The challenges of design according to Domitilla Dardi, design historian, founder and curator EDIT Napoli
"The most urgent challenge as human beings is undoubtedly the climate one, but I don't believe that design can really have an impact on this if it is not preceded by clear global political choices.
The risk in thinking that design alone can be incisive is - as also happened recently during the pandemic - of staging a parade of good intentions , which perhaps receive applause and some prizes, but which do not actually resolve systemic problems which must be addressed in a complex manner.
I therefore come to the challenge that in my opinion design must urgently face in itself: rediscovering itself through preparation, study and the search for meaning.
Recently we have broken down barriers, benefited from contamination with other disciplines, benefited from transversality.
But now I think it's important to go back to design and clarify, study and prepare. There are many ways of designing, but each requires its own precise and specific knowledge.
I feel the urgent need to stop before doing and think about the why, the sense of doing. Why make a book, an exhibition, a collection, a fair, a product? Don't respond quickly to a client's request, but seek the meaning of that action.
For this reason I return to Munari's always brilliant scheme on the process of Creativity. Precisely at the "Creativity" step Munari gave very few explanations, he said that it was a synthesis of the previous work, the pre-design one. And above all that everything starts from the correct "statement of the problem".
Well, it seems to me that it is urgent to start from the statement of the problems, even when we are not called to solve them, but to pose them as critical and speculative design does. Clarity in the meaning, more preparation. Intuitions make sense if they are preceded by preparation, otherwise they are amateur, non-professional expressions. I would start again from these challenges".
