Between experimentation and radicalism, transcending the oppositions between industry and craftsmanship, Italian design opens the way to another approach to the object, beyond functionalism, renewing the relationship with the domestic environment. After the rationalist aesthetic (Pagano, Albini) of the 1930s and 1940s, Italian industrial design enjoyed international success in the 1950s (Sottsass, Borsani, Colombo, Castiglioni, etc.). From critical utopias carried by radical architecture (Archizoom, Superstudio, Pettena, Ugo La Pietra) to the "reappropriation" of objects (Enzo Mari, Riccardo Dalisi), Italian design opens up to "collective creation" over the seventies.

The catalog is divided into ten chapters: Rationalism, Organic design, Genealogy of the seat, Lighting, Industrial design, Radical design, Radicals in the Memphis style, Post-modern city, with a focus on two major figures in design, Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi. The essays restore the unique history of Italian design, the recovery of anonymous objects, as well as the tractor saddle of the Castiglioni brothers in the 1950s, transformed into a seat, to the breathtaking theaters of objects of Memphis in the early 1980s.