Historia del diseño
Renato De Fusco
2023Historia del diseño
Biographies
Renato De Fusco
Renato De Fusco was a renowned historian and essayist on architecture and design. A former Chair of Architectural History at the University of Naples, he also served as a critic of contemporary art, architecture and design at the Op.cit magazine, which he diligently directed for sixty years, considered one of Italy’s most respected cultural publications in the sector. In 1967 the Italian National Institute of Architecture awarded him the In/Arch prize for the magazine, and in 2001 he received the same prize for his career in the field.
Renato De Fusco
| 2023What we call design and how it evolves in human cultures are subjects addressed by an abundance of writers. But, “any essayistic writing on the theory is confined to the search for a definition of design, which is continually refuted by the facts”, while “the history has always been contemplated through the prism of the architectural history”.
To resolve this shortcoming, Renato de Fusco set about analysing the development of the phenomenon of design in different cultures, through the lens of an “historiographic artifice”, which considers design as a single corpus, characterised by four structural parameters: the project, production, retail and consumption. That is, when project quality grows thanks to the training of schools and designers, when attention to production can be seen in the details, when the distribution networks and media dare to present and publicly discuss the latest products, and when the public sanctions their quality by buying them, then, and only then, will the four-leaf clover, the quadrifoglio, open up and display its full splendour. Where those four moments – the project, production, retail and consumption, come together in unison, that is when we will have good design.
ISBN 978-84-941113-6-5
Renato De Fusco – 2023
Spanish
Otabind, 23.5 cm x 16 cm / 9.25″ x 6.3″
428 pp
390 b/w ilustrations