THE DESIGN OF POST-GROWTH: A NEW LEASE OF LIFE

The economic growth is no longer producing welfare or improving the quality of our lives, claims G. Fabris in his latest book La società post-crescita. A new type of growth becomes paramount, then (or even de-growth, according to S. Latouche's most radical proposal), together with a true, deep change in lifestyles, in order to tackle the crisis in which the world has plunged in the past few years. A provocative question would therefore be: why keep producing? Or, at least, we definitely need to ask ourselves how and to what extent to do so, considering the disasters caused by the uncontrolled growth which fills our warehouses with unsold items and the planet with waste. Design is one of the vital ganglions of today‟s society, bringing together science, art, economy, production and higher education. And after the collapse of what was commonly viewed as the monolith of Milan-based Made in Italy production, Italian culture must contribute to renovating design by listening to the thousand voices raised in the various areas where design is the subject of theoretical reflection and practice. To develop a new design culture it‟s necessary to go beyond the distinction between animal laborans and homo faber, as R. Sennet suggests in his The Craftsman, formulating – like the idea of artidesign devised by De Fusco – a mixture of art, crafts and design that is more suitable to the system of small enterprises, which have played such an important role in Italy‟s industrialisation process.