This is the outlook in which to grasp the lesson of the masters of the postmodern, ‘practical philosophers’ like Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini or Alessandro Guerriero, whose iconoclastic verve was not the expression of a rejection of design itself, but of a palingenesis of the project that in an era when the values of industrial functionality seemed to be wavering, would go back to the roots of the creation of objects to rediscover their original meaning. Being ‘post,’ i.e. ‘after’ the modern era, thus meant taking a programmatic position outside modernity, to explore creative resources excluded from the narrow perimeter of industrial civilization.

This explains the apparent contrast, typical of the postmodern, between objects of geometric composition such as those of Sottsass, and the use of neo-primitive codes applied by Andrea Branzi. These two approaches were derived, in fact, from the same effort to get out of the modern orbit and to draw on older and newer, deeper and lighter sources, through the reinsertion in design of playful and colorful elements and openly neo-primitive references. Today, at the start of the third decade of the 21st century, design culture is in a situation that in many ways is similar to that of the 1980s.

Hence it is not by change that the linguistic evolution in the field shows a direct link to the aesthetics of this relatively recent past. Once again, the negative effects of our collective pursuit of affluence are increasingly visible. Global warming, extreme weather, lack of hydric and nutritional resources, not to mention the risk of pandemics, are stable themes on the political agency in the industrial nations. Design again has to respond to a crisis of faith in progress. Large geometric pieces of furniture, broken down with a logic of surreal elegance, represent a widespread trend that is clearly the heir of the postmodern legacy. But there’s more.

Design again has to respond to a crisis of faith in progress. Large geometric pieces of furniture, broken down with a logic of surreal elegance, represent a widespread trend that is clearly the heir of the postmodern legacy. But there’s more. The ‘instafriendly’ aesthetic of these products, determined by a primordial geometricism that borders on the metaphysical, is particularly suited to impact on social networks, intercepting contemporary visual tastes.