Know the Foundation that seeks to make the first museum of Argentine design come true
Is there an identity of Argentine design? What do graphic, industrial and clothing design have to do with each other, for example? Is design a product or a process? Is your mission to make something beautiful and easy or does it have a cultural and political dimension? Can art, crafts, design and industry dialogue and provide feedback?
These are some, just some, of the questions that the IDA Foundation (Investigación en Diseño Argentino) comes to answer, an institution that aims to raise awareness about the valuable cultural heritage that exists in Argentine design and aspires to transform his archive, growing, in the first Museum of Design in Argentina.
The Story
When Mariana Dappiano made her career decision, the career in Fashion Design did not yet exist. She wanted to study Fine Arts, "to tell what was going on in my head", but she was afraid of not finding a job opportunity and opted for Architecture, the closest thing to a creative career with a consumable product.
But, while she was studying the Common Basic Cycle, Design in Clothing and Textile was inaugurated at the University of Buenos Aires and she did not hesitate. “There was only one chair for each subject and it was taught in the afternoon”, he recalls and shows how Design, in this case of Clothing, barely twenty-five years ago did not have its space, even in the faculty itself.
“The first great contribution of the IDA Foundation was to give design a cultural entity, which was always somewhat relegated. It is encompassing design per se and all of us who in some way build this heritage”, celebrates Dappiano.
Laura Varsky, another one of those invited by IDA, began studying Graphic Design back in 1994. “Back then, I had to explain what it was. Now, on the other hand, everyone believes that they know what design is and associates it with ideas that, from my point of view, detract from the discipline”, she says and details:
“It is locked up in a mercantilist idea and a methodology of efficiency and the entire political and cultural sphere is lost and how one can trace how design works in any industrial process”.
“What IDA does by giving it a sphere of heritage is to make us understand these dynamics with the Monday newspaper and to be able to intervene in the present from another place. It shows how it affects the cultural and industrial sphere and gives it a political volume, in order to understand how those contributions made the society that it was. Because design is a fundamental transformative tool”, says Varsky.
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Sculptor Celina Saubidet and industrial designer Marina Molinelli Wells run Cabinet Bone, where they make sculptures, jewelry, and pieces for the home. They also donated part of their production to the IDA archive. “Argentine design is part of the national identity. It is vital that we distinguish it and that this country, which always lives in the present, has a solid foundation of a past that also builds a future and shows that there are great designers and a history here”, says Saubidet.
“The ultimate goal of turning the IDA space into a public and open space, where material can be exhibited and people can interact, will do a lot of good, also for all students, because they will find a concrete heritage, with a narrated story”, affirms Molinelli Wells.
The Legacy
For Varsky, when we think about design, we usually imagine a finished object. However, she says, the design is the entire construction process that results in the final product and that is the most difficult thing to tell but, in turn, what she considers essential.
For all this, he also donated his sketches and annotations, records that will allow us to see the orders of his clients, the returns and the assembly and development of the idea.
In Dappiano's case, he had to open bags of clothing he had created for runway shows and photos. "Seeing my coat rack in IDA was very strong, it gives me a flashback of each creative process," she says, and maintains that she has always been moved by the challenge of turning things that interest and excite her into clothes, from a little crab and its joints to a trip to the Sicily of his grandparents.
“My thing is not to make clothes by saying: ´This clamp and this sleeve generate such a thing´, I could never start from there. Many make clothes because they like clothes. I am passionate about design."
Celina and Mariana, who consider themselves to be “magpie keepers” and have a hard time parting with their productions, are encouraged and relieved by the possibility of donating them and making them accessible to the general public.
“We have a lot of things that were part of the creative process. We work in a trial and error laboratory, that exploratory and creative part is what we like the most”, concludes Celina.
The mission
IDA highlights how transdisciplinary design is. Open the fan and show that everything around us is crossed by it. That multiplicity was little recognized before. Laura Varsky says that what she finds in those crosses is very inspiring.
“When we talk about design, we all understand each other. However, we are talking about different things, everyone brings something different. Before, I thought I understood what a clothing designer did, for example: I thought they did the same thing as me but that it ended in a garment. Then you understand, and that makes you give another dimension to the design itself, how with the same methodology and tools you face the processes and build from another side. That ends up enriching what I do. For this reason, it is so important that there be a Museum of Design, where boys in their fourth and fifth year of Secondary school can go, for example, and can make design visible in different areas of society, understand that everything we use and consume It is designed. That is the step to take, that it be a living, meeting space, where activities can take place. It is something that we still do not have in Design”, explains Varsky.
By uniting two different paths and amassing a common project, the girls of Cabinet Bone give an account of the multidisciplinary. “The concept of independent disciplines is archaic. I think what is interesting about all this is precisely this revaluation of the collective and interdisciplinary”, says Saubidet, who went from the autonomy of being a sculptor who did her work entirely alone to a joint work in which she is part of a team:
“I realized that the designer is a bit like the director, like in a movie or in an orchestra, the one who has the idea and starts looking for the different members because without them he doesn't do anything”.
Molinelli Wells agrees: “Design is a creative act, where a lot of knowledge and intuitions are combined, and it is the possibility of making it happen. We had a fairly old education, where design and art or trade and industrial design were almost enemies. But the best thing is the exchange because nothing that one does can be done in solitude”. For this reason, in IDA a collective plot is woven, as robust as it is promising.
