Seizing the real : from global tools to design

Abstract

This article reflects the design community’s interest in Global Tools, a 1970’s radical movement in architecture and design, born in Italy and corresponding to a shift from design considered as a practice to a cultural movement that is able to propose new paradigms. Activists involved in making, such as Victor Papanek (1973), in a post-nuclear culture in The Whole Earth Catalog (1971), and by several actors in Aspen, Colorado in 1971, precipitated this movement to the design community. The movement questions the impact of a mass production and consumption model generating an economic, social, and environmental crisis. Global Tools initiated as a school by Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi, questioning the role of the industry as part of a paradigm in which the issue was not how designers could contribute to industry, but how industry could contribute to society. In this article conceived as an interview, the research activity of institut superieur des arts de Toulouse (isdaT) reveals a manifesto towards making in a social economic and milieutechnology new paradigm, with polemic and conceptual relationships to both Global Tools and Design 3.0.