Italian Design Summer School: Art, Society and Industry

The ITALIAN DESIGN SUMMER SCHOOL offers a unique opportunity to understand how the Italian tradition of “Disegno” is still living in today’s industrial design project. 

Italian design became famous worldwide for its unique balance between aesthetics and functionality, expressed through many industrial products, as furniture, cars, motorbikes and household devices. Italian designers take their inspiration from a special artistic atmosphere existing in Italy, whose roots could be found in Giotto's painting and Michelangelo's sculpture, just to mention two of the most known Italian artists of the past.

The course is addressed to students and professionals interested in product design.

The reference professional profile is an expert dealing with product development as well as with the industrialization process, operating since the concept design phase to the executive project and prototype building, taking care of aesthetic and functional aspects, within precise technological and economical boundaries. 
It is an essential figure, requested by firms belonging to several industrial fields, from furniture to automotive, from household appliances to gymnastic equipments, medical instruments, tools and generally any serial product interacting with man. 

Hand crafted and limited series productions, above all those belonging to the fashion industry, will be taken into account through the course developement, as they are strictly tied to most of the distinctive features which make Made in Italy so unique.
Hence, differences between industrial and craft productions will be shown, highlighting the main values of each: functionality characteristics in the first case and artistic aspects in the second. 

A number of visits to firms and institutions representatives of Made in Italy and to artistic and tourist places will be organized, also during the weekends, as an important part of the didactics of the course. 
Particular emphasis will be given to typical industrial productions of Emilia – Romagna region, so firms as Lamborghini (cars), Ducati (motorbikes) and Perla (fashion) will be visited; the artistic peculiarity of Bologna will be illustrated as well, through visits to the Morandi Museum and to the Pinacoteca of Bologna.
The activities, for a total of 150 hours, will take place in Bologna and Bertinoro for two weeks and a half from Monday August 27 to Wednesday September 12 2012.
All the classes will be held in English

In order to immediately apply the contents of the course, a significant number of hours will be dedicated to project works during which students will be asked to develop a specific product following different methodologies: on paper, through virtual modeling and finally producing a physical model.