Keywords

1 Exhibiting Design as a Process

This investigation into the possibilities of “exhibiting” design as a process and not as an individual product rests primarily on two key ideas.

The first comes from a conference held in 2007 at the Università Iuav di Venezia titled Memoria e racconto. Per una museologia del design, curated by Raimonda Riccini and Alberto Bassi. On that occasion, some of the major directors of international design museums pondered whether it was necessary or even opportune to develop a specific museological model for design, which might stand astride the two more traditional modes that, in synthesis, designate the isolated display of an art object or the focus on functionality for a technical object [1].

The second is from a more recent experience that seems to concretely carry out this approach. The newest of the Italian design museums, The Spoon and the City, the permanent collection of the ADI Design Museum in Milan which contains the circa 2500 objects of the Historical Collection of the Compasso d’oro award (1954–2020, in progress), tells the story of Italian industrial design – later simply “design” – by enhancing the dimension of design as a process, because the project, as the captions underscore, «is “merely” the result and endpoint of a long process» [2]. Considering design as a process, a series of exhibition devices were used to display the heterogeneous materials – sketches, drawings, models, prototypes, products, communication artefacts, photographs, documents, advertisements and so on – previously conserved or borrowed for the occasion from the many persons who participated in this process (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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The Spoon and the City, ADI Design Museum, Milan (©Elis Gjorretaj)

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A process that, to simplify, may be summarized as De Fusco’s classic “four-leaf clover” [3] (project-production-sale-consumption), to which we might also add disposal/reuse. The ADI Design Museum therefore proposes a museological “model” to exhibit design and design history which is not new, but is rather unusual for Italy in the way it physically “mediates” the argument.

We believe however that this method may be extended to other forms of exhibiting design, those made possible by the digital archives which are also dedicated to content regarding the history of design [4].

In presenting this point of view, we embrace two of the methodological questions identified by David Huppatz in 2020 [5] which we believe are significant for the design historians of the near future. In restating, without mentioning him, what Enrico Castelnuovo wrote some years ago – “It is only by conveying the role and interaction between the various agents in the field, the works, the designers, the engineers, the market place, the production, distribution and promotional processes, the clients, the institutions, the public, that we can attain a total history of design” [6], the Australian theoretician and historian emphasises the need to adopt a holistic approach in reconstructing the history of design, and to consider the final result as the outcome of a process of negotiation and compromise between the subjects that concur to its definition (first and foremost, the clients, designers, manufacturers, technicians and users). This process may be investigated by expanding the focus of study to the projects, models, prototypes and relations between different subjects, “documents” that are sometimes, or no longer, deemed to be worthy of attention.

Furthermore, it appears to be no accident that Huppatz finds yet another opportunity to conduct and disseminate – we might say “exhibit” – shared research conducted by international interdisciplinary groups in archives, libraries and digital databases, increasingly accessible and rich in materials, and the methodologies associated with them, based on the collection of data on the global scale, analysis by algorithms, investigations using powerful search engines (Figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 2.
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Dossiers and documents of the Archivio Ettore Sottsass jr., Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venezia (Fondazione Giorgio Cini onlus, Archivio Ettore Sottsass jr., Centro ARCHiVe Venezia).

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Fig. 3.
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Dossiers and documents of the Archivio Ettore Sottsass jr., Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venezia (Fondazione Giorgio Cini onlus, Archivio Ettore Sottsass jr., Centro ARCHiVe Venezia).

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2 The Digital Models

In the past several decades the forms of digital archives have expanded the opportunities for reconstruction and exhibition beyond the confines of the physical space in the places designated for the conservation and diffusion of documents [7]. The possibilities offered by heritage digitisation and by the technologies for data interoperability, which make it possible to search gigantic volumes of materials belonging to different conservators – from institutions to individual users – have in fact expanded the construction of new and renewed narratives.

Accelerated during the global shutdown caused by the Covid19 pandemic, these opportunities had been summarized as early as 2008 by Jeffrey Schnapp:

“the emerging media domains and practices loosely […] offer new challenges and possibilities for institutions of memory like libraries and museums: novel approaches to conservation and preservation based not upon restricting but multiplying access to the remains of the past; participatory models of content production, re-search, and curatorship; mixed reality approaches to programming and informal education that expand traditional library and museum audiences; enhanced means for vivifying and for promoting active or experientially augmented modes of engagement with both past and present” [8] (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Typeline edited by Isabella Collavizza, Project POR-FSE 2014-2020 (© Isabella Collavizza).

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While their history is relatively more recent [9], archives dedicated to design, especially digital archives, have become a fundamental resource for research in Italy today [10]. They stand at the centre of the debate surrounding both the definition of a work and study methodology and shed light on a specificity that makes it possible to distinguish them, as well as integrate them, with libraries, exhibitions or collections. As digital archivists increasingly adopt an approach that operates between disciplines – bringing together the expertise of researchers, curators, editors and historians [11] –, archives and museum collections dedicated to design in recent years have presented projects developed to test new and original models to avoid the risk of dispersing the materials, facilitate new perspectives for study and animate the archives [12].

Based on an inclusive idea of accessibility [13] – and with certain important harbingers, such as Aiap’s Centro di documentazione sul Progetto grafico (Cdpg) – a case such as the Vico Magistretti Archive, one of the few in Italy, represents for example a fundamental tool for the protection, enhancement and dissemination of design understood as a cultural heritage. Not coincidentally, this same institution, based in Milan, promoted the conference Narrare con l’archivio [14], underscoring the importance and the possibilities offered by the use of Linked Open Data (LOD) [15] technology to create connections within and beyond the archive.

This is just one example in the attempt to build on reflections about current models for producing knowledge [16] as well as the need for a dynamic curatorial approach, across different media and mindful of the spaces and places that generate and store the archive, to guarantee long-term conservation as well as activation and accessibility based on the shorter timeframes of the documents [17]. A perspective that looks to models of participation and integration to consider and design the archive as a place dedicated to connections, exploring the specific potential of the digital object [18], reinforcing the collaboration between subjects with different knowledge and skills, such as design historians, digital archivists, computer scientists, interaction designers.

The same digital object that the most recent experiences show to have become continuously enriched and integrated thanks to the construction of networks and with tools that involve the communities, based on reflections and practices originating in recontextualization and appropriation [19], aimed at the conservation of the ephemeral, as testimony and oral sources [20], rethinking the archive through its contemporary definition as a corpus of materials, collected in a more or less recent past [21], increasingly open, fluid and interconnected.

3 Case Study 1: The Ettore Sottsass Archive

The reconstruction of the design process, by connecting various fonds, is one of the goals of the research project dedicated to the Archivio Ettore Sottsass jr., conserved at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice [22]. This study was conducted by the Università Iuav di Venezia in collaboration with the Centro ARCHiVe, a structure within the Fondazione itself which is responsible for the digitisation and inventorying of the Archive with the aim of making it freely accessible and searchable online.

Consisting of over 100,000 documents dated between 1923 and 2016, the collection contains the personal and design material produced by Sottsass in the fields of architecture, interior design, industrial and graphic design, in addition to graphic artworks, posters, handbills, drafts for publications, books, periodicals, university theses, various documents and some objects.

The problem of the dispersion across different archives of materials covering the same subject was addressed in this case by digitally reconstructing the connections between projects, thereby establishing relations between the many fonds that preserve materials regarding Sottsass.

To establish these connections, which means firstly to identify the projects “dispersed” across several archives, we initially chose to restrict the research area to graphic and industrial design, within the section of the archive defined as “Dossier” by Sottsass himself, and meticulously divided by the designer into folders corresponding to individual projects, classified both chronologically and in terms of design categories (in addition to graphic and industrial design, they include art, architecture, interiors, exhibitions and exhibition design, publication design, articles in the press, varied). This thematic limitation was set to enrich the current debate based on materials that largely have yet to be studied or even released, reconstructing Sottsass’ experimentation and production in each case: from his private and biographical data to the collaborations and relations with partners, collaborators, clients and companies.

Consequently, indispensable sources to consult, along with the publications and catalogues of the exhibitions that have updated the landscape of available studies and resources [23], were first and foremost the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC) of the Università di Parma – recipients of donations made by the designer himself and his heirs at different points in time – and the collections of institutions, manufacturers or collaborators, such as the National Archives in Florence, Museo Casa Mollino, Archivio Cardazzo, Archivio progetti Iuav, Archivio storico Olivetti, Archivio Aldo Londi, Archivio industriale Bitossi, Centro Studi Poltronova or the Archivio Italdisegno-Arazzeria Scassa.

The data sheet developed with XDAMS software carries the references to the materials contained in these fonds, in a digital format if they are available online, as in the case of those conserved at the CSAC in Parma, and will make it possible to publish the summary of Sottsass’ works in industrial and graphic design on the portal dedicated to the digital Archives of the Fondazione Cini [24].

Based on a historical perspective [25] and integrating the research with the expertise of the digital archivists, this study laid the foundations for the reinterpretation and reconstruction of a design method and the processes involved, to shed light on the elaboration of an expressive language in the many areas in which Sottsass conducted his visual and spatial experimentation, and at the same time, to construct a system of his personal and client relationships.

Obviously, the growth in the digitisation of the heritage conserved by various archives and the connections offered by technologies such as LOD would make it possible to “animate” the archive far more productively, and to channel the focus of many “stories”, deriving from the query of the materials, more specifically on the reconstruction of the process inherent to design.

4 Case Study 2: The Typeline Project

The second case study involves a research study developed within the project titled Editorial processes and innovation 4.0: recreating value through the synergy between analogical and digital. This project, which ended in 2019, was a collaboration between the Università Iuav and Ca’ Foscari in Venice, and involved five research fellows, one short-term research fellow, two visiting professors, twelve companies and seven institutions [26]. The general aim was to re-establish the cultural, social and economic value of the book by integrating the practices of design and digital production with those deriving from the rediscovery of letterpress printing and the revival of historical typefaces [27].

Within this framework, one of the themes developed in the project was to determine appropriate ways to access, publish and exhibit typographic materials and processes, and typefaces in particular, artefacts that, together with printing, are recognized by historiography as an accomplished form of design ante litteram with respect to the onset of the industrial revolution [28].

The study involved the Fondazione Tipoteca Italiana as a partner. This is a private institution, founded in Cornuda (Treviso) in 1995 by the Antiga family – owners of a major local printing establishment – and is the most important national museum of the art of printing and typographic design [29]. It features not only an exhibition for visitors, but a laboratory area as well in which to hold classes and workshops. Most importantly, it is sustained by a significant archive of types, machines, equipment and tools used to implement various printing processes, as well as design drawings and promotional documents, and a vast specialized library.

The research focused initially on an analysis of the Tipoteca’s efforts since the 1990s to collect the wood or lead type discarded by printing shops as they adapted to the digital “revolution”, and the relative design materials and specimens dedicated to the glyphs. This acknowledgment highlighted two aspects: on the one hand, the extent to which the current arrangement of the museum exhibition and the physical archive depended on such progressive acquisitions; on the other the lack of a structured classification system or catalogue of the materials, which was still incomplete and relied largely on printed material.

It thus became clear that all the documents conserved at the Tipoteca could only be cultivated, focusing the attention of design history and theory on original or long-neglected forms and sources, by “exhibiting” a historicised reading of the entire printing process through the elaboration of an online digital archiving system based on the digitisation of the materials that characterise each phase of the process.

And thus the project for a virtual archive of the typographic process was born.

To test the project, the Griffo typeface was selected as a case study, in the version cut in 1929 by the Parisian punchcutter Charles Malin for the Officina Bodoni operated by Giovanni (Hans) Mardersteig who, following a meticulous philological study, revived the lower case cut by Francesco Griffo and printed by Aldo Manuzio in 1496, of which the Tipoteca conserves a series of types. The search for documents to reconstruct this history involved the consultation of archives and fonds, such as Mardersteig’s personal archive conserved in the Library of the Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienza e Lettere in Verona, or the Stanley Morison Archive at the Cambridge Library, and the digitisation of various documents [30].

The results were organized into a database that led to the creation of a timeline – named Typeline – conceived to establish relations between the various exemplars that contribute to the story of the typographic/printing process: from the historical or archival documentary traces to the design of the typeface (sketches, handwritten notes, letters, drawings, photographic reproductions, specimens, sample sets and more), to the matrices, and the individual pieces produced of both the typeface family and the printed editions that have used it over time.

This archive can be implemented ad libitum, for example, with some of the results of the research project itself, such as the “replicas” of the Griffo redesigned with digital technologies and plastic materials with the purpose of preserving the original copies, or the proofs printed on paper with contemporary inks formulated to be more environmentally sustainable.

The “exhibition” formats sustained by a digital archive can thus make it possible to bring together information and materials that would otherwise be dispersed across various entities, often geographically distant and sometimes accessible only to physical consultation, but above all to open the processes that narrate the history of design to “the world connected online”. If the technologies were compatible the project, illustrated here briefly but obviously subject to further development, could become a model of “history” that could be constantly updated with newly discovered documents, uses of type or drawn revisitations derived from information found online on the same subject.