industriale, Triennale di Milano, Salone del Mobile, Federlegno Arredo and ICE – Italian Trade & Investment Agency, the Italian Design Day enhances Italian design and Made in Italy worldwide through exhibitions, meetings, presentations, competitions and seminars, where the most renowned professionals, entrepreneurs and journalists in the sector offer their experience and knowledge highlighting the unique aspects and iconicity of the Italian design system.
Italian Design Day. Manufacturing value: inclusiveness, innovation and sustainability
If last year’s theme, “Quality that lights up”, was focused on the finished product, this year’s theme, ” Manufacturing Value: inclusiveness, innovation and sustainability” shifts the focus to the value of the production process. At the center of the research is the need to investigate how products are created, as well as value through manufacturing processes, so as to combine tradition and craftsmanship with the most modern techniques in terms of technology and environmental sustainability, thus reaffirming Italy’s manufacturing and production primacy. A focus that addresses the most pressing social, political and economic issues of our time.
The goal is to identify models and good practices capable of meeting the challenges of contemporaneity, highlighting the ability of Italian design to create and spread culture, as well as forms. The day also legitimizes the vocation of Italian design to weave and strengthen relationships between craftsmanship and innovation, as well as between different countries that share a value system even in productivity and act to respond to major planetary issues.
In particular, the traveling exhibition “100 vasi italiani” has been specially conceived and realized for the Italian Design Day 2024. A project by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for the promotion of IDD in all participating countries, the exhibition is curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Enrico Morteo, in collaboration with the Skira publishing house. “100 vasi italiani” was created as a cultural popularization initiative dedicated to Italian design vases created from the beginning of the last century to the present day, in order to enhance the idea of Italian excellence on the international design scene.
Italian exhibitions abroad in the coming months
In addition to Italian Design Day, there are several exhibitions dedicated to Italian design that, as part of the activities planned for the initiative, could be visited abroad in the coming months:
- Enzo Mari | Design Museum London. Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Francesca Giacomelli. Produced by Triennale Milano;
- Carissimo Pinocchio | San Francisco / Skopje. Curated by Giulio Iacchetti. Produced by ADI Design Museum;
- I gioielli sostenibili | New York. Curated by Riccardo Dalisi;
- Italia Geniale. Design Enables | Almaty. Curated by Carlo Martino and Francesco Zurlo. Produced by ADI Design Museum.
- Compasso d’Oro alla Carriera | Washington. Curated by Giovanni Chiaramonte and Michele Nastasi. Produced by ADI Design Museum.
- Enzo Mari in Interdesign | Santiago, Chile. Curated by Interdesign, Conference “The Italian way. Historias de innovación en el diseño italiano”. Organized by Italian Embassy in Santiago, Italian Cultural Institute in Santiago (IIC), Italian Trade Agency (ITA).
On the occasion of Italian Design Day 2024, a project by Angelo Ferrara is also being produced in a limited edition. This “portable mirror sculpture” in which the IDD logo is reflected and makes people reflect is inspired by Bruno Munari’s “travel sculptures”, “foldable, light, very small, to be carried with you so that they can create, in anonymous hotel rooms, a link with your own culture.”
