In 1954, the Italian artist Bruno Munari won a Compasso d'Oro – Italy's foremost design award – for designing a flexible toy monkey. The next year, he won a second Compasso d'Oro for an aluminum ice bucket. He considered the recognition unfair. As enticing as his designs were – and as much as he admired the work of fellow Compasso d'Oro recipients – he preferred anonymously-designed objects such as padlocks and fishing nets and folding chairs. He praised these commonplace items for fulfilling a necessary function without succumbing to fashion, and honored their unknown designers with his own unofficial Compasso d'Oro awards. "This is real design," he declared. Most of the objects he selected are still in production, as familiar today as they were in the '50s, confirming Munari's good judgment. What has changed is our attitude toward them. Munari's esteem for vernacular design no longer seems revolutionary. It's been institutionalized by museum design departments worldwide, the subject of books and exhibitions. In fact, the interactive process by which classic fishing net and padlock designs evolved is now simulated and accelerated by crowdsourcing creativity, enlisting consumers in participatory design of the goods they buy online. Yet, as a compelling new Munari exhibition in Milan makes clear, Munari's ideas are still radical today. Essay by Jonathon Keats on Forbes.com.
Reported by Forbes.com 10 hours ago.
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