Vincenzo De Luca, Director General for Cultural and Economic Promotion and Innovation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, takes part in the 2016 Compasso d’Oro Award ceremony.
“The Foreign Ministry has chosen design as one of the cornerstones of its international promotion action. Every year, starting from 2 March 2017, the network of Italian Embassies, Consulates and Institutes of Culture around the world will organise an ‘Italian Design Day’,” Mr De Luca said at the Compasso d’Oro Award ceremony which took place at Palazzo Isimbardi, in Milan. He added: “This will be done in teamwork with public and private players: a networked action following up on the strategy followed for Expo Milano 2015 with the aim of affirming Italy’s design culture worldwide.”
The 2016 edition of the Compasso d’Oro Award focuses on the economic value of design and of intellectual property rights, a strategic issue for Italy. The winning products, which represent all sectors of production ranging from furniture to lighting, from means of transport to services and to personal items, will add on to the assets of the Fondazione ADI Collezione Compasso d’Oro, which has been collecting Italian design items since the award’s first edition in 1954.
The Compasso d’Oro Award has been an international point of reference for decades now, giving an outlook on the dynamics and tendencies of one of Italy’s cultural and industrial trademarks and a place where designers and architects from all over the world share innovative solutions for new shapes, processes and products. It is an Italian and international heritage, a rigorous selection of the most brilliant expressions of international design, merging creativity and ever-more sophisticated industrial processes in a territory in which its history and aesthetic sense combine to do business.
It is precisely this multifarious definition of design – in terms of research, design and industrial development and its incidence on Italy’s socio-economic fabric – that underlies the decision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to involve the Ministry and its diplomatic and consular network in promoting Italian design abroad. Its promotion activity spans from supporting the 21st Triennale International Exhibition and the 55th Salone del Mobile di Milano to its long-dated and well-structured cooperation with the Industrial Design Association.
