Design, future and prospects of an Italian sector of excellence

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - The design sector, with all its facets and opportunities, was the protagonist of two meetings organised by the Unione Industriali Torino as part of the programme of activities celebrating the title assigned to the Piedmontese capital as Capital of Business Culture 2024. Two moments of discussion that investigated, on the one hand, the future prospects for Piedmontese and Italian design starting from the data of the first three years produced by the Regional Observatory on Design Mira and the contribution of the Circle of Design, and on the other, they traced a bridge between Turin and Milan, in a constructive dialogue between companies that recounted their experience as protagonists at Milan Design Week 2024.

According to the Observatory's data, in the field of design, Piedmont will be the fourth region in 2020 in terms of the number of companies (8.5%) and employment (11.5%), and in 2021 it will be third in terms of added value (11.7%). In detail, "The province of Turin," explains Sara Fortunati, director of the Circolo del design, referring to data from the Symbola Foundation, "is in third place in Italy after Milan and Rome in terms of the number of core design companies (those that have design at the heart of their business, ed.) and is in second place in Italy after Milan in terms of the number of employees, which is close to 5,000. Turin is also the destination of choice for many students who want to train in the various design specialisations, thanks to the presence of the Turin Polytechnic, other universities in the area such as Ied and Iaad, and a course in design at the Academy of Fine Arts. "For us, it is a long tradition that started 30 years ago and has now taken on a scientific aspect," says Claudio Germak, professor of industrial design at the Politecnico di Torino, specifying how "the Piedmontese design scene is articulated, it is not only transportation, it is made up of the many manufacturing sectors and today also all the sectors that address communication and multimedia. Paul Tamborrini, professor of design at the Polytechnic University of Turin, echoes him: "There is strong innovation in the themes linked to communication and in particular to the world of interaction design. There are historical strands, such as transportation design, that characterise our training at an international level and those that may be future orientations of the profession itself," without forgetting that "there are very precise directions that are those of sustainability, which characterises training in our area," Tamborrini concludes.

And another direction that the design sector should take for its future is that ofcity synergies. "That of design is one of the many primacies of our land," emphasises Alessandra Perera, corporate & digital communication manager of Italdesign, a company that took part in Milan Design Week 2024, and then turns her gaze forward: "the future is linked to the creative capacity of both our people and our land and the ability to work as a system, because the increasingly globalised world imposes complexity and the ability to face great challenges. In particular, Perera hopes that 'the one between Turin and Milan is no longer a dualism to the exclusion but a beautiful integration, the joining of forces. The expansive and propulsive capacity that Milan undeniably has more than Turin at this time could only benefit our area'. "Paola Bertoldo, president of L'Opificio, also present at Milan Design Week 2024, agrees: 'The twinning between Turin and Milan as far as design is concerned is absolutely something that already exists in part and should be cultivated and extended, also because we are geographically very close and I see nothing but positivity in this operation. Design as collaboration, therefore, but also as an engine of a 'social transformation'. This is how Daniele Lago, ceo of Lago, one of the companies taking part in Milan Design Week 2024, interprets it, emphasising that design is "an extraordinary discipline that allows you to connect the dots and make companies meaningful, to involve people, to balance nature, technology and people in a single vision, truly building real progress".