Design, development and the challenge of autonomy

Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies, 2014

The article discusses Brazilian design from the 1970s in terms of its autonomy in relation to core-country projects and introduces some that addressed particularistic issues without rejecting technological advances. It calls for a historiographical revision of the period in terms of not submitting to the exclusive dictates of the international market and shaping an autonomous critical tradition.

2009

This paper discusses a new approach to autonomous community development, drawing from two main facts: before centralized planning, people used to be able to produce their own everyday spaces; technical support for such autonomy was on the agenda in the sixties and seventies, but was later given up for the idea of participation, which is often centralized planning with manufactured consent. Highlighting these kind of heteronomous processes and pseudo-participation we discuss the instruments used by Urbel (responsible for the urbanization of favelas in Belo Horizonte, Brazil). Finally we argue for an alternative approach based on self-production by means of which people raise data, discuss what to do, get funds and build in a truly autonomous way. This means changing the role of planners from designers of finished proposals to designers of instruments to which people can resort to decide what to do in their own spaces.

The Design Journal, 2019

This paper proposes a modality for engaging communities through design that is for, and from, autonomy. I will start by situating my experience using design in the social sector and introducing the concept of Autonomous Design, as proposed by Arturo Escobar. I will then unpack the three beliefs that Escobar says are historically embedded in the mainstream practices of design, to critic them and propose alternatives. I will then move to interrogate, by reflecting on an example from my own practice, how design could change, ontologically, when we move from a needs-based approach to one that focuses on strengths in groups and communities. I will then conclude by proposing a way to frame the design work with groups and communities, inspired by the work of Escobar.

The Challenges of Autonomy and Autonomy as a Challenge: Thinking Autonomy in Challenging Times., 2022

Autonomy is one of the most challenged and challenging notions of our times. Theoretical investigations and practical applications of autonomy show it as a concept that refracts the extremes of freedom and necessity, identity and alterity, situatedness and displacement, liberty and oppression. Autonomy as a prism is always open to the risk of becoming a crystal prison. Autonomy seems, then, to be a fragile beam of light woven in a spectrum of open oppositions that constantly characterize the course of human beings' individual and social existence. Although the rise of modernity was also the rise of autonomy, and possibilities for self-realization and self-expression are unparalleled in human history, autonomy is significantly challenged in the present-day McLuhanian "global village. " This book addresses the topic of autonomy through different perspectives inspired by Paul Ricoeur's work and applied to a variety of individual and social conditions through the lens of phenomenological anthropology, capabilities approach, and more.

Museum Management and Curatorship, 2018

Lately, since the 'riforma Franceschini', we saw an increasing growth of the pursuit of an effective model to run Italian public museums since February 2016, after having worked more than 20 years as superintendent of artistic and historic heritage in Milan, and being assistant and director of the Pinacoteca di Brera in 2015, I became for 1 year director of the newborn Fondazione Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, going successively back for few months to Brera. Thanks to the twofold experience, the former more about the private side, the latter watching from the outside a freshly reformed museum, I believe I can compare the two models and highlight the positive and negative aspects of both of them. However, this comparison underlines possible common obstacles that should not be taken for granted, obstacles caused by the lack of expert staff when it comes to defining the layout of the museum (economic, governance, organogram) and by the scarce clarity of the main aims of an itinerary that will be unavoidably long but compulsory.

2009

The 'watch dog' role of the media, the impact of migration processes, health care access for children in developing countries, mitigation of the effects of Global Warming are typical examples of governance issues -issues to be tackled at the base; issues to be solved by creating and implementing effective policy.

nonsite.com, 2021

A response to José Eduardo González's review of Di Stefano's _The Vanishing Frame_. See González's review on nonsite.com

Capacity for Development: New Solutions to Old …, 2002

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the old strategies for technical cooperation, capacity-building and, in broader terms, development assistance in a way that will point to new strategies. It is a very old idea that the best form of assistance is to help people help ...