The Italian Embassy in Berlin has started the initiatives planned for the 6th edition of the Italian Design Day with a debate on design, new technologies, and sustainable future. The topic was addressed by Marco Sammicheli – International Relations Chief Officer of the 23rd edition of the Triennale Milano and Superintendent of the Museo del Design Italiano – and the German designer Konstantin Grcic – already three-time winner of the ADI Compasso d’Oro Award, whose works have been included in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Centre Pompidou. The event was moderated by Elke Buhr, Editor-in-Chief of Monopol, German magazine for art and life.
Ambassador Armando Varricchio opened the event by saying: “Designers are increasingly forced to face multiple challenges to create functional, beautiful, and sustainable objects.” He continued: “Sustainability is the keyword for our future. Design needs to renew itself and go beyond what has already been discovered and conquered to explore new dimensions, which can mean new ideas, new materials, or production processes.”
Many initiatives have been planned for the Italian Design Day, organized by the articulations of the Country System in Germany. In Cologne, the Italian Cultural Institute will host the “IT IS: Tradition, Invention, Sharing, Responsibility in Contemporary Italian Design”, dedicated to those Italian designers who represent a new approach to integrated design. In Dortmund, vintage cars as a sustainability model and the influence of Italian producers and designers in creating German models will be discussed. While in Stuttgart, a young business experience from Sicily will be promoted, which combines tradition and innovation using natural leather materials coming from Made in Italy industrial processing waste.
