Artidesign (english)

De Fusco-Alison Artidesign (english) Introduction The subject of this book is a type of production spanning various kinds but relating in particular to furniture and ornaments; a phenomenon which is mid-way between craftwork and industrial design, and which we shall call «artidesign». However, we are not trying to define such products as a 'half-way house' (an uncomfortable compromise between these types of production, both well-known to the public and traditional) but rather to define a sector which, although influenced by these two kinds of production, certainly combines both aspects positively, and has its own distinctive design, product types and consumer groups. We shall also show that “artidesign”, though limited to the above-mentioned types of product, has more to recommend it from a quantitative and qualitative point of view than craftwork, especially if seen in the traditional light, and even more than industrial design, above all if considered from the theoretical, orthodox point of view. “Artidesign” has, as yet been overlooked by the critics, as it has not emerged from any specific kind of plan, but has grown up for a whole series of reasons. In fact craftwork, from the mid-19th. century onwards, has changed remarkably in comparison to previous centuries. Industrial design too, born around the same time, has undergone many changes in its development, especially in the theory behind it, and to such an extent that nowadays it differs quite considerably to the production of the Twenties and Thirties. These two trends can be considered more or less parallel in development - and in certain cases they have merged into one and the same thing - but generally speaking we have seen the birth of a “third” kind of product, with its own features and raison d'être. Furthermore, the very concept of art has altered over the years and this has influenced more recent craftwork, contemporary design and this “third” or «intermediate» production, for which we have coined the term “artidesign”, and which contains references to the figurative arts, craftwork and design. To define this “third” product area it will be necessary to go back to the basic concepts and transformations which art, craftwork and design have undergone. These are the criteria which will be used as theoretical and practical references to make positive or negative value judgements, and so help to identify the characteristics which distinguish this kind of production. The arts as a criterion Behind all historical developments in craftwork and modern design is art itself and especially painting and sculpture. There are various reasons for this, the most significant ones being firstly, that artists and sculptors belonged to a guild considered to be of primary importance; secondly, their research into form and their interpretations of it were not influenced by purely practical considerations; and thirdly, art was synonymous with quality, free spiritual expression and a model for minor art forms. Further on we shall examine the attempts to change this ideology, though we are still faced today with the age-old problem of the distinction between pure and applied arts. This problem cannot be faced by simply proposing other ideologies, but rather must be studied acknowledging that craftwork and design are applied arts, and seeing the theoretical changes that have had their influence as being part of history. Although the superiority of pure art must be accepted, it must be recognised that the applied or decorative arts have a certain degree of independence regarding their formal and linguistic features. It is clear that, generally speaking, painting and sculpture have provided craftwork with a great deal of inspiration, but there are also cases where the opposite is true. Good examples are the anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, phytomorphic and above all grotesque features, characteristic of Classical wares, rediscovered in the Renaissance, revived by Mannerism and Baroque and still popular in the late 19th. century, and these features originated from the decorative arts. They were so successful that from merely decorating surfaces they progressed to becoming forms themselves, passing from the domain of craftwork to that of art. If there were no further proof than this, it would alone be sufficient to refute the summary judgement which would have it that the entire language of craftwork has been taken from the fine arts. But apart from these considerations, whose aim is to oppose any single ideology and to reduce the gap between art and craftwork, it may be useful to go back to what we were saying in the introduction: art has undergone so many changes that it has now much in common especially with craftwork, but also with design. The main reason for these changes was a different conception of technical skills. As has been remarked, "'Pure' art has always been acknowledged as having a higher degree of value and dignity than 'applied' art.., the very term 'application' implies that pure art must precede it and that subsequently its forms be used as a model for objects. This opinion derives from the habit of considering technical skills as merely practical ones, and practical skills as merely manual work, lacking in any ideal character or force. During the Industrial Revolution last century these values were inverted - technical and practical skills linked to positivism (the great ideal of last century) took on an ideal value, while the old aesthetic ideal, as is well known, declined into trivial academicism since technical and practical skills imply creation, what is beautiful is no longer what is contemplated, but now what is made"1. Further on we shall see what the implications are of the making/contemplating pair for the theory of contemporary art. At this point it is important to mention another factor behind the conceptual changes which art has undergone during this century - changes dictated by a new concept of quantity. The author of the lines quoted above, Argan, remarks: 'We know from the experiences of centuries of history of art what quality really means. It is no mere chance that this term was specifically applied to art, almost in contrast, just where and when the Industrial Revolution was beginning to gain ground. The concept of quantity though, as a concept of value, was new. It clearly presupposed the idea of repetition, and of course regimentation. Everyone recognises the fact that a machine is much more accurate than a man's hand, even if the hand is provided with the right tools".2 Here Argan is referring to the mechanical repetition characterising industrial processes and thus also the new concept of design, but we feel this should not be referred to craftwork, which was actually affected by production techniques. In fact, while decoration was still done by hand, craftwork began to make use of technical improvements. New materials and methods, different and novel kinds of articles, caused craftwork to look increasingly less to art, and to such an extent that it ended up by simply using decorative motifs until they became standardised. As the influence of art on objects of everyday use diminished (meaning painting and sculpture) the inspiration of form began to be sought within the object itself, in its function. However, the role of machines and the new idea of value connected with quantity was the basis of the ideas propounded by Walter Benjamin in his famous book: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduziebarkeit.3 While still at the beginning of this book it might be helpful to go back to the idea of making something artistic and functional as opposed to the traditional one of an object for mere aesthetic contemplation. Referring specifically to the poetics of abstract art, Argan comments: "For the first time art was seen as not purely decorative or pleasing, but actually contributing to raising one's standard of living, assisting one's daily life without requiring any reinterpreting, reviving, understanding but only needing to be used; it helped to produce an interactive relationship with people, and was no longer merely for contemplation imitation of reality".4 However biased this assertion may seem to us it was certainly a product of the controversies taking place at the time among the more extreme critics (at this time abstract art was fighting a battle against socialist realism), and the "active" trend of art as opposed to the "contemplative" was rich in significant precedents. Above all, this is reminiscent of the theoretical tradition and Fiedler's "pure visibility", an important concept equating art with knowledge. Fiedler was a follower of Kant and believed that knowledge materializes when we give shape to our sensations. This means that we only "know" the things that we are able to make and build in some way, and so art is knowledge first and foremost, and manifests itself through making and not through contemplation. Another aspect of art according to the pure visibility theory is didactic - if knowledge implies making something, then we learn by making. This was behind the teaching at the Bauhaus, with varying degrees of awareness of theory, and has much in common with Froebel's pedagogic principles, the main one being learning through playing. Furthermore aesthetic activism, first influencing craftwork (Gropius's lectures were mainly intended for craftsmen) and then design was not restricted to designers and manufacturers but also, in theory at least, to those who were at the receiving end of the product. These principles, formulated and shaped according to the logic described above, a propounded at the level of knowledge, clarity, order and economy, (as in Fiedler) were deliberately given the form social pedagogy. In this attempt to recapture the influence of pure arts over applied ones, using art as a criterion to understand craftwork, design and in particular "artidesign", we do not intend to give the impression that the ideas of the time actually became concrete realities. This coming together of art and technical skills, quantity and quality, beauty and utility, though much was gained from it, was really not much more than a utopian dream. This is confirmed by subsequent events, like the continual wavering between the rational and irrational, the latter at times strongly prevailing. What is more important though, is that the aesthetic and industrial tendencies mentioned only inspired part of the avant-garde: the rationalists. The exponents of this trend were De Stijl, Abstraction-Création, the Bauhaus, Constructivism, etc. countered by the opposing trend whose watchword was spontaneity, represented by Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism and other trends leading up to the Neo-avant-garde movements. Events did not follow where art led, as some would have wished, so the controversy between beauty and utility was never finally cleared up. These two opposing avant-garde trends present a rather complex picture at various levels of the phenomenology of art, craftwork and design. In earlier writings on this subject5 a sincere attempt to define this issue once and for all was made by Italo Calvino, whose starting point was not the action-contemplation opposition. Calvino claims that the "rational" side of the avant-garde movements should be seen as "formal and conceptual imitation of the state-of-the-art of industry starting from the visual arts and even, I would suggest, from the arts which seek a form to give to everyday objects"6 However, in contrast with this rather "optimistic view of history", when applying this idea to the field of literature, he writes: "On closer examination, even the rationalistic tendency of the avant-garde, overprecise and limiting in the more recent extreme literary trends (Robbe-Grillet for example) turns inwards, making a great effort towards dispassionate depersonalization. The mimetic process of forms in the world of industry becomes inwardlooking and reflective, a way of creating a relationship with the outside world".7 Calvino's remarks are particularly relevant to the subject we are dealing with and above all his historical interpretation of the various concepts of art which have evolved during the 20th. century, both on the pure and decorative arts. He throws new light on the principle of imitation, which has always been a guiding principle in art history and criticism and too hastily discarded by contemporary philosophers of aesthetics. This principle reproposes another referent, not a naturalistic one as in the past but one which is embodied in the industrial context. What value a reproposal of imitation and the referent may have we shall see in the next chapter which is entitled "Utilitarian Art". Another significant contribution is to have identified the two trends present in artistic and literary avant-garde movements, and a third one to have seen in the arts of vision, (a 'vision' for producing articles of everyday use) a priority with respect to other aesthetic experiences. Equal importance must also be attributed to the appeal to (or desire for) inner reflection, which liberates art from a purely mechanical relationship of cause and effect with craftwork and design. As a conclusion to these observations on the historical aspects of the changing concept of art over time, which is extremely important as it is used as a basis for our book, we now come to the avant-garde. As is well known, the avant-garde has been defined with an expression which was fashionable some decades ago, as an attitude of "total protest". It denies the very nature of history, tradition, past values and perhaps any values. It does not accept any socio-cultural system, despite fleeting flirtations with left-wing political groups. It will have nothing to do with culture either from the point of view of knowledge or anthropology. In a word, it is nihilistic, its means of expression scandal, its time only the future, hence the success of the term ‘futurism' over and above the specific manifesto of this movement which bore this most fortunate name. But if this is true, why should we even touch on the avantgarde in art and literature in a book whose object is to describe one particular type of production spanning craftwork and design? The answer is that using art as a criterion to define other disciplines, we cannot deny that the avant-garde is one of these, and with all its ideologies and contradictions it still embodies the vanguard of artistic experience, as is evident in the French term. Another good reason which makes the avant-garde relevant to our subject-matter is that often it is not meant in the more orthodox sense of the term. There is not only nihilism but also experimentation here, which has provided craftwork and design with ideas which, if they had been lacking, would have relegated craftwork to local stereotypes and design to the most trivial mass production. Furthermore, even if the radicalism of the avant-garde never succeeded in achieving its aim of "total protest' it has been able to revolutionize tastes, customs and habits and combat prejudice. Finally, the nihilistic ideology of the avant-garde has paradoxically engendered opportunities in the fields of craftwork and design. In fact, as we shall soon see, since the avant-garde proclaims the "death of art" as part of its destructive logic, there are only two possible developments, at least in theory the disappearance, quite literally, of all artistic objects or the end of one kind of art form and the beginning of another, the latter including "utilitarian" art, which is an opening towards craftwork and design. "Utilitarian" art What is meant by this term is those manifestations in painting, sculpture or plastic form which, though they serve a utilitarian purpose (and this was what made the content of certain poetics of the historic avant-garde unconventional) they remain what they are, meaning that they should not be confused with architecture and the applied arts. The most suitable way to approach the subject-matter of our book is not to go back to Morris's original ideas (which are not particularly relevant as this important figure was not so much interested in "utilitarian" art as in turning pure arts into applied ones), but rather to link art to the development of criticism and the requirements of mass culture, with its specific production and communication techniques. From this point of view, "utilitarian" art can be seen in the light of Benjamin's writings, as mentioned above. He proposes that what we call "utilitarian" art should be identified with "reproducible" art, meaning an art form which has lost the pre-eminence and value deriving from unique and inimitable masterpieces for technical and social reasons. Benjamin's suggestion is all the more significant as it refers not only to artistic experiences in the field of architecture and design, but also to the whole sphere of contemporary art, which can be reproduced because it is deliberately made to be reproduced. This being true, there is a narrowing of the gap between free art and applied art, about which so much has been written. On the other hand, though contemporary art can be reproduced, whether useful or purely representational, it cannot be considered one of the traditional applied arts. If it is not to be considered this way, then Benjamin feels it must be politicised, while Calvino feels it must be inward-looking. The technological civilisation, mass culture, socio-political implications (a good example is Russian Constructivism born at the same time as the Revolution), the need to find an outlet for abstract forms which is not expressionist, ideological assumptions of art which intend to refute any form of representation, communication, semantics, and so on are just a few of the serious issues which affect the development of "utilitarian" art. However, despite a certain amount of scepticism and contradiction, this kind of art (seen as an independent phenomenon) is undoubtedly one of the fundamental assumptions of a large part of contemporary architecture and of almost all formal anticipation of new craftwork and design. From this plethora of implications it may now be helpful to identify a number of common features that can be found in several trends in the art form we are describing. The first of these has already been encountered: imitation from both a formal and conceptual point of view at industrial level. In addition to this common feature there is also the first contradiction born of "utilitarian" art: its desire to be free of all referents, which has been shown to be unfeasible; it is only feasible to modify the referents, replacing traditional ones with new ones. In effect, as early on as the turn of the century, the discarded referent of nature was replaced by the communicative one of feeling, the German Einfühlung, meaning empathy. However, this was used for referential purposes by both figurative painting (Futurism, Cubism and Expressionism) and by abstract art (Kandinsky's abstract expressionism and later the Informal Movement). So empathy did not succeed in creating one specific referent for Abstraction-Création art, the trend most similar to "utilitarian" art. Subsequently, resorting to the use of geometry only meant moving the referent from the sphere of empirical and naturalistic experience to cultural experience - to geometrical forms which are as much part of painting and sculpture as figures and landscapes. With the same function as a vehicle for inspiration and communicaton, the "spirit" of organic forms was chosen (a good example of this is Arp's work). However, although it was more sophisticated, this referent can also be found both in figurative trends and in Abstraction-Création. Later, in an attempt to find objective references, a parallel between art and science was hypothesized, based on unlikely criteria, like non-Euclidean geometry, the fourth dimension, and so on. Lastly, as Argan pointed out, it was not intended that abstract art should be understood or contemplated, just used. But is this not also resorting to referents, when the purest of abstract art tends to become another art form, or be used as a model for architecture and the other applied arts? Another shared feature of "utilitarian" art can be found in the realm of ideas (and contradictions) already mentioned regarding the "death of art", an old theme often recurring in avant-garde trends, both rational and emotional. This theme implied art becoming little more than philosophy, art in science, art in the aesthetics of everyday life, and so on. However, this idea is also part of ideologies which have never achieved any concrete form: if art has changed or has been reduced to something else, this something else is not philosophy, or science, or the spreading of the appreciation of art, but rather technology, with all the limitations that we know are present. On the other hand, it is obvious that for people to be able to make things which anticipate or are intended for useful purposes, for these to be more than merely individual i or subjective expression (ephemeral and transitory), for these to typify the contradiction of all or almost all the attributes of art, then the death of art is a necessary condition. This is true in the dual, ambiguous sense of the transformation of it at the aesthetic level of society, and as death to give life to other kinds of art forms. Enthusiastic supporters of this idea were the more radical exponents of Constructivism and De Stijl, while the Purists and the Bauhaus were less categorical; as they were architects or were trained as architects, they felt that there was not necessarily a contradiction between beauty and utility. A third common feature of poetics in "utilitarian" art which was more widely acknowledged, was the "synthesis of the arts". This was meant in the traditional sense, so that production entailed a blending of various experiences - painting, sculpture, theatre, photography, graphics (for example the Constructivists, Neo-plasticists, Le Corbusier, and above all the Bauhaus) and in a brand new form: the transformation of painting, sculpture and photography into "objects" which transcended the specific features of these fields. The most explicit theories of this tendency were propounded by Lissitsky and his poetics were centred round the concept of "Proun” but these were anticipated by Malevich, Tatlin and other Constructivists, leading to a return to "programmed" art in the post-war period. The fourth common feature in all "utilitarian" art is the presence of a "project' This is a conditio sine qua non, though the project is always sui generis. It differs from traditional preparatory studies for paintings and sculptures, and also from the precise, technical definition of architectural and design projects. In fact, in the latter case the project is intended for objects which fulfil precise, practical requirements while the project for "utilitarian" art is required for making "figures" and objects whose function is basically imaginary or potential, which gives them greater energy and at the same time a certain ambiguity so typical of this art form. Some of the projects remained at the drawing-board stage, a good example being Tatlin's for the III International, but even when projects became reality they still retained a diverse and ambiguous energy. Rietveld's famous Red and Blue Chair exemplifies this tendency, and although it was born of long experience with craftwork it should not be seen merely as a functional object, but rather as a shape, a structure, a synthesis of various features from the language of Neo-plasticism, transformed and in a sense distorted into the form of a chair. A similar case is Schroeder's work, which should not be seen simply as architecture, but rather as structure, an image transformed into an architectural shape. The contributions of the De Stijl movement to "utilitarian" art are dissimilar to those of some Bauhaus artists, who from a potential function created a form, and to those of some Russian Constructivists who used a symbolic function as if it were the beginning of a process, an object-cum-image which finds its inner coherency in preordained language and only later on reaches the stage of being functional. “Designer" design Connected with "utilitarian" art is the phenomenon of "designer" design. Generally speaking, what has been stated about "utilitarian" art and implicitly about its influence on craftwork and design refers to the historic avant-garde movements, and their totalizing, idealistic vision of art. However, our remarks concerning "designer" design regard the Neo-avant-garde and recent years, and is a consequence of what was conceived in the first thirty years of this century, but was never achieved. To speak of the difference between "utilitarian" art and "designer" design, and of the historic avant-garde and the Neo-avant-garde one should really trace the developments of these phenomena from the mid-19th. century up to the present day, also examining the new trends in craftwork and design during the same period. However, by speaking first of "designer" design and the Neoavant-garde it is possible to group together in one chapter all the major developments in art, and point out their relevance to the subject-matter of this book. This enables us to give greater clarity to the ideas expressed on art but also the opportunity to give some information about developments in the applied arts, which will be gone into in further detail in the next chapter. Most people are aware of the difficulties which design has encountered in respect of its classic formula dating back to the rationalist Twenties and the simultaneous crisis of the avant-garde movements in the circles of art and literature, in particular the "rational" tendency. This was replaced after the mid-Fifties by a return to the "emotions" of the historic avant-garde. There is no doubt that purposeful and constructive ideas were born at this time, like the search for "programmed" art, like "op art" and "kinetic art", seen in work by Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari, the MID Group, just a few examples from Italy. Thus the rigid equation of historic avant-garde equals rational and symmetrical trends, while Neoavant-garde equals emotive trends can be refuted. However this research, though it was certainly useful and at times even very valuable, has remained minimal compared to the more widespread irrational, purposeless, referential, behavioural trends of the Neo-avant-garde. In short, despite the new Abstraction-Création forms, which we recognise as the bases of "utilitarian" art, one cannot help admitting that since the post-war period the most popular trends have been the Informal, New Dada, Pop Art, poor art, behavioural art with its happenings, conceptual art with its philosophical tautologies, and so on. A number of trends which, although independently, ended up (as we shall see) by influencing applied arts, new craftwork and the "old" concept of design. The specific project versus inevitability dichotomy observed by Argan clearly expresses this inversion of tendency. "On the one hand” he writes "in constructive and functionalist rationalism there is the theme of progress and the eventual salvation of creativity in a society where art will have contributed to renewing the structures; on the other hand, in the poetics of the irrationalist trends there is the theme of historic fatalism, guilt complexes, inevitability, and the uselessness of human effort. Art is seen both as a project and as destiny. The former can be criticised as being abstract and utopian, while the latter as defeatist. Then there are the constructivist trends with their mania for projects which were to "historically" mark the future of society, but which lacked any historical relationship with real society. The opposing, anti-rationalist trends, on the contrary, described the real historical situation with great clarity although this may seem contradictory from the point of view of historical coherency. Yet only today, with hindsight, can we say that the project was idealistic and its destiny history".8 As the dichotomy mentioned refers to pure art, is there any reason why one should describe the condition of applied art, in our case "designer" design? And how should this latter term be defined? The answer to the first question is - yes, there is. The force of irrationality typifying the Neo-avant-garde is expressed in many examples of contemporary design: antidesign, radical design, work by Memphis and Alchymia, etc., which has boosted designer design and found confirmation there. In order to define designer design one could roughly equate it to the work of an artist with a traditional background, and painters and sculptors whose aim is to go beyond the limits of a painting or piece of sculpture and achieve objects which also have a practical function. The stress on "also" means that here we have most of the difference between the phenomenon we are now examining and the "utilitarian" art produced by the historic avant-garde. While the raison d'être of the latter was little more than potential utility, achieved by transforming the expressive component into the symbolism of function, designer design does not negate the expressive component, but blends, mixes and "contaminates" it with the utilitarian. The main reason for this difference lies in the two major linguistic tendencies which have inspired the two types of applied art. "Utilitarian" art by the historic avant-garde is based on Abstraction-Creation, while designer design of the Neo-avant-garde is almost always based on Neo-figurative art. And so, in the ease of the former, with the alleged loss of reference in abstraction, the reference became its own practical function; in the case of the latter, as 'iguration persists, in addition to practical function there is something else present in these objects - a reference back to naturalism, fiction, communication, decoration, and so on. Furthermore, if the purpose of "utilitarian" art was the project, even if purely sui generis, designer design is above all object-orientated. Figuration and utility are permanently interdependent. Seen this way, the phenomenon is not a purely new one. It has already been mentioned that there are anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and phytomorphic features in some pieces of furniture and domestic objects; during Eclecticism and Art Nouveau there were tables made to look like tree-trunks or chairs like flowers, and so on. The connection of designer design with kitsch and the excessively banal is inevitable, once this kind of "contamination" has been sanctioned. The differences in the trespassing of art on the premises of craftwork and of design are by no means limited to the linguistic differences mentioned, and to the abstraction-figuration opposition. Another important factor lies in the fact that "utilitarian" art, though hand-made, seemed an industrial process. It aimed at being the first of a series, and was virtually the beginning of the process of quantifying quality. On the contrary, designer design, even when its inspiration is geometrical rather than naturalistic, likes to give the impression of not being perfect, which would typify an object made by hand. Perhaps the greatest difference between "utilitarian" artists from the rationalist period and their Neo-avant-garde counterparts lies in the fact that the former tended towards purity, minimalism, essentials, the classical and the type-form, while the latter affected a deliberately spurious taste, pompous and over-ornate, meaning they made the objects "speak for themselves", and the more unusual (or made up of unusual components) they were, the more loquacious they became - draped material stiffened by fibreglass to hold tabletops, stones or branches to support chairs or trolleys, typical stylistic features from the past or folk art appearing in contemporary furniture, rudimentary shapes to give body to a wide variety of objects, trompe l'oeil effects for decorating all kinds of surfaces, and so on. What meaning is there in this kind of art in a cultural environment such as the Italian one, which is so strongly influenced by technological perfection? To answer this question we must move on from discussing form to content. "Good design" (historical design) is, as we shall see, a failure due to the following reasons: its totalizing, all-embracing intentions have been largely unaccomplished, the long-awaited "art for everyone" has never been born, the expendable has superseded the utilitarian in many countries, industry is ready to face any risk no matter how great to get its products sold, or at least to sell their image (many firms have moved on from being "radical" to "commercial"), many standards have been disregarded (including mass production which actually was the real difference between craftwork and design), so why not legitimize designer design too? The only answer to this is that it should be legitimized, though this will mean even more chaos just where clarity is essential, but this can be justified, as in other trends, by the pluralistic nature of our society. As a conclusion to the first chapter, which has been dedicated a to art and its influence on design, the artistic quality of "utilitarian" art and designer design should be stressed. Both - belong to the aesthetic imaginary, the utilitarians influencing design, and the designers influencing craftwork. And this is a sign that the latter is still alive and well, not defunct as industrial designers would have us believe, only that it has taken other forms - those of the new trends in craftwork and "artidesign". Craftwork as a criterion After the considerations made about art in the first chapter we shall now go on to identifying, defining and describing "artidesign" with craftwork as the criterion. Firstly, as we have seen, one art form is particularly suitable for "artidesign" - "utilitarian" art; there is also craftwork and design which is able to throw light on the hind of production we are discussing. This chapter and the following one, although they are centred round specific themes, are by no means complete, self-contained essays on craftwork and design, but rather should be seen as a set of references which can be used to define the "third" area of production, already mentioned. For this purpose craftwork is used as a criterion or as a device for propounding our ideas, and will be broken down into three phases: the project, production and subsequent "interaction" of the product, meaning promotion, sale, and the consumers, though these are more complex and formal than their counterparts from the sphere of industrial design. Similarly, design will be broken down into four phases: the project, production, sale and consumers. The three phases of craftwork start from the project. Early and contemporary production in the traditional style use no project as the work is done by copying existing types. At this "primitive" stage, the craftsman uses no specific plan as all he needs to know can be found in the model he is copying. At a more sophisticated level, a crafted object may use some kind of project though it does not precede the working stage, in fact it takes shape as the object itself does. This happens frequently in certain activities where special techniques are used, like in the moulding of pottery and the blowing of glass. At an even more sophisticated level, the craftsman first makes his plan and then puts it into action. However, this is usually a general plan, not as clearly defined as a plan for a design object needs to be. As it is the work of a professional artist who has nothing to do with the actual making of the object, the design plan or project cannot by definition be altered during the course of work; it must contain all the details needed for the craftsmen, there can be no improvising and, as we shall see, no variations. On the contrary, a craftsman's plan, as he is both creator and worker, can eventually be altered during the work and resembles notes jotted down by the craftsman or even by one of his collaborators or apprentices. A different case is where the craftsman has to make a product-type, which is born of detailed planning but has to be completed by a life-size model. Here the craftsman, in a sense, takes part in the design process but also carries out the work. A good example of this is the wooden model made in car designing or other formally complex objects; in our ease integration is achieved between design and craftwork, even if the latter is obviously dependent on the former. Our exploration of the different levels of craftwork design would be incomplete without speaking of its highest expression - artistic craftwork. This term has been used in various ways and thus some confusion has arisen over its meaning. By this term we do not mean a type of product which aims to resemble or imitate objects commonly considered to be "artistic", especially if valuable raw materials are used, but rather objects which aim at design quality rather than intrinsic quality. Now this has been explained, and after all that has been said about art and its influence on the applied arts in the last chapter, we can persevere with our thoughts on the planning of artistic craft objects and establish new links between art, craftwork and design. Two statements can be made: first, the link between art and craftwork is direct and immediate, while between art and design it is indirect and intermediary; second, the fruit of artistic intuition or of experimental research on aesthetics rarely becomes a design object without the medium of craftwork. How and why does this happen? Generally speaking, a work of art (even if "utilitarian") is created dispassionately and belongs to the sphere of pulchritudo vaga (indeterminate beauty). The artist conceives it initially for his own pleasure, to express a mood, to leave his mark, to influence the taste of the period, and so on. Later, when it is wished to preserve and transfer the peculiarities of that work of art to objects in daily use, craftwork is used. It is in fact impossible to approach the design process directly as this requires specific planning and suitable technical instruments. Craftwork is the medium for this transfer and its peculiarities now become those of pulchritudo adhaerens (‘applied' beauty). If this medium did not exist and the artist was asked to transform the work into an object, he would not be able to, and would end up by making a brand new, dispassionate object. Whether it is true or whether it is only believed to be so, the term artist is usually synonymous with inventor, craftsman with "applying" aesthetic quality to a functional object, and designer (by virtue of his interpretions of these) synonymous with the creator of a project combining quality and quantity, which provides standardisation of prod ucts, all with these features. The art-craftwork-design process is obviously not so simple as has been described here; emotive forms have been mentioned which are born of craftwork (grotesque features) and it is possible that a genuine aesthetic quality in design exists which is not inspired by earlier types. However, this outline may be useful, at least to give a minimum of definition to the typical features of these three categories of creative workers. The analogy between a particularly skilful craftsman and an artist can be seen from another essential point of view. Both of them aim to produce a unique, inimitable object. So, summing up the issue of planning in the crafts and the classification of the different kinds of plans used by craftsmen, it appears quite clear that it is not so much the planning phase which distinguishes the artefacts themselves as their uniqueness. As we shall see, there are other reasons why the craftsman and the artist are different, one being that the artist focuses all his attention on the planning, while the craftsman concentrates on the artefact. So what really typifies the skilful craftsman is the uniqueness and inimitability of his artefacts. At this point, it may be useful to quote two passages by Dorfies, which show two different (though not contradictory) aesthetic considerations. The first is: "The artistry of a piece of era ftwork is apparent at the end of the work cycle, while the artistry of an industrial product is there at the beginning. For this reason crafted articles today will become increasingly "exceptional", as the artist must always be present if mass production is to be avoided and production for an élite safeguarded. Thus era ftwork will soon be little more than a genre like painting or sculpture, whose purpose is to create unique, inimitable objects, which will be particularly coveted and thus extremely expensive" So according to Dorfies, cheap "folk" craftwork will be superseded by industrial products, and craftwork will only be able to survive if it turns out single luxury and quality items "made by those few artist-cum-craftsmen who are able to produce highly specialised articles to be sold at infinitely higher prices than current mass-produced ones".10 A further observation in another book, about philology and consequently design, is particularly relevant to our theme and runs: "if a dose 'stylistic' relationship between the work of art and craftwork could be seen from very early on, what is the relationship today between industrial objects and craftwork, and between the latter and artistic objects? Unfortunately and almost inadvertently, the vis formativa which typifies an industrial object is now being transferred to artistic objects, sculpture and architecture".11 Though one may not wholly share this opinion, it does however show the circular movement of these phenomena, even if this is limited to the planning phase, it will also be found, as will the complexity of the problem, in the phenomenon of "artidesign". From the project or planning phase, we shall now go on to production, which can be distinguished as the relationship between craftwork and technology. At the most elementary level, the craftsman uses natural materials which are themselves part of the earliest technical tradition, based on simple tools and which have remained more or less the same over the centuries. As many authors have suggested, these tools may be considered the extension and potentiation of human arts and the energy which these tools produced. "Know-how means the capacity to blend the natural component into the artefact which the craftsman produces in such a masterly way".12 But putting aside for a moment this classification of production in the light of the growth of technology, some considerations must now be made about materials. Continuing along the lines of the remarks made about planning, and turning now to the relationship between the kind of materials used and form, a comment by Henry Focillon comes in useful. In a famous essay written in 1934, this author claims that the concept of form is inseparable from that of matter, since form does not act as a principle on an inert mass, but on matter with specific characteristics, the latter conditioning form itself to such an extent that "matter imposes its own form on form' or rather different materials have"a certain formal vocation'13 The assumption is unexceptionable, and immediately brings to mind some Scandinavian craft and design types, like Alvar Aalto's furniture, Finn Juhi's chairs, Tapio Wirkkala's bowls and so on, where the properties of wood do seem to determine the form and texture of the materials, which are played up and made the most of, and even seem to act as the decoration. Recently materials have also been examined for their semantic and symbolic value and on this head it has been said: "The eyes run over the everyday objects of our lives. They are forms which have quality and this quality derives from the materials. Memory, experience and intuition attempt to bring back to our minds the terms 'wood’, 'iron’, 'plastic'. Our relationship with reality is mediated by this capacity to call things by names seeing, touching, tasting, and finally recognising, which means finding wider meanings in our subjective, limited knowledge, which in their turn are given a name. Collective memory is full of stone walls, wooden furniture, woollen mattresses, steel swords, gold crowns - in these stereotypes the names of materials are charged with their widest meanings. From these names the object acquires cultural significance: stone is durability, wood is the passing of time, wool warmth and comfort, steel cruel force. Every culture has attributed similar meanings in its language to objects".14 Going back to our classification by degrees of technological complexity, from the simplest level where the craftsman works the materials himself, another one immediately follows where he is more demanding with his materials, improving on his tools and often adapting or inventing one specially. The step from mostly manual work to a reliable mechanical device comes about when the craftsman finds he needs to repeat certain actions or keep them going for a time, or when the object's form requires greater precision. Incidentally, the need for a mechanical aid usually comes first, then the machine which satisfies this need, but it is not unusual in the history of production techniques that a new technique, initially only rich in potential, is followed by a practical application and thus can be used in various kinds of production. Furthermore, in the majority of cases the craftsman plans as he works, so he adapts, alters and manipulates his tools while he is concentrating on his work. So production and technology, among other shared features, are also 'invented' while work is going on. At an even higher level, we are dealing not only with natural materials but also man-made ones, which are the result of a previous industrial process (for example iron and steel, chemical, synthetic and semi-manufactured products). The craftsman can either transform them into hand-made objects or machine-made ones. However, when considering all types of mixed work and intermediate phases, four factors always recur: natural and man-made materials, manual and mechanical processes. Now, despite all possible simplifications to better describe the variety of craftwork, it is still clear - that while the planning component (in the strict sense of the i word) is a tangible dividing-line between craftwork and design, the "production" component (the transition from one phase to another) leaves a grey area, with various interpretations, where the two know-hows overlap. Thus, the distinction between the two sectors being compared does not so much lie in their degree of mechanization, rather, once again, in their uniqueness, in the singularity of craftwork. When speaking about the technical skills employed in craftwork there should be some mention of the hand-made article, the scope of which goes beyond merely manual procedures. Once, the term hand-made was seen as a guarantee of a product's quality; later on, with mechanical improvements, it became increasingly less synonymous with quality, in fact the opposite became true, to the extent that it finally stood for work of inferior quality compared to machine-produced articles. However, this inversion of tendency did not happen in every trade. So is a hand-made article still linked at all to the idea of quality? To answer this it would be helpful to know how much manual work there is in manufactured items, and particularly in those inspired by the "culture of design”. Manual work is still dominant where life-size models have to be made, as a pre-prototype phase in many kinds of production. This is an intermediary stage, half-way between creation and the finished product and there is no machine able to replace manual work, as the model is experimental, giving form and matter to something quite novel or at any rate novel enough to require the flexibility that typifies craftwork techniques. Another field where hand-made products have never been ousted is the clothing trade: in fact there is no better way of making clothes than the time-honoured system of tailoring from the point of view of good fitting, respecting the client's wishes, and personal taste; in a word there is no improvement on quality, and this is even more important in designer fashion. Here other factors come into play too: originality, novelty, uniqueness, exclusiveness, the prestige of a well known couturier, and so on. This trade sector, though producing ephemeral items, is a great force in the economy and a considerable source of income for designers, fashion houses, the workforce and related industries, and the designers are responsible for having created many expensive luxury items, as Dorfles has said. There is another area which deserves mention, as it is also a contrast to mass-production: furniture-making. Mechanical means are used for certain parts of the work but at a certain point craftwork takes over, because a piece of furniture is a complex article in itself, with both mechanical and artistic features, also because it is often wished to diversify objects belonging to the same series (though this has been achieved through automation, as we shall see further on), and even because mixed and integrated working processes are cheaper in the long run. Furthermore, furniture manufacturers admit that these mixed techniques enable freer expression and greater creativeness, which are not harnessed to one single technology. Another advantage is that hand-made objects can be distinguished from those that are not, thus avoiding deception, and so, the consumer is able to identify the two types of work in the same article, appreciate the quality and also perhaps be prepared to pay more for his purchase. Now we shall take a look at what could be called the "social component" of craftwork. This is certainly the most complex aspect, as there are a series of issues and problems which need to be given a form of classification, as above. An important factor is that the craftsman, like the artist, is usually a solitary figure, but which does not mean he is "antisocial”. As Hauser says: "the concept of sociality is seen too narrowly, if solitude is not part of it".15 Moreover, there is obviously a social component in the relationship (at times difficult one) with workers and apprentices, and in a society which tends to disapprove certain aspects of its activity. More specifically, on the subject of craftwork the main social problem is its impact on the clientele. Starting from the simplest level again, where a client asks for an article to be made or copied, in this case demand clearly prevails over supply. Though this level has been called "simple”, it does not mean that the client's reasons for requesting a particular article are simple. He turns to the craftsman because the object he requires must have specific characteristics, it must sometimes be made in an unusual size, be adapted to fit into a certain space or respond to a particular taste. This is why out-dated objects are copied, or they are deliberately made to look antique or valuable, also because objects of these types and styles are not easily found in the shops. The client turns to be craftsman because of his experience, his manual skill, and willingness to carry out the job. At a higher level, the craftsman is not merely the "hand" carrying out the client's wishes but more the interpreter of them. This means that the craftsman must know about the taste, life-style and habits of his client. He must know who the object is for and what it is`for even if this is going beyond his brief. In short, it is a direct relationship, based on trust and "inside knowledge”. At a still more sophisticated level, it is not just the client who decides what the object is to be like, but the craftsman too. Conscious of more varied requirements, the craftsman offers types and models which can potentially meet the public's favour, though once a craftsman is identified with a particular type of artefact then he is approached for that object or a variation of it. There is an interpersonal relationship here too, but not such an intimate one as in the first two examples. It is no longer led by one or the other party - the demand-supply relation taking on a dialectic role. At the highest level of complexity the interpersonal relationship declines as another figure takes over the function of intermediary - the dealer. How trade function is well known, but there is one element of the business in the field of craftwork which requires explaining. The dealer in a sense comes between the producer and the consumer; facilitating the "deal”. He represents public demand, suggests what particular characteristics the craftsman should add to his products, purchases them and keeps them until they are sold - a fairly complex procedure. He also takes care of advertising, promotion, distribution and sales which replaces direct sales but takes on a different form to the sale of design products. When the craftsman sells through a dealer he needs to be able to offer a sample range of products - one is just not enough. As these sample goods are made by one person they are more distinctive and often cheaper than industrial samples. Moreover, the craftsman's samples are not required to be technically perfect or superbly finished, like industrial design objects. In fact, in many cases craftwork may have faults, like carpets - but this is seen as a synonymous with value and prestige, the guarantee of uniqueness that is the major quality of craftwork. However, at all levels of craftwork, from the simplest to the most sophisticated the invariant is that demand – whether of a single client or a dealer or a larger consumer group -is always greater than supply, and this is another import feature of craftwork. Design as a criterion In the light of recent studies, industrial design appears not so much an activity comprising planning, techniques and aesthetics, as a unitary but compound process. As mentioned earlier, this process consists of four phases - planning, production, sale and the consumer target, and these four phenomena are totally dependent on one another.16 This four-fold manner of seeing design bridges some of the gaps which were present in the classic concept of this discipline - it is seen more realistically, and is freed from an ideology tending variously towards aesthetics, technology or ethics. As far as our subject-matter is concerned, it enables other more substantial differences to be discerned between art, craftwork and design, and the experience of "artidesign" to be placed with respect to these. In short, the "four-leafed clover" (as it has been called) not only provides us with a new, more critical way of envisaging design, but also a way of defining a new area of production. However, as this is not an essay solely on design but rather on design as a way of explaining "artidesign" by analogy and comparison, we shall use the classic notion of design for our purpose, as formulated in the Twenties and Thirties, and only the new concept of design when it is deemed relevant. This is for reasons of simplicity and clarity, so that the basic theoretical aspects can be gradually developed, though above all because this line of thought is still held by many to be the best. First of all, what was the classic or original theory of design? It was based on the straightforward notion of quantity (mass production made possible by new technology and necessary if production costs were to be kept down), quality (the product's aesthetic, relating to its durability and fulfilling of functional requirements), and of low prices (required for both the firm's profit and the spreading of the benefits of industrial activity to a whole society). Thus, it is immediately evident that this idea tended to overcome all the contradictions which had emerged during the Industrial Revolution and during the cultural debate that had lasted over a century. Controversy had arisen over: art and industry, vested interests and the needs of society, ethics and aesthetics, the requirements of an élite and the widespread demand for consumer goods, material needs and social pedagogy; all this was present in the optimistic climate of great destinies, to be achieved stage by stage. Now we shall take a closer look at the three essential points of the historical theory of design, again resorting to o hierarchical pattern. Quantity This phenomenon appears in its simplest form when industry is exclusively oriented towards manufacturing large number of products which already exist, and thanks to the invention of new machinery able to replace manual craftwork. This procedure helped to meet the widespread demand for consumer goods in a society which required a growing number of products, whose population was originally scattered over the countryside but subsequently gravitated to the large cities. Without dwelling on the most common social consequences (which are well-known, like a general improvement in the standard of living, higher wages, the rise of industry and decline of agriculture, etc.), it can be said, in short, that the early quantification of products was a direct consequence of the urban life-style which grew up from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Much has been written on this subject, especially on the faults, contradictions, unlimited profit, and the conditions in which people had to work. What we are interested in are the more positive social aspects of early industrial production and the following recent quotation neatly sums these up: 'The ethical force of modern industry was the idea of the democracy of consumption. This can be expressed by the equation 'a better future = distribution of products’, a simple, convincing idea which combined the concept of Progress with quantitative parameters, that, it was thought could be expanded ad infinitum. This was a brilliant idea which galvanised a whole society".17 Further on we shall see why (and Manzini agrees) this idea was not sustainable. For the moment it is enough to say that in some sectors it has held up to the present, while in others the concept of quantity has encountered considerable difficulties right from the early industrial age. In effect, for staple, perishable products, to be consumed by people who were little more than poor, it was possible to centre production round quantity, but as soon as the stage of consumer goods was reached (mostly essential products but sometimes with other features - the value of the materials, the solidity of the products, greater durability) the relationship between production and consumption required re-thinking. Thus a more complex pattern of production was conceived. This pattern - where the accent on quantity was indispensable to offset overheads, to shorten production cycles, etc. - was based on continually adapting supply to demand, perfecting technology in factories, inventing and identifying new consumer requirements. This does not mean those false ones which were later to be magnified by advertising, but a more positive factor - opening up the market for consumer goods (formerly only for an elite) to wider segments of the public. We shall return to this theme later on, after discussing the other aspects and levels of the quantity phenomenon. A gradual process is still used to adapt supply to demand. Consumers who are not satisfied with essential goods are offered more sophisticated ones by industry - products already on the market and made by craftsmen, and to produce these in large numbers the only alternative for industry is to imitate them. At a more complex level, there are more sophisticated goods which are also brand new - here consumers show greater interest, also because no comparisons can be made. These new products, usually typified by their functions, are popular because they 'do the job'; hardly anyone asks themselves if a useful tool is 'beautiful' too. After this phase we come on to the manufacturing of simple products (non-staple ones too) up to complex ones, and more generally from simple to complex crafts. As Giedion remarks: 'What distinguishes European from American mechanization is evident, both at its inception in the early 18th. century and 150 years later. Europe went on from mechanization to simple trades: spinning, weaving, iron and steel production. America behaved differently right from the beginning, starting off with complex trades'. This process of increasing complexity, whose benefits we shall shortly be looking at, is offset by consumer demand. In addition to losing the straightforward and direct relationship it had with craftwork, it now provides a choice between staple and non-staple products, objects made to look old but newly made, and simple and extremely elaborate artefacts, resulting in greater consumer interest in brand new products which are mainly functional and mechanical. This process is manifold, and this certainly does not facilitate industrial decision-making, buying and selling and more generally, the production-consumption relationship. The second strategy based on quantity regards technical improvements to machines in factories, and would seem to present fewer problems as it is connected with the production side. The first quantification instrument we shall deal with derives from the concept of standards, meaning the technical standards required of an industrial product. Commonly, standardisation is synonymous with, or usually used to mean, items produced separately having shared characteristics. This reduces the variety of types and components, removes discrepancies, instability and uncertainty, and creates the ideal conditions for mass-production, the division of labour, the implementation of specific plans, and facilitates storage, packing and transport. From the consumer point of view, standardised products can easily have parts replaced or repaired, in short - the gap between production and the consumer market is reduced. Moreover, standardisation is what makes the assembly-line. As Giedion says: "It links the different stages of production, its purpose being to transform a factory into a single organism where the various production stages of each machine are co-ordinated. This fragmentation of production into incomplete processes and their smooth integration is the key to contemporary mass-production. The time factor is extremely important because the speed of the machines must be synchronised".19 Studies on production times in relation to human capacity made by Taylor are an attempt, albeit an ambiguous one, to facilitate the drive towards quantity and get the best results from the work-force, and can also be considered one of the more scientific aspects of quantification methods. As to the method for quantifying production by expanding the consumer market, one of the most interesting and straightforward of all the strategies used in the past was Henry Ford's socio-productive policy. As Giedion recalls, Ford believed that a quantitative increase "would only be possible if there were a new product which required all the work to be done from the beginning again. Around 1900, the automobile took on this role. It was Ford who first realised the potential of "democratizing" the motor-vehicle which until that time had been considered only for an elite. Transforming a complex device like a luxury automobile into an everyday object, and bringing the price down so that the man-in-the-street could buy it, like any article in a department store, would have been inconceivable in Europe. The confidence that he could transform the automobile into a mass-produced article, with the prospect of revolutionizing industry, ensured Ford a place in history".20 On the subject of quantity and production policy, there is another of Ford's ideas that is worth mentioning. Seeing his work-force as potential customers, Ford raised their wages to 5 dollars for an 8-hour working day from the low wage then paid for a 9-hour day. This meant that his factory had a continuous production cycle with three shifts per day instead of two, thus increasing the productivity of the factory by almost 50%.21 These aspects of management policy may seem out of scale if compared to the design of domestic objects, but later on we shall see to what extent Ford's ideas are relevant to the qualitative features of production. But before we come to this, our classification of progressive quantification levels has to be completed, and the next step is the mass-production on which our study is based: furnishings, furniture and luxury ornaments, etc. It is because of these that industrial production cannot depend on quantity alone; there is also the issue of quality to be dealt with, which derives from art and craftwork, and is associated with concepts and pseudo-concepts of various kinds - aesthetics, ethics, social issues and so on. Without wanting to dwell on old controversies (out of place in this study, which is not the history of design) it must be said that some aspects are still relevant to our subject, though also problematic. The first of these is that these controversies have introduced aesthetics into industrial production, which was inevitable for certain sectors, like the one we shall be talking about. This association with aesthetics brought advantages but also disadvantages. An example of the latter is the limitation of the concept of quality to aesthetic quality alone. Another mistake derives not so much from models of refined art and crafts as from the hope of finding the same kind of aesthetics as in the original model. The advantages were to have aimed high, to have brought together beauty and utility, to have demanded that in the automation era industry should rise above or at least equal the quality of art; all this, though in the midst of controversy, has helped to keep down mindless quantification. However, the most useful aspect of aesthetics (where it was not pseudo-aesthetics) was the spreading of the conviction that there could be no quantification without quality, and confirmation of this will follow under the next heading. Quality It has been observed that "ever since the time of Galilei and Descartes .... modern science, and physics in particular, has been convinced that nature, as it exists independently of man, has a quantitative configuration. In effect people agree when quantity must be established (e.g. the length or width of a surface) but they don't agree about quality, like the exact shade of a colour. This is a personal opinion, which is closely linked to physiological and sociological factors. What is personal obviously refers to one individual and not others: it does not exist outside ourselves and cannot be a reference point for others".22 This idea propounded by scientism (Descartes did not agree with it) is not really relevant to our study on quality, whether aesthetic or any other kind. However, the idea is useful to some extent because it states that the degree of objectivity which is applied to quantity is greater than for quality. This is an important point in design too, where both aspects have to co-exist. Most theoreticians on the subject of design have actually spent a lot of time and energy proving this. For many of them, quality and quantity interact as early on as the plan. "In industrial production the plan is a sort of platonic idea: a machine has no option but to print thousands of copies without any alteration or adaptation taking place during the work. Thus the plan takes for granted a knowledge of all the technical conditions necessary for the work to be completed; the object must be able to carry out all the functions it is being made for, and not just for one person or group of people but for the whole community; it must be recognisable as being standard; it must foresee and solve all the problems regarding the materials used, because no distinction can exist between the ideal world (the spiritual one) and the practical world (the material one). It is important to remember that an industrial product is never made of "natural" materials, which are the province of craftwork; industry makes its own materials at the moment when the form is decided, and man-made materials are chosen for man-made forms. So the 'plan' or 'industrial design' provides for quality a priori and in relation to function, and this is the aesthetic quality of the product. In today's cultural climate it is not possible to have a good plan which is not born of intuition or invention, meaning from a process traditionally believed to be aesthetical and thus the province of the artist". Even if this idea may be slightly outdated, Argan's definition of the plan appears one of the best, as it shows the main difference between design and craftwork and associates quantity with quality. Although it is a good way to express the classic theory of design (the one we are using to identify the criteria relevant to "artidesign") it is not so helpful if we consider it in the light of the more recent concept of design, as a process consisting of four stages. Seen this way the plan appears too idealistic and also too reductive. It is idealistic because it attributes too much importance to intuition, an a priori awareness capable of predicting the whole product cycle. It is reductive because the other stages in design phenomenology (production, sale and the consumer market) are almost totally comprised in the first stage, i.e. the planning one. Experience shows that it is not like this: each stage conditions and is conditioned by the others, so none of them can be considered the main one. Of course the plan can exist without the work being done subsequently, but when we talk about a design product, all the other stages are involved and to the same extent. Returning to the classic reference scheme, it should be pointed out that not all authors have given quality an aesthetic value, which confirms our conviction that the plan in the design process is only "relatively" important. It was the American sculptor Horatio Greenhough who transferred the formula evolved by the naturalist Lamarck of "form follows function" to architecture, art and industry. Around 1850, on the subject of machines, he said that if we compared the first form of one of these machines "with a new improved model of the same device we would notice (by examining the improvements made) that the load had been lightened where less force was required, the functions had been brought closer together without affecting their performance, the planes had been made to curve and curves smoothed out until the device was no longer awkward and unattractive but a solid, efficient and attractive one". What is the role of the design itself in these frequent technical improvements of an article? It will be limited in the simple case of a single product-type but when this is improved on by subsequent mass or normal production, it is not only intuitive design that counts but also production experience, the facility or difficulty of sales, and the success or failure of the product with consumers. In the USA the functionalist trend in design was applied more strictly than in Europe. As Greenhough continues: "by beauty or attractiveness I mean the outline of function".25 If it is true that Ford's design for his cars is based on such principles it is easy to see why their aesthetic is similar to that of so many objects characterised by anonymous design like ships, yachts, canoes, sulkies and many other types of sports equipment. Moreover, there is that sensation of constant improvement of the device (as Greenhough mentioned before). This is quite logical, as Ford was not thinking of possible changes in taste but of a better and better product: "every day I used to cherish the idea of a universal product-type”. Ford's basic ideas about aesthetics, function, the significance of the product (meaning its quality) can be seen in these quotations of his. On the subject of one of the most controversial of themes in Europe - utility versus beauty - he wrote: "the question is - is it better to sacrifice artistry to utility, or utility to artistry? For example, what would the function be of a teapot whose spout (for artistic reasons) wouldn't pour properly? Or a spade whose handle was so elaborately decorated that it would hurt the user's hand?..... An automobile is a modern product and must not be built to represent something, but to perform the service it is made for". The author is being deliberately provoking here, with his rhetorical questions. Many authors before him, starting with Lodoli, had differentiated between "function" and "representativity" and, in cases of incompatibility, had opted for the former, as mentioned earlier on under "Utilitarian Art". Ford's merit was not so much to have evolved a theory on functionalism, but to have interpreted it through tangible product, and to have supplied real samples of this reduction to the essentials. More significant, are Ford's ideas about the constant improvement of a product-type - an idea which was probably motivated initially by both ethical and aesthetic factors, but also implies productive and social ones. In his autobiography he wrote: “If the construction plan of an article has been carefully studied changes are rare and are only made in the large connecting parts; in the production process though, changes are very frequent and completely natural .... My partners were not convinced that our automobiles could be limited to one single type I am proud that every part, every item I produce is properly and strongly made, and that no one can find any reason to replace it. Every good automobile should last as long as a good watch". This was certainly true of his most famous automobile, the T Model, made between 1908 and 1927. Although this was the first family automobile to be cut down to the basics, it was made of particularly resistant materials - steel reinforced with vanadium and specially treated metals which made it lightweight and strong. In effect, Ford's lack of interest in aesthetics or rather his sarcastic remarks about it, show that his views went beyond the form-function concept. To him quality was synonymous with efficiency, durability and the potential improvement of the model which could then be produced for years. In a word, this was the ideal of a universal model. On the contrary, to many authors - irrespective of the period they are or were living in - a product's quality depends largely on the novelty factor. To find out what this implies, surveys of various kinds have been carried out, and research had been made on information theory. On this subject Dorfles says: "As information theory is based on finding out how much information is provided by a given message it is easy to believe that the more unpredictable is the content of a message, the greater the impact it will have... So if we apply this principle to industrial design it is easy to see that the unpredictability of a message (present in a brand-new industrial product), its novelty that is, is essential to achieve a high degree of information, and this will provide a strong compulsion on the part of the consumer to buy that particular product. The more novel or unusual is the product in a particular market, the easier it is to persuade people to buy it and thus demand increases".29 Is it true though that consumer taste always tends towards novelties? This is the question we shall try to answer further on. For the moment it will be helpful to conclude this section on information theory by saying that this concept also comprises redundancy, meaning the most obvious and easily recognisable part of a message. If this element were not present then the receiver of the message would not know which code it referred to. In the same way, a design product must contain some obvious features, in addition to novel ones. In effect, without resorting to the complex criteria connected with scientism, but simply citing historical experience, George Kubler remarks: "Human wishes are always divided between imitation and invention, between the wish to return to established patterns and "escape" by means of variations. In general, the wish to return to the past has always prevailed over the impulse to break away from it. There are no brand-new things, nor is it possible to do things without varying them in some way. Every act we perform is inevitably a mixture of faithfulness to the model and detachment from it, to an extent that ensures recognisable repetition without excluding those minor variations that the time and the circumstances afford. When the importance of variation surpasses the quantity of faithful imitation then we have invention. In the whole universe absolute and total imitation is probably greater than variation - if this were not so, the universe would appear very different to what it is". Summarising what has been said about the quality component in design, the most accredited theory is the one giving the design project the greatest role in the determination of quality. The presence of a project would seem to guarantee this because if a product has been planned then this means that all its details have been imagined, studied and foreseen. We have also seen that there are other ways of interpreting quality, which continue to present problems - aesthetic quality, quality as synonymous with perfect construction and durability, quality as novelty, etc. Later on, we shall see how and to what extent historical design is still faithful to these principles, which of them have been neglected and which rightly or wrongly have prevailed over the others. Low prices Last but not least in the classic theory of design is the issue of price, which is linked to the other features of quantity (necessary to keep production costs down), and quality (which stimulates demand by increasing it). These two essential features however, cannot exist if the price of a product is too high for most consumers. Although these three features are all dependent on one another, low prices particularly depend on the consumer market - the final stage which sanctions the success or failure of a product. The question of price in the past affected not only commercial and production policy (and this is still true today for some products), but also involved ideological, cultural and socioeconomic factors. These were simply theories, predictions and hopes which were often unrealistic, but not because they were unfounded; in fact they are still proving to be useful as reference points. One of these theories was that "all men are equal" and thus "everyone has the same needs" (Le Corbusier); another one upheld the principle of "art for everyone", the dream of the avant-garde that aesthetics in everyday objects would become widespread; another stated that beauty was "necessary but redundant" and yet another supported the "pride of modesty". The authors of this book admit to believing in these principles, which were part of the ethics of modern industrial production and the theoretical basis of the idea that quantity achieved through unsophisticated quality and low prices would mean an increase in production and greater equality among people. However, there is also the opposite view which must be stated if one is to be objective, and which U. Ojetti described in the following terms: "First the chimaera of democracy then poverty humiliated the decorative arts, and not only those arts. How many exhibitions there were of modest furniture generously created by bourgeois designers for the dwellings of workers, poor country people and clerks! All this would have been practical and very useful if these designers had not forgotten one thing - that the bourgeosie, the lower-middle class, workers and farm-labourers have always wanted (and will continue to do so) to copy the furniture of socially superior classes. But Europe has lived for over a hundred years in the hope of changing people once and for all by applying the sacred principles of fraternity, liberty and equality. Now equality has finally permeated art with the aid of universal poverty and consists of a levelling process which is purported to be a way of sharing out intelligence and taste".31 Whatever one might think of such an opinion, as it identified itself with the principle of "luxury is a necessity" by definition it was the opposite of the "pride of modesty". Between these extremes the history of Italian design was to develop. This controversy was obviously ideological rather than economic, and in order to understand what the real "price" to pay for low prices was a connection has to be made with consumer response. According to the classic theory of design, this was to be a heavy price. Objects were only to reflect their function, not concede anything to decoration, symbolism, imagination - in sum those connotational values which have always accompanied the form of artefacts without detracting from their functionality. But this was just what consumers did not want. If in the past the connection between form and function had not been spoiled by the presence of other connotations, then why should contemporary functionalism remove or annul them? There were two answers to this question: the first with some justification upheld that if prices were to be kept down then production costs also had to be low, which meant eliminating the superfluous and decoration, and above all decoration used to cover factory faults (a case of interdependence between quality and the right price); the second viewpoint, equally justifiable, supported that simplification did not mean cheaper articles, in fact a "simple" product often required much more careful planning and work and was therefore more expensive to produce. This was not explained clearly to the public, already unwilling to give up what was "redundant but necessary". In effect, quantity achieved through lower selling prices caused by the simplifying of forms and features was not considered as quality by the majority. Only an élite thought differently, following Mies van der Rohe's creed "less is more” while the majority of consumers found the articles poor, mechanical and unattractive - and in many cases they were just that. However, this divergence between design culture and consumer taste, which was basically dictated by economic, technical and socio-cultural factors was simplistically transferred to the realm of taste. And it was here, as we shall see further on, that the greatest difficulties were encountered in the production-consumer relationship, which was the crucial problem of design and the cause of many of its failures. Thus, if there was an element in the classic theory of design which did not work out, it was not merely the principles of quantity, quality and low prices, but the fact that these three factors were inextricably linked and thus could not become an accepted design culture The Artidesign Art, craftwork and design have all been dealt with in the previous chapters from points of view relevant to our subject-matter, not seen as themes in their own right but as criteria used to assess information and considerations for the introduction to artidesign. Having now completed this part of our work, we shall go on to what we have called a "third" kind of production. The intention is to juxtapose artidesign with craftwork and design, or better, let it speak for itself through affinities and diversities. In particular, as recent historical experience presents craftwork differently to industrial design, to show the former's link with artidesign a simple comparison is all that is needed, while for the second it will be necessary to describe and interpret the crisis of design, at least of the classic theory of design. A comparison with craftwork Our study of the phenomenology of craftwork comprised three factors: the planning, production and social aspects, meaning the promotion of the product. We shall use the same factors to compare the "third" kind of production with craftwork. The latter, as we have seen, does not derive its character and represent activity from the plan. In fact in craftwork the plan is part of the creation and achievement, therefore it is part of the work itself; the traditional craftsman plans while he works, and this cannot be considered a stage in itself of any kind. In our conclusion we agreed with the general opinion that the craftsman's attention is not so much focused on the plan as on the object. Can the same be said for artidesign? The answer is no. Although artidesign does not aim at mass-production but at the most a limited series, the planning phase cannot be ignored. This is mainly because while the real craftsman tends to stress the fact that the object is hand-made and thus unique and inimitable, the activity that we are defining does not have this aim at all, in fact it does use a repetitive process, though to a lesser extent than mass-production. Another reason is that the plan is seen as a creative event which precedes the actual work, so it is a separate and preparatory act. In artidesign it is clear to see that the plan has a different form to the one used in craftwork for various reasons. In artidesign it appears as a rational, clear-cut and precise operation in each part, not only at the production stage but also as a conscious premeditated act, in response to contemporary requirements, trends and tastes - in a word as a sign of "modern-ness". In other words, the artidesign plan, in addition to being a technical expression, is also a cultural one, attesting to the historic nature of the product it will give shape to. On this subject, it should be noted that the invariant of the artidesign plan is that unlike craftwork it never looks backwards to past types but aims at keeping in line with contemporary taste. If this is true, then how is it different to the design plan? There are certain affinities which can be seen from many features formal but not operative affinity, the tendency to small quantities not large ones, planning a more durable product than those made industrially, etc. But the greatest difference is that while the designer's plan affords no modification during the work, the artidesigner's does, and this resembles in a sense the capacity of the latest sophisticated technology of numerical control, which we shall talk about later. Regarding the productive and technological aspects of craftwork, as we have seen the main features are the use of natural materials and manual work. Vice versa, artidesign tends to use man-made materials or mechanized techniques, but with a limited quantitative production. Moreover, the use of a small range of materials can be explained by the fact that it is more economical to use semi-manufactured materials, which are easier to obtain than "raw" materials. There is also the increasing difficulty of finding really "natural" materials and this justifies the use of these by craftsmen, who as we know, do not aim at mass-production. Natural materials also require more manual work for both quantity and quality and this means a greater number of artisans, a resource which has grown relatively scarce. The reasons for not using natural materials are also supported by the rationality, reproduction and modern-ness of the plan itself From these considerations on the differences between craftwork and artidesign certain singularities can be identified from the point of view of planning and production. As we have seen, there is a wide range of types of craftwork: imitation of existing objects, imitation with variations on the theme, production where the plan evolves during the course of work, the use of natural materials, manual skills, the adaptation of a technique to a specific product, etc. In artidesign, although there is still much flexibility in planning and the carrying out of the work, (this is the advantage over design) a large part of the above-mentioned features are simplified - the plan is properly defined beforehand and the skills are really only adaptable to the product which is to be made. And here lies the advantage of artidesign over craftwork. Moving on from planning and execution to sales, it is clear to see that one of the major differences between these two categories is the relationship between demand and supply. Where classic craftwork is an activity whose social element resides in the commission, this is not true for artidesign, which is created and distributed mainly on the basis of supply factors. More specifically, in the exchange of craftwork demand prevails over supply, though there is a kind of hierarchy: direct relationship between the user and the craftsman, selection by the user of a well-established craftsman, mediation between the two by a dealer. In the case of artidesign there is also a hierarchy in the exchange of a product - direct demand, and demand communicated through a dealer; but the opposite is also true. The artidesigner does not work in the background; he relies on a trade network and he is quite able to promote and advertise his own work. Strictly speaking, the "third" kind of production tends more towards supply than demand, though above we said "mainly" towards supply. In reality, the moment of exchange is when the greatest compromise between production and consumption takes place. Supply persists, but this is never independent of demand or even a specific direct commission. Proof of this balanced relationship, of this "compromise" in the more positive sense of the word, is that for some time now sale by commission is no longer relevant only to objects of craftwork. For industrial design products there is also a market trend towards "personalised" objects, which are variants of a line. Industrial production gives great importance to this trend and is adapting technology to meet this requirement. However, whatever technological skills are involved, it is obvious that this longing for singularity (though as part of an existing line) has been borrowed by design from artidesign, which is thus a "happy" compromise and anticipates market trends. Design criticism Although the subject we are dealing with is furniture and household object design, in order to talk about the crisis of design it will be helpful to give a more general picture of industrial production. Most of the products on the market bear no signs of "design" because they were conceived and produced by a technological process. They are unique objects, both because of their complexity from a technological point of view and their use, which is certainly not that of a mass-produced item. They are made in quantity which means that quality of form is not sought after, they are dictated by philology and so basically formal; they are copies of historic styles and types; they are the fruit of a compromise (this time a negative one) between craftwork and manufacturing, and the list could continue with products that are however outside the ambit of the three main features of historic design. Moreover, despite the fact the contradictions listed above refer to the requirements and expectations of each sector of trade, another side of this phenomenon could be pointed out, where the aspiration to profit, common attitudes and current taste demand increasingly ingenious technical products and ever more "artistic", decorative and symbolic ornaments, personal effects, decors, etc. The crisis of design can be perceived when the entire range of production can be classified at four levels of technology. The most advanced sectors technologically speaking seem to be tending towards a product image whose form is derived from merely mechanical processes, which have now become extremely sophisticated ones. As Dorfles remarks: "people speak of form and function without realising that for a great many products which in the past did respect this criterion, today form no longer exists! Some simple examples are: the vast range of products using microchips - these tiny pieces of silicone no bigger than a thumb-nail able to store, process and manage immense automatized systems, laboratories even factories or the endless range of hi-fl equipment - tape-recorders, amplifiers, radios, microphones, videos, etc. which are now no larger than little black boxes containing a tiny chip in its turn containing complex circuits. Where is form here? Form no longer exists or at best it is a brand-new invention bearing no relation to what is contained within or is hidden from sight, and this gives the user/purchaser the illusion of a container which in reality is lacking in any relevant morphological content".32 Blinded by the tremendous functional efficiency of this equipment, the public are indifferent to the form and they do not perceive the deception which lies in the connection between form and function; what is worse, the mysterious workings of electronic circuits give them a taste for what they cannot understand and this only increases the object's fascination. No-one wonders what it is or how it’s made, simply being content with what it does. Sectors of trade with a medium level of technology (not in the sense of processes which also tend to automation but in the product's characteristics) are different to historical design in another way. The best example is the automobile industry: it only takes a few minutes to assemble and finish a vehicle which is basically not very different to one from the 1920's. In this industry the problems of form, popularity with users and low prices should be important but there is a tendency to form which is both forced and banal. Often only an expert can distinguish one model from another because of the cosmetics. In effect, it could be said that today the quality of classic design has been lost, and this is also true of the variety of types which justified the unorthodoxy of styling, so strongly criticised. Moreover, in the light of recent views, this "styling" is certainly not so arbitrary and formalist as has been claimed. More worrying still, is the triviality of type-forms in relation to price - the family car is disappearing and is being replaced by public demand with more expensive models. In the third technological sector which uses industrial processes associated with manual ones, corresponding more or less to the category of furniture and furnishing design, the situation is more fluid. It is here that there is the greatest divide between design culture and consumer demand. This is principally caused by taste, a factor which has greater importance here than for other products for the home and which are influenced by a particular tradition and ideology. The old aphorism "qualifying quantity" is particularly difficult to apply here because of the first term, which implies taste. To design culture, taste used represent a characteristic of form which made it a coherent expression of function. To consumers though, the quality of objects represented a characteristic of their form which made them not only functional (quite obviously) but also express something, as happened in the past. Since most consumers found contemporary design "tasteless” they preferred objects which were copies of past styles or which were at least rich in symbolic value, showed the craftsman's skill, were beautifully decorated, and so on. These values (or pseudo-values) built up over time into something like a cult. As a result the majority of those people accepted the idea of the city, the neighbourhood, modern architecture and its distributive and functional aspects. They also liked the new means of transport and mass media, even the great changes in the workplace, but they did not want their homes to be all alike, with seemingly mass-produced objects which were also expensive, as we shall see. Other authors claim that the popularity or unpopularity with consumers of a product-type or form is not just a question of taste but goes much deeper. Speaking about architecture (though the same can be said for design) Adorno observes: "It was no coincidence that Le Corbusier invented 'model people'; but living people, even the most backward ones and slaves of convention are entitled to satisfy their needs, however false they may be. If one only thinks of real (i.e. objective) needs, ignoring subjective ones this turns out to be counter-productive and even brutally oppressive, and becomes la volonté générale versus la volonté de tous. Even a human being's false need is an aspiration towards freedom - what economic theory has defined the value of use as opposed to the abstract value of exchange. Because people are refused what they really want and perhaps what they really need, legitimate architecture ends up by appearing hostile to them".33 After this reflection on whether it is wise or unwise to frustrate the public's aspirations (however crude they may be) Adorno returns to the subject of the contradictions of functionalism from which "objective" taste derives. "The issue of functionalism is also the issue of subordination to utility. There is no doubt that what is useless is expendable. Progress in development has brought out the immanent lack of aesthetic; but the merely utilitarian is inextricably part of a guilt complex, an instrument causing the sterility and desolation of the world, though human beings are not able on their own to provide comfort which is not an illusion. Even if this contradiction is never quite eliminated, being aware of it would at least be one step in the right direction".34 Returning to the various levels of technology, we shall briefly look at the simplest one. This comprises the majority of objects made in large quantities and whose origin is in what we might call 'spontaneous design'. These are the kind of products we can find in supermarkets, the ephemeral ones with no value and extremely simple in form, which seem to have no purpose other than filling up dustbins. These goods, though very interesting from the point of view of mass culture and conservation problems, are obviously not relevant to our theme, which is really the third sector of technology, the one comprising furniture and furnishings. The definition of artidesign then largely relies on the criticism of design of this particular sector. However, it is not intended that this criticism be seen as élitist, so after Adorno's remarks about taste it may be useful to see how consumers react to cultural themes and problems in this area of design. Historical design, neo-design, modern and post-modern, functionalist and organic, hard or soft line? These are the questions designers ask themselves, but the majority of consumers do not show any interest. Terms like anthropocentrism and society, so often used by designers and critics, usually become mere abstractions as the design of these objects does not take into any account the real requirements of the collectivity, which are conditioned by tradition, economics and specific customs and habits. The average consumer sees design differently to the way classic design would like (meaning as an independent but collective experience). On the contrary, (and this applies to other sectors too) the consumer sees it as an "additional value" which can be related to any sector - the design of a car-body when he buys a ear, of decor when he buys a piece of furniture, of domestic appliances when he buys a washing-machine, and so on. In other words, consumers rightly or wrongly do not perceive the unitary value that is supposed to inform all industrial products o born of 'quality' planning and technology, but just a variety of qualities - as many "values" as there are types of products. Incidentally, this way consumers have of seeing design goes a back much further than the analysis of this phenomenon. In effect, only recently have the most acute critics started to deal with this area, critics who no longer uphold common sweeping statements, expressed by slogans like "from the spoon to the city". As Maldonado writes: "Industry, as an abstract, monolithic entity was a 19th. century myth. In reality, what really exists today is "industries". It is for this reason that there is not just one industrial design, but several, all very different from each other. The monistical conception of industrial design will have to be replaced by a pluralistic one. I doubt whether the legendary problem of relations between Art and e Industry can be solved at all, but I am sure of one thing: for the first time we shall be able to know what we are talking about". Going back to what consumers think about furniture design, it should be added that they basically see it as a series of fashions - the rational-functional one; then the popularity of organic Scandinavian furniture; the expressive pieces of the opulent Sixties (but this richness did not equal the value of antique furniture which has always resisted fashion); objects made with new technologies (plastic, printing, plywood, etc.) which is synonymous not with the complexity of production but only with high consumer prices and often the poor quality of the materials; and finally radical design, which appears to the consumer as the most unjustifiable of these fashions, especially when this hymn to the ephemeral, the banal, the kitsch, means having to pay as much as for a classic piece, whether antique or modern. The problem of price is certainly very important when talking about the criticism of domestic design. We have already mentioned the divergence between taste and the unpopularity of modern design with most consumers. On the production side, there has either been unconditional acceptance of current taste, only because it was in their interests to meet the demand, or at best the continuation of the cultural tradition of design, which meant the idea of quantity was soon abandoned with the result that high production costs pushed up selling prices. This may have been the only solution to provide for a particular market segment - that of a well-informed élite. On the other hand, it is quite legitimate to suppose that the tendency towards high selling prices will continue even when a larger consumer market has accepted design culture. Why should the objective be a laborious quantification of products with all the entrepreneurial risks and difficulties inherent in manufacturing when all that is necessary to make the same profit is to serve a small number of clients, who are proud of being an élite, anti-conformist and culturally avant-garde? However, it does not appear (except in a very few cases) that the success of a piece of furniture has automatically meant the selling price being reduced. In other words, production born of design culture has not reached the masses, at least as far as products for the home are concerned, and has imposed high prices as a tribute to the ideology of the well-to-do. As Veblen well-known theory says - the value of a commodity resides in its high price. He also makes an interesting remark about aesthetic value in this connection: "The general principle ... is that if an object of value is to appeal to our sense of beauty it must conform to the requirements of both beauty and expense. But that is not all. The question of expense influences our tastes to such an extent that they become inextricably linked (in our assessment of what expense means) with the consideration of what is beautiful in an object, and the result is seen as being an appreciation of its beauty ...... The best examples of this mixing and muddling of expense and beauty can probably be seen in clothing and household items".37 If what Veblen says is true, then surely the fascination exerted by high prices should not only affect the well-to-do, but all classes of society, because everyone can attribute a value to the high price of an object if they wish to do so. Before attempting to draw some conclusions from these contradictory characteristics of design for our "third genre" of production, some other considerations may show how the culture of design has tried, and continues to try, to find a remedy for its difficulties. From what was said above it is clear that the main stumbling block has been in the passage from production to consumption. What strategy has industry used to guide and regulate this relationship? As everybody knows, it turned to both market and motivational research, creating a specific sector for "marketing' In this essay we have neither the space nor the specific competence to analyse this aspect fully, but since no appraisal of design can ignore it completely, we will examine it briefly. It has been rightly said that "actually both market and motivational research have up until now only produced fragmentary and provisional results. In recent years market research has perfected its methodology, but it still reveals grave shortcomings on account of lack of precision in its conceptual framework. It sometimes seems that a market researcher believes in the possibility of quantifying consumer behaviour in absolute terms, without any consideration of the qualitative aspects. And if market research can be criticised for relying only on a quantitative approach, motivational research is similarly gravely onesided [...] Both types of research suffer from the same limitation in their consideration of a demand which is already structured and never one which has yet to materialise”. How has this assessment changed between when it was made in 1964 and the present day? In theory very little, if it is still possible to read - in a study published in 1990 - that market research "can 'photograph' reality and reveal what in effect is already apparent. It cannot bring to light that particular intersection between what the public may desire (but has not yet found the way to express) and what technology is capable of offering (but still has not found a fertile terrain), which together constitute the ’new idea of the product’”.39 In practical terms, have research techniques really overcome the tendency to extrapolate what was merely the picture of current demand and may already have faded away as the new article is being prepared and put into production? The solution to this problem has been sought in a strategy which no longer applies market research to the status quo, as it were, but reduces the interval of time between production and consumption so that rather than knowing today what the public will want tomorrow, one seeks to supply in the shortest time possible what is in demand today. This strategy has been put into effect by exploiting the new resources of technology: "Industry has organised itself according to an integrated system of information and production which is in contact with demand and in which all the components interact in the shortest possible time. In particular the integration of the project stage with numerical control technology or computer-controlled production lines makes it possible within the limits determined by the system, to carry out variations in the finished product at virtually any moment without interrupting the production line. The integration of the commercial apparatus with the purchase of stock, production and storage allows for working in practice on commission (the emphasis is ours) and the technical solutions adapted leave room for the introduction of variations on a fundamentally homogeneous model to give the final product a variable profile. Underlying all this is a new idea of marketing, viewed as a relationship with the public which precedes the whole production cycle and governs both in the short and the long term the market image of the manufacturer and the specific qualities of the individual products, basing its orientations on an analysis in real time of the consumer trends and the evolution in market taste". To be honest we do not find this solution, presented like a deus ex machina, very convincing. As we have already observed, and we shall return to the point later, the process outlined above is, at least in the results it produces if not in its actual methodology, very similar to that of artidesign. While this certainly strengthens our thesis of a "third genre", it also implies the loss of one of the principal characteristics of design: the uniformity of serial production once the ideal attributes have been established in the blueprint. Secondly, the employment of computerisation and informatics will determine new rules for the marketing aspect but will not give it a higher profile. It is true that market research has never been truly scientific, as it was claimed to be, but at least it ensured certain organisation of data, with forecasts and technical and commercial estimates; in a word, it reflected that factor of risk which ultimately stands as the ethical justification of capitalism. The new technology would put an end to that by controlling the nature of the product while it is in production. Yet such a control can only produce small variations in a model which is fundamentally homogeneous. What is more, this so called made-to-order production will tell us little or nothing about consumers' habits and trends: in any case no more than what we learnt from market research (which continues to exist and develop). The gulf that has come to separate the public at large from design culture is not simply a question of details which can be solved by using numerical control technology, for it concerns much more substantial problems, some of which we have mentioned while others will be seen shortly. Finally we must ask how many and what kind of firms will be able to use this technology to intervene on their prototypes. Can one speak of "personalised" objects simply because in a homogeneous series some specimens differ from each other in one particular detail? The components of the so-called American-style kitchens, the different armrests of a series of armchairs, certain extras and so on certainly have nothing to do with a highly crafted quality product. Another criticism we must make of the present state of design - still in the interests of clarifying the characteristics of artidesign - concerns its "superstructure” particularly in the furniture and furnishing sectors. Just as in marketing, until a few years ago, much was made of "induced needs”, "occult persuasion" and similar pseudo-concepts formulated by a trend of sociology which had patently failed to come to terms with the relationship between production and consumption, so recently emphasis has been put on information rather than the product, on the concept rather than the object - in a word on a "superstructure" which takes priority over the production itself. Naturally this has nothing to do with the Marxist concept which established a dialectical relationship between the two terms, whatever the context in which they were applied. The current notion of "superstructure" indicates something superfluous which tends to gloss over the structural character of all those products which are indispensable in our daily lives. Thus publicity takes precedence over the real quality of a product, promotion over its genuine usefulness, its "information" potential over its actual value. Furthermore market strategy in the field of design, in common with all industrial production whether aspiring to quality work or not, does not stop at these collateral operations: the logic of the "superstructure" enters into the form and contents of the products themselves. The clearest expression of this phenomenon is seen in the "bi-dimensional" tendency. As has been observed, "our world seems to lose its sense of depth. The physical and cultural breadth of the things around us diminish and everything tends to take on a bi-dimensional profile, even in the messages it is supposed to convey. The emblematic images of today's world confront us with an environment that has become volatile and as fluid as the information that flows through it, reduced to the two dimensions of the printed page or the video screen. This prevailing bi-dimensional effect (and the corresponding sense of a dematerialised reality) is by no means limited to information systems. By virtue of a sort of domino effect the whole category of everyday objects seems to be succumbing to the same trend: not only that vast family of products which, with the progress in electronics and the consequent miniaturisation of their functions, are becoming bidimensional, but also objects which by nature are unequivocally three dimensional now tend to display on their surface more and more of their functions and expressive capacity".41 This description of the phenomenon is clear and irrefutable, and in its more general sense - the priority of information over configuration - raises several considerations which are relevant to the current crisis of design. There is no danger that we, who have always been attentive to the problems of information, the significance of an object's functions, to semiotics and to the mass media42, will react with surprise or disappointment to this prevailing trend of contemporary design, but at the same time we do not wish this bias towards information to lead to misunderstandings. The first and most widespread risk is to confuse the "lightness" of certain products with a corresponding dematerialisation of their conceptualisation. Plastic plates and knives and forks are and will always remain a surrogate for other products which are traditionally beautiful, solid and longlasting. The fact that they are cheap and can be thrown away after use does not make them vehicles of information, as if they could suddenly be likened to a newspaper, for example. The highly computerised dashboards of some recent makes of car are undoubtedly more decorative than functional, for the information they can claim to transmit remains very limited. The habit of reducing the volumetric and spatial attributes of an object to one surface is an old "decorative" trick to cover up poor workmanship. In short, when talking of visual information in its commonly accepted meaning it is important not to confuse design with visual design. And if we wish to give "information" the sophisticated meaning that is proper to it, there are more pitfalls in wait for us. Certainly even the most banal object has its meaning, but this will always be connotative and not denotative; furthermore one must distinguish between a proper and an improper meaning - or simply between a good and a bad one: the meaning we attach to "design" must always have a positive value, indicating "good design", which would itself be a tautological expression were it not for the deprecable "anti-design" of recent memory. These few indications will have to suffice to show our firm conviction that many transpositions of aesthetic-informational theories to the field of design were simply futile exercises in filling the critical and operative vacuum that has always characterised the discipline in question. However much importance is given to semiotic and semantic values, the primary value of objects of daily use will always be their usefulness, made explicit and highlighted by their very configuration. We cannot end this review of the criticisms of design without also referring to those elements which count in its favour and which will in most cases recur in our examination of artidesign. One such element is the capacity of the discipline, within certain limits, to carry out self-correction. It can be contrasted with urban planning, which is by definition a global and all-embracing activity that claims to incorporate both architecture and design in its scope but which has failed, partly for political and socioeconomic reasons, but also on account of the totalising ideology mentioned above which prevented it from recognising the limits of its own logic. Its exponents did not foresee that the larger the scale of the planned interventions, the longer the timescale of their realisation and the ramifications of bureaucratic red tape, so that by the time the project was completed, it would already have been superseded by the events and realities it was supposed to regulate. In addition, the philosophy of urban planning, which saw the light in the same years as industrial design, was and continues to be seen by ultra-rationalist adepts (and above all by politicians) as a series of Chinese boxes: the plan for an urban district had to be inserted into the plan for the whole town, which had to go into that of the metropolitan area, which in turn had to become regional and so on right up to the national scale. Design, even in its most orthodox phase, has never had such utopian aspirations; it never lost sight of the fact that its application was always in the here and now. It is no mere coincidence that the industrialisation of building firms, which constitutes a sort of bridge between architecture seen as urbanistic quantification and design, has not had the desired success - this for various reasons, but mainly because it did not guarantee that direct relationship between production and consumption and ignored the economic timescale which design has always taken care to respect. In the same way design has gradually freed itself of various other utopias, such as productivity at all costs, a perfect balance between quality and quantity, social pedagogy and so on. It must be said that the culture of design has managed to avoid many errors in virtue of the liberalistic philosophy which underlies it. It has always subscribed to the logic of private initiative and free competition, avoiding close ties with bureaucracy and public commissions and indeed more often than not with politics. In the whole field of building enterprises it has been design, in spite of the criticisms noted above, which has most often obeyed the law of supply and demand and which has kept closest to the logic of the market, with all its instability and contradictions. In the absence of any formal regulations, it has fluctuated between laying down conditions and making concessions, following the pendulum effect inherent in its own process of production and consumption. As a result of this liberalism and the sometimes cynical philosophy of "everything goes as long as it sells" there have been many lapses into bad taste, inefficiency and the ephemeral, but there has also been a lot of scope given to experimentation and innovation in all possible aspects: from a rigorous functionality at one extreme to the celebration of the banal and kitsch at the other. Thus if we really wish to identify the "signs of the times", the most emblematic aspects of a cultural season (rather than epoch), we must turn not to urban planning or architecture but to the system of objects which design has given us. While not denying all the failures it has suffered, we can conclude by saying that all that is positive in it can be interpreted as a great "compromise" - in the best sense of the term, not as the affirmation of a matter of principle or the prevalence of one set of interests over another - between all those dualisms which have been formulated and campaigned for since the industrial revolution: quality/quantity,useful/useless,object/concept, information/redundancy, functional/decorative,conformation/representation,etc.,even modulating between the industrial and the artisan. This is why we have proposed the re-dimensioning of design in terms of artidesign, at least in our particular field of interest, that of furniture and household objects. 43. From design to artidesign. Our conclusions are reflected in this interpretation of the present reality by E. Manzini: "The classical industrial culture envisaged a world that was simplified and transparent like a production line. Instead today we are confronted with a complex world in which "hi tech" can interact in many different ways with more established technology and even with traditional craftwork, in which time-honoured skills can be recycled in very modern contexts; so that instead of the expected homogenisation of cultural and productive models to produce a single dominant rationale, the fundamental diversity is enhanced. If it is true that the world is becoming a "great planetary village", it is no less true that in this village many languages are spoken and different traditions continue to flourish. And the variety of forms that characterises production is reflected in a comparable variety of forms at the project stage. The semantic ambiguity of the term "design" is the reflection of this diversity of conditions in which the meeting of industrial culture and project culture takes place. If today it is impossible to refer to one single model of productive activity, it is also impossible to evoke a single identity for the planner" The situation outlined here has much in common, as we have suggested, with the context in which we situate artidesign, and indeed this outline can virtually serve as a definition of it, but not quite. It is true that the author recognises the possibility of combining the most advanced technologies with the most heterogeneous and traditional forms of production, above all those of the artisan, and also the legitimacy of the different languages and the most varied inputs; that even the term "design" is used ambiguously to indicate a situation characterised by diversity. But his analysis tends more to underline the pluralism of contemporary productivity than to identify a new sector with its own, albeit still spurious, structure. In fact he precedes the above passage with another one which gives a better summary of his point of view, at least in what interests us: “In the end the mature industrial culture appears to be a hegemonic system inasmuch as it determines the overall framework, but also a "tolerant" one that is open to various solutions and able to integrate what exists by recycling it with new connotations in its own processes"44. Of course we have no intention of evoking a post-industrial condition, for we do not believe it possible to leave behind industrialism in its broadest sense. But in what measure can a "mature industrial culture" tolerate, particularly in the sector we are interested in, the whole range of diversification which is emerging as acceptable without being deformed by this process? How far can artidesign, which certainly has traditional components and modes in both planning and execution open to it - at times bordering on the reactionary -propose itself as a tolerated component of mature industrialism, or should it not rather contest it? Our "third genre" between craftsmanship and design cannot be considered a mere tendency to set beside other tendencies, one aspect of the widely trumpeted pluralism; in other words,it is not a sort of cultural broadmindedness or tolerance, nurtured by critics and theoreticians, but must rather be seen as a separate "craft" in its own right, considerably compromised it is true, but with a series of virtues and defects all its own, In practical terms what are the results of the all-embracing approach of industry and advanced technology? Leaving aside the postmodernist mystifications, we can think of nothing more than computerised and numerical control technology which, as we have seen, are able to introduce small "personalising" variations into a base model without interrupting the production line. These same advantages, together with those offered by made-to-order production, can be found mutatis mutandis in the processes of artidesign without the need for expensive computerised machinery. We are aware that the difference between these processes and those of numerical control technology is that it is not necessary to interrupt the serial output, but if the costs of enabling the artisan equipment to achieve the same degree of variety are not prohibitively high, is the new technological operation really indispensable? What sort of design would claim variety and flexibility for the structural configuration of a product because one or two details are changed? After all what is decoration, in its most traditional and superfluous sense, if not a limited, superficial variation operated on a morphological organism which in its essence is fully defined? Is it not more logical, at least in the sector we are discussing, to opt for a small series which differs from the next series in both "substance and appearance' as is the case for artidesign? The question of pluralism is more complex. It can be measured against the plurality of individual solutions within a more general and uniform, production, but it really signifies the coexistence not just of several tendencies but indeed of different conceptions of design itself, or as Maldonado put it, of many different "designs". This is not only a matter of classification and theoretical taxonomies, but has its tangible and practical aspects, such as the counterparts required by the different ways of conceiving design and the relative technologies. Without wishing here to enter into the ecological debate, there is no doubt that industry at large, alongside its undeniable progress, has also caused grave damage to the environment, just as it has sought to overcome the "limits of development". Leaving aside all catastrophical moralism and at the same time any utopian solution, we feel able to put forward the hypothesis that the damage produced by technology on a large scale can be limited or eliminated by a still more advanced technology. Yet if this is true for large-scale production, it should also be valid in the opposite case: it should be possible to limit or eliminate many of the shortcomings of small-scale technology by developing an even smaller, more convenient and user-friendly technology. Once pluralism has been accepted, this coexistence of macro- and micro-technology is quite natural: for several decades now scientists have recognised a "double standard" between macrophysics and microphysics, albeit in the opposite sense to the one we have evoked, since the latter refers to the more advanced discipline. In speaking of our sphere of interest, we can say that it is still legitimate to associate macrotechnology with industrial design, while it is becoming more and more useful and apposite to link microtechnology to artidesign. We can go on to identify other consequences of pluralism. In Chapter III, Design as a criterion, we left unanswered one important question which explains why a quantitative policy, the "democracy of consumerism” is no longer valid". Today in fact we can observe with critical acumen how the situation really developed. We can evaluate both the pros and cons of the spread of consumerism and appreciate the social inequalities which this gave rise to and the price in terms of damage to the environment [...]. It may have seemed legitimate to link progress to parameters of quantitative growth in a world which still appeared basically simple (in which elementary needs could be identified and satisfied with standard products), but today considerations of quantity have been superseded by those of quality. This does not mean that problems of quantity are no longer relevant - on the contrary, in some contexts it is still vital to be able to decide increases and decreases in output - but rather that if progress is to be achieved, it can only be assessed according to qualitative parameters. And the qualitative dimension cannot be considered using simple models of reference, for quality is synonymous with complexity". Such an association with complexity is one of the most concrete ways of talking about quality, which otherwise remains vague and impossible to define. Complexity implies a transition from rigidity to flexibility, from primary to secondary needs, from the commercial product to the social service and all the other phenomena we encounter as our contemporary world becomes ever more complex. Yet does not such complexity correspond more to an awareness, an ability to formulate the problems rather than an actual solution to them? A more realistic and, under present circumstances, more efficient interpretation seems to lie in the awareness of being in a complex situation - social, economical, cultural and productive - which actually requires, however paradoxical this may appear, a "reductive" approach. What other explanation is there for energy saving, the search for new, cheaper sources of energy, for means of technology which pollute less, and even for information which becomes more efficient as it is transmitted by fewer and more precise messages? In short, among the various ways of reducing the objective complexities to forms that render them tolerable and intelligible, we certainly cannot exclude the possibility that all these ways of economising involve not only a more sophisticated technology but also a sort of "going into reverse”. If then the various reductions outlined above undoubtedly require re-examining and rethinking in the context of macroindustry and industrial design, small- and medium scale industry and their equivalent, artidesign, would seem to contain at a structural level some possibilities for solving many of the problems raised above. Thus the greater flexibility which is recommended for large-scale industry has always been a characteristic of "cottage" industry; quality, which has become identified with complexity and is the opposite of quantity, now more than ever a mechanical and mass phenomenon, is by definition characteristic of skilled craftsmanship or its present equivalent, artidesign; the solid, lasting product over against ethereal and ephemeral information; the more "natural" and less polluting production processes; the phenomenon which requires that every technological innovation, particularly if it involves automisation, brings with it a reduction in the work force, and so on; all these topics can undoubtedly find a solution more immediately and concretely in the sector we have taken as our subject. The "great debates" which go on about what used to be called "progress" and is now more modestly referred to as "development" are largely irrelevant to craftwork, including the version of it that is more modern and appropriate to today's reality which we have called "artidesign”. It may well be that these time-honoured skills have survived over the centuries precisely because they did not involve so many costs, in terms of social equilibrium, energy use, pollution and so on. However implausible it may seem at first sight, it is possible that large-scale industry and industrial design may be obliged to "go into reverse" while small-scale industry and artidesign can "go into top gear". We are now in a position to identify, define and describe artidesign on the basis of all the considerations made so far and on deductions drawn, as we set out to do, from its relationship with art, craftwork and design. In relation to art, artidesign emerges as the activity which is most successful in transforming imagination, experimentation, aesthetic pleasure and image into material objects. The reasons for this success are: a) like craftwork, it is able to transfer directly to its products its artistic attributes without excessive mediation (i.e. engineering, production mechanisms, absolute dependence on economic calculations); b) unlike craftwork, it respects, in the variability of the number of components of each series, the principle of an art which is technically reproduced; c) going beyond "utilitarian art", artidesign is able, thanks to the limited apparatus it requires, to transform into usable objects all the aspects, whether representative, expressive or indeed anti-conformist, of the artistic avant-garde, i.e. both its rational and irrational aspects; d) in its re-dimensioning of the global vision of art-design-architecture, artidesign does not only draw on the indications which derive from the classical avantgarde, but from all art of the past which, when turned into objects and thanks to the new techniques, sometimes even succeeds in freeing itself from eclecticism. In relation to craftwork, the phenomenon we are trying to define draws on its heritage and introduces the following corrections and transformations: a) it is not concerned with a one-off product (and herein lies the justification for the survival and coexistence of craftwork) but rather with a multiplicity which reflects the aspects we are about to list; b) it evolves its own microtechniques so that it maintains the right balance between the methods of craftwork and costly industrial plant, enabling it to experiment in terms of both morphology and technology; c) it does not refuse publicity and sales promotion, but these are based not simply on "image" but on more substantial and tangible qualities; d) like craftwork it works to order but, like design, it is able to anticipate the market's requirements; e) as a result it does not maintain a direct personal relationship with the customer, as a craftsman does, but yet it preserves flexibility in the sense of a relationship with a "group” somewhere between the individual and the mass. In relation to industrial design, the "third genre" has obviously much in common, and the following aspects show the affinities and distinctions: a) it maintains the importance of the project stage, but is ready to make alterations during production; b) it uses both traditional and up-to-date materials, but elaborates them in its own way; c) like design, it aims at a homogeneous finished product, but nonetheless declares explicitly the heterogeneous character of the components; d) it is also constantly adapting its machinery to the requirements of the consumer, but it concentrates on simple, flexible production apparatus; e) it substitutes the hi-tech approach of design with more empirical procedures; f) it is similarly attentive to trends in taste and changes in habits, without any ideological, pedagogical or sociological assumptions. We could continue this list of its characteristics, since others have already been mentioned or will emerge below, but this should suffice to give an idea of artidesign as a phenomenon of culture and production which is balanced, calibrated and adaptable, all attributes which the theory of the applied arts has always extolled and which in any case have been shown to be particularly suited to the sector of furniture and household objects for which the notion of this "third genre" was conceived. If our considerations are valid and appropriate to the panorama of productivity in Italy, we can affirm that the best of our production in this sector can be more accurately ascribed to artidesign than to industrial design. Thus the best designers and firms have taken what is of most value from tradition, have accrued invaluable experience and transformed limits, difficulties and necessities into unexpected virtues. Note 1 G. C. Argan, Il disegno industriale, in Progetto e destino, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1965, p. 133. 2 Ivi, p.25. 3 Cfr. W. Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduziebazkeit, 1936, poi in Schriften, Francoforte 1955; trad. it. L'opera d'arte nell'epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, Einaudi, Torino, 1966. 4 G. C. Argan, Ancora dell'arte astratta, in Studi e note, Bocca, Roma, 1955, p. 120. 5 Cfr. R. De Fusco, Storia dell'arte contemporanea, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1983. Id., Storia del design, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1985. 6. I. Calvino, La sfida al labirinto, ne «Il menabò», n. 5, 1962. 7 Ibidem. 8 G. C. Argan, L'Arte moderna 1770/1970, Sansoni, Firenze, 1970, pp. 449-450. 8 G. Dorfies, Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica, Cappelli Editore, Bologna, 1963, p. 18. 10 Ivi, p. 19. 11 G. Dorfies, Il divenire delle arti, Einaudi, Torino, 1962, p. 158. 12 E. Manzini, La materia dell'invenzione, Arcadia Edizioni, Milano, 1986, p. 30. 13 H. Focillon, Vita delle forme, Le Tre Venezie, 1945, p. 74. 14 E. Manzini, op. cit., p. 31. 15 A. Hauser, Le teorie dell'arte, tendenze e metodi della critica moderna, Einaudi, Torino, 1969, p. 227. 6 Cfr. R. De Fusco, Storia del design, cit. 17 E. Manzini, Artefatti, verso una nuova ecologia dell'ambiente artificiale, Domus Academy, Milano, 1990, pp. 62-63. 18 S. Giedion, L'era della meccanizzazione, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1967, p. 46. 19 Ivi, p. 82. 20 Ivi, p. 117. 21 Cfr. A. J. Pubs, American Design Ethic. A History of Industrial Design, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1983, p. 253. 22 E. Severino, La filosofia moderna, Rizzoli, Milano, 1984, p. 59. 23 G. C. Argan, Il disegno industriale, in Progetto e destino cit., p. 137. 24 H. Greenough, The Travels, Observations and Experiences of a Yankee Stonecutter, in FO. Matthiessen, Rinascimento americano, Mondadori, Milano, 1961, p. 220. 25 Ivi, p. 221. 26 H. Ford, My Life and Work (1922), cit. in T. Maldonado, Disegno industriale; un riesame, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1976, p. 45. 27 H. Ford, To-day and To-mor-row (1926), cit. in T. Maldonado, op. cit., p. 45. 28 Id. My Life and Work, cit., pp. 44-45. 29 G. Dorfies, Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica cit., p. 25. 30 G. Kubler, La forma del tempo, Einaudi, Torino, 1976, pp. 88-89. 31 Cit. in V. Gregotti, L. Berni, P. Farina, A. Grimaldi, Per una storia del design italiano, 1918-1940: Novecento, Razionalismo e la produzione industriale, in «Ottagono», n. 36, marzo 1975. 32 G. Dorfies, Dieci anni tra due convegni, Atti del Convegno L'Oggetto abitato-l'industrial design nella prospettiva degli anni, in «Caleidoscopio», a. XIX, n. 34. 33 T. W. Adorno, Parva Aesthetica (1967), Feltrinelli, Milano, 1979, p. 121. 34 Ivi, pp. 122-123. 35 T. Maldonado, Arte e industria, in Avanguardia e razionalità, Einaudi, Torino, 1974, p. 144. 36 Cfr. G. D'Amato-R. De Fusco, Per chi tanto design?, in «Op. cit.», n. 59, gennaio 1984. 37 T. Veblen, La teoria della classe agiata (1899), Einaudi, Torino, 1949, p. 110. 38 T. Maldonado, Scienza e progettazione, in Avanguardia e razionalità cit., pp. 198-199. 39 E. Manzini, Artefritti cit., p. 70. 40 Ivi, p. 52. 41 Ivi, pp. 22-23. 42 Cfr. R. De Fusco, Architettura come mass medium, Dedalo libri, Bari, 1967. 43 E. Manzini, op. cit., p. 65. 44 Ibidem. 45 Ivi, p. 63. - - Artidesign 1