This week, we are joined by the Italian maestro Michele de Lucchi, who has left a significant imprint on international design and architecture in the 20th and 21st centuries. De Lucchi has been active even before he graduated from his architecture studies; while a student in Florence, De Lucchi founded Cavart (1973), one of the final collectives associated with the Italian Radical Design avant-garde. De Lucchi would go on to be a key member of three other seminal collectives of the 1970s and 1980s: Global Tools, Alchimia and Memphis, which mark the transition from Radical Design to Postmodernism. In the 1980s De Lucchi was also responsible for industrial designs with Artemide and other firms, representing the increasing diversity of his work, oscillating between industry and craft, mass-production and one-off, and small-scale design and large-scale architecture. Today De Lucchi unites these polymathic activities through his Milan-based studio AMDL Circle.
This interview is conducted by Dr. Catharine Rossi – a UK-based design historian, and Professor of Architecture at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Canterbury. The conversation is conducted in Italian with English subtitles. (Please use the “cc” icon in lower right corner of the video and select English subtitle.)
Watch the conversation here:
Inaugurated on April 1, 2020, Design in Dialogue is a series of online interviews hosted alternately by curator and historian Glenn Adamson and designer Stephen Burks. Conversations are held on Zoom every Wednesdays for 1 hour, beginning at 11am Eastern Time, including a participatory Q&A. Please join leading voices from the field — designers, makers, critics, and curators — as they discuss their work and ideas.
