Tomás Maldonado was an intellectual who worked in many fields. He was an artist who played a leading role in concrete art in Buenos Aires in the 1950s and, in recent years, had consistently resumed that pictorial path; an educator who taught at the most prestigious universities, innovated educational models, renewed individual disciplinary statutes, and created actual educational institutions; a philosopher who authoritatively engaged with topics such as modernity and technical culture; a designer and, more generally, a planner and design theorist who left essential works and writings. He rigorously and profoundly addressed each of these areas but, above all, he was able to consider them as different tools and perspectives to tackle the complex issues of contemporaneity, always intertwining civil passion, a farsighted ability to anticipate, and a tenacious will to root innovations and experiments within an institutional framework.
This latter peculiarity led him to participate in some of the most innovative and experimental educational experiences, some of which later became reference models for educational paths at an international level. In Germany, he was among the founders of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, inaugurated on October 2, 1955, directed it, and inspired its educational philosophy and content by introducing nascent disciplines into academia such as cybernetics, information theory, systems theory, semiotics, ergonomics, philosophy of science, mathematical logic, and even some basic elements of fractal geometry. In Italy, in the 1970s, he was among the initiators of the DAMS at the University of Bologna and, subsequently, the degree course in Industrial Design at the Polytechnic University of Milan, after contributing to introducing this new educational path into the Italian university system.
His interest in Industrial Design, however, dates back a long time. In 1949, the Architecture Students’ Center of Buenos Aires published an article by a prominent figure of the artistic avant-garde — Maldonado himself — titled El diseño y la vida social, which represents the first document discussing industrial design in Latin America. A prelude to his extraordinary contribution in this field as a teacher, designer (consider, for example, his work for the electromedical industry, for measuring instruments and office equipment, construction machinery, mass distribution, the communication system, interfaces as we would say today, of the Elea computer by Olivetti), theorist to whom we owe the definition of Industrial Design accepted in 1961 by ICSID, which still retains its substantial validity today, and some of the foundational writings of the discipline.
As for his civil commitment and his ability to anticipate issues that would later become priorities in cultural and political debate, one of the most striking examples is his early interest in environmental issues. In 1970, he published in Italy La speranza progettuale with the significant subtitle Ambiente e società. This book, immediately translated into Spanish, English, French, and German, was preceded by two texts that constituted a preview: Noi e il mondo delle merci, published in 1965 in the magazine “Ulm” and Verso una progettazione ambientale, which appeared the following year in the magazine “Summa”. Here, however, the topic was addressed with greater awareness of its multiple scientific, social, political, and economic implications. He distanced himself both from the instrumental alarmism of the President’s State of the Union Message of January 22, 1970, by then U.S. President Richard Nixon, and from the underestimation of the problem by the European left. Among other things, he already pointed out a problem like the uncontrolled increase of the “waste population,” which is still dramatically relevant today. His proposal, objectively against the tide, was the rejection of a defeatist attitude that uses the complexity of environmental problems as an alibi for inaction and the choice to rely on the tools of design. The “design hope,” a challenging watchword and a program to be set up, critically evaluated, and adapted to changes in reality without illusions but with tenacity and perseverance.
(Medardo Chiapponi, published in “Il giornale dell’Architetura”, 158, 2018)
