ADI Design Index: a book to read from start to finish

The ADI Design Index is therefore first and foremost an exhibition to see. It will be in Milan at the Design Museum until November 17, and then continue in Rome from the 25th to the 30th of the same month.

ADI Design Index 2024 is also an important book. And as such it should be read, not just browsed to look at the pictures, which is what we tend to do. Partly because for a long time Italian design was represented through the style and manufacturing mastery of furniture companies. And so a quick glance by the design community and enthusiasts was enough.

Partly because once upon a time the texts and captions said very little about how intelligence applied to industry and craftsmanship was becoming a systemic tool necessary, once again, to evolve.

The leap of design from creative discipline to method of thought has been pervasive and manifest but difficult to intercept and tell for an association that has always dealt essentially with products. The 2024 edition of the ADI Design Index, however, is different.

The introduction by the Scientific Committee also explains it: "In this path, the design (or redesign) of products and production techniques, the attention to the use of easily recyclable or reusable and the focus on disassembly (to promote repairability) are at the center of almost all the selected works, many of which have been the trigger for more general processes of reorganization of companies.

Yes, because the complexity brought by sustainability is also upstream undermining the cascading organizational models of companies towards horizontal and collaborative models".

The ADI Observatory has selected 219 projects that tell the story of a more horizontal and collaborative industry

The 219 projects selected by the scientific committee of the ADI Permanent Observatory are the story of contemporary stories. They highlight problems, even emerging ones, and seek answers. Designers are confronted with every type of crisis, social, environmental, economic and anthropological.

The world is asking a lot lately. From a human and, consequently, design point of view. But the collection of intelligent projects of the ADI Design Index shows that we are trying. Or that we have the ability to persist despite everything.

With implacable patience and stubbornness the Design Index tells what we are doing and, generally speaking, contains good news. It is a volume to study to marvel and understand how much and how the industry and the manufacturing reality of small and large companies is concretely changing.

And how much and how design is today a discipline capable of structuring a broad and collaborative thought capable of providing answers, even if only partial and not definitive, on social and environmental issues. It is not just a question of sustainability, an area in which the project has been and will continue to be fundamental for modifying production processes and for rationally exploiting technological evolution.

It is above all a question of mental scenarios, ethical and cultural positions.

This is demonstrated by the numerous books, research, exhibitions, design projects for social and inclusion described by the Index. Because they speak of a world that sometimes fiercely questions the status quo, questioning the way we have always done things and proposing more rational solutions. Certainly facilitated by the massive presence of an enabling technology, but also by the willingness, not so obvious, to change for the better.

Luciano Galimberti, ADI president: “I think it is right to declare the selection criteria”

“Too often, quality is identified as an absolute term, but contemporary society cannot be satisfied with a generic term. If the quality of Italian design must be a distinctive factor, it must be measurable, because it has an enormous responsibility in the international context.

For ADI, there are the fundamental factors: materials, because the less you use them, the more repairable the products are and the more resources are saved.

Packaging: an issue that arrived late with respect to the great theme of production, but it concerns a significant part of what is produced. The project: a fundamental part of analysis that concerns the methodology, resources, attention to fragile users, the relationship between aesthetics and function.

When added together, these factors are able to measure how quality is produced, by now taking for granted a series of characteristics that in the past were manifestos for a new vision of design”.