24-25 October. VII National Design Conference at the Polytechnic University of Bari

Product history or history of contexts? The useful contradictions in the history of Design

21 October 2025

Design is the project of material and immaterial goods. Designing means knowing. In order to be on the frontier line, it is necessary to draw on a broad culture: scientific and humanistic, to ultimately arrive at a creative synthesis. The interpretation of history is a means in the effort to combine functionality, meaning, and aesthetics. Even contrasts, antinomies, can be a source of inspiration. And precisely around one question: “Product History or Context History? The antinomies (the contradictions) useful to the history of design”, the presentations of the VII National AIS/Design Conference – Italian Association of Design Historians, which since 2009 has promoted the culture and advancement of studies in the history of design in Italy, will converge.

Precisely from the South, for the first time in Puglia, at the Polytechnic University, the need takes shape to engage at a national level on a history of making design that can look at different models of development, that can see and understand more complex and less standardized production contexts than those that the history of design itself has so far investigated, contexts for which the Mezzogiorno, more than other places, serves as a spokesperson.

The initiative, organized by Poliba (contacts: Professors Carullo, Cristallo, Pastore) and AIS/Design, with the patronage of CUID (Italian University Conference of Design), SID (Italian Society of Design), ADI (Association for Industrial Design), AIAP (Italian Association of Visual Communication Design), is scheduled Friday, 24 and Saturday, 25 October, in the main lecture hall “Domus Sapientiae” of the Department of Architecture, Construction, Design (ArCoD) of the Polytechnic University (university campus).

The conference will host 26 papers, presented by 42 speakers from 12 Italian universities. It will provide an opportunity to reflect on two integrated and parallel perspectives that run through the historical debate on design: on the one hand, the questions surrounding the identity of products shaped by industrial processes; on the other, design understood as a context encompassing ideas, practices and environments.

In the contemporary context of a complex cultural and social transition, engaging with the real or apparent contradictions of product and context, within the historical knowledge of design, is equivalent to exploring the roles of research and education, not so much to demonstrate the disciplinary breadth of design, but above all to consider that historical inquiry represents the premise for understanding the future in which design experiences will have, in addition to the natural task of responding to emerging needs, increasingly that of anticipating and revealing them.

The conference enables Poliba faculty and researchers to highlight and support a “design culture” in continuity with the recent renewal of the degree programmes offered by the university: the three-year bachelor’s degree in “Design” and the master’s degree in “Design for the Cultural and Productive Context.” These programmes aim to train designers capable of critically combining the knowledge of the humanistic culture and the technical-scientific culture, in all phases of conception, development, and realization of artefacts.

The programme. 24 October, Main Hall“House of Wisdom Department of Architecture, Construction, Design – campus universitario.

9:30 a.m.Institutional greetings: Umberto Fratino, Rector of the Polytechnic University of Bari; Francesco Defilippis, Director of the Department of Architecture, Construction and Design, Poliba; Maddalena Dalla Mura, President AIS/ Design; Francesca Tosi, President CUID; Lorenzo Imbesi, President SID.

10:15 a.m. Introduction: Rossana Carullo, Vincenzo Cristallo, Monica Pastore, Polytechnic University of Bari. Sessions and presentations follow.

The universities present: Polytechnic University of Bari, Polytechnic University of Turin, Polytechnic University of Milan, Sapienza University of Rome, University of Florence, IUAV University of Venice, University of Palermo, University of Naples Federico II, University of Ferrara, University of Campania, University of Camerino, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.

The article 24-25 October. VII National Design Conference at the Polytechnic University of Bari comes from Poliba Chronicle.