Dear friends, in attachment you find some letters of Susan Yelavich, Victor Margolin, Kjetil Fallan, Anna Calvera and me.
In November I met in New York Susan and we discussed about History of Design. After that encounter I wrote a letter to some friends. All their letters are here attached. Now I send that letters to you hoping we can go forward with this debate. Anyway I try here to summarize what in my opinion are the main points of the discussion.
- I insist that there is a loss of importance of History of Design in Design Schools. Many of us think that it depends upon the hegemony of technical and managerial culture. Fallon says that there is a better situation in Eastern Schools (it would be interesting to have more information about that).
- I deeply agree with Fallon about the autonomy of History of Design and against reducing H. of D. only to a tool for projecting (of course it can be useful to designers for their project.).
- About Teaching History of design: Historical or Modal way? Or both for graduating students and only Historical for the first courses?
- Susan remarks the difficulty in appreciating History from the young people. I insist that there is a loss of importance of History in general in postmodern culture and this influences also our schools.
- In AIS/Design (the Italian Society of Design Historians) we are discussing about education of Design Historians. In Italy there aren’t master or Ph.D. for education of Historians of Design.Here I have summarized what it seems to me the main points of the discussion but the letters are much richer. I hope we can go on in this discussion.
Many thanks and hearing from you soon.
Chairman of AIS/Design
Vanni Pasca