Journal of Design History Vol. 18 No. 4 doi:10.

1093/jdh/epi054

Local, Regional, National, Global

and Feedback:

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Several Issues To Be Faced With Constructing Regional Narratives

Anna Calvera

The author is grateful to Professor Christopher Bailey for advice on

the English version of this article.

This paper aims to clarify the methodological problems faced by a local historian when he or
she attempts to describe design from his or her own viewpoint. It will set out the theoretical
and general questions that arise when the many different aspects of the creative design process
are documented. To document an item means to provide information about the designer’s
biography, the manufacturing company’s history and policies, the marketing strategy, the
zeitgeist shared by designers and consumers at a particular concrete historical moment, the
technological context and means of production, and the prevailing design trends. We also
need to explain the design concept, or problem, in design terms in order to understand what
sort of solution the design is intended to offer and, even more complex, we must also justify
the value system within which the historian selects and evaluates a particular design object.

Introduction—minding the map regional histories that could be considered from a

In his paper to the International Design History con-
ference in La Havana in 2000 on the historiography
of design from a regional perspective, Tevfik Balcioglu
put the central problem in a new way. He said ‘the
tacit acceptance of universal communicative power
of design and its multicultural identity does not only
support, but also requires a global understanding of
the subject’.1 As far as I know, this was the first time
design standards were seen as multicultural, the
outcome of a synthetic process resulting from the
contribution of many different regions and cultural
realities. To verify how far this was so we, together
with professors Lucila Fernández from La Havana,
and Cecilia Loschiavo from Sao Paulo, took up this
challenge when preparing a strand called ‘Local
Chapters for a Global History’ for the Istanbul Design
History Conference ( July 2002). Devoted to the
exploration of local or regional matters, its main goal
was to look for and discover all those ‘aspects of
comparative approach’. The next task was to reflect
on these local histories considered as a whole and
thus to propose an integrating field of discussion
for all them.
There are many theoretical issues underlying
Balcioglu’s statement that will be considered in some
way. They could be identified as follows: what does
‘the universal communicative power of design’ actu-
ally mean now that modern standards and a modern
style of design seem worthless as a reference to be
shared globally? Does identity, when referring to
many different cultures, mean just an analytical
approach; or rather is it a synthetic one, the identity
of the whole of design culture itself ? If so, what is and
should be the role of different cultures and regions in
defining what a shared design culture may be? And
finally, what is meant by a ‘global understanding of
the subject’? Is it a claim for a general history that
could explain and tell many different histories at the

© The Author [2005]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved. 371
 Anna Calvera
same time, integrating them in a new synthesis such
as that included in the scope of a Worldwide History?
In that case, what could be the logic, or rather the
articulation, of that general history in case it should
act, or has to perform the role of a larger narrative?
These questions are approached from the point of
view of a local, or national, historian who studies
what is close at hand, but who sometimes also plays
the role of a world historian outside his/her own
country. At the same time, this paper is located in the
context provided by Victor Margolin and Jonathan
Woodham when preparing their session for the Istan-
bul conference, when they invited the author to con-
tribute to the matter by dealing with the relationship
between the local/national and its role in a global
approach. Their contribution was titled ‘Design His-
tory Narratives: Local, National, Global’ and its brief
put the matter in these terms: ‘how does the issue of
local histories and the criterion for doing them relate
to the theme of a larger narrative?’ Thus, the whole
question takes on a new character: the aim nowadays
is to find a way to manage and to draw a new outline
of the map of design useful enough to build upon
a World History that allows a global understanding
of the subject. Both Margolin/Woodham’s and
Balcioglu’s questions reflect a similar worry even if
their meaning is subtly different because it is based on
some different assumptions, mostly concerning the
concept of design used, which is strongly dependent
on the area of the map from where they have been
drawn up. Thus, while proposed in the context
defined by two former international conferences on
Design History (Barcelona 1999 and La Havana
2000), the existence of the debate clearly suggests
there is a general desire for an integrating discourse
which might be a theoretical tool strong enough to
manage the already well accepted existence of the
plurality of histories of design that have recently risen,
according to the variety of approaches used to study
design in history. So, what is presently at stake is the
capacity and usefulness of a ‘geography of design’ seen
as a structuring element for a World history.
Towards a geographical approach to
the history of design
Looking for a new outline of the map of design, two
directions have already appeared for research among
372
local or national historians. The first one deals with
the differences existing among Design cultures trying
to establish identities of Design, grasping peculiarities
and national oddities. This is a direction that could
easily help to build a general, or rather a common,
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large narrative of the World History of Design, open-
minded enough to be shared by different regions or
nations. It permits a research approach that works
from the general to the particular. The second research
direction aims at finding points and aspects to be
compared between different local, or rather national,
identities notable for their differences. This approach
works from the particular to the general and, through
sharing particularities, it should introduce new
interpretative models (might we also call these larger
narratives?) that are adapted to local realities.2
Both research directions were displayed and dis-
cussed at the Havana conference, although the focus
was mostly on the second one as this was considered
to be the next step, its having been accepted at the
Barcelona conference that the plural applied to the
history of design has also acquired a geographic sense.
In fact, underlying the Barcelona debates was the
opportunity to employ the geographic plural, using
an approach similar to that used to grasp the other
plurals that have arisen recently in Design History,
namely, all those reflecting the many marginalized, or
simply omitted; in short, the many design experiences
left on one side by the standard larger narrative, such
as, for example, commodities actually consumed in
preference to the heavily promoted ‘high culture’ or
‘designer’ goods; other popular items, whether these
are not considered because they address market needs
or are inspired by mass culture.3 Besides these exam-
ples left on one side by History, there are also the
works made by female designers, or those considered
solely as suburban creations. From the geographical
point of view, those left aside are the nations and cul-
tures whose design activities and achievements are
still unknown abroad. The subject was not completely
new in Havana or Barcelona: a quick glance at Design
Issues and the Journal of Design History back issues
proves that many historians from the category of
unfamiliar countries are nowadays trying to introduce
and explain their experiences to a larger public,
mainly the international community of design histo-
rians. So at last, after this first stage of acknowledging
and collecting pluralities, we are now able to confront
many ‘other’ histories besides the old history of
 Local, Regional, National, Global and Feedback
design, the ‘alternate’ ones, the ‘peripheral’ or the
‘marginalized’ ones, using and taking advantage of
the polysemic character of all these words. Therefore,
the Barcelona conference ‘Design History Seen from
Abroad’ had mainly geographical connotations but it
also suggested the need for a way of looking that is
able to recognize boundaries wherever they exist: in
the social environment, in cultural performances,
among demographic groups or even academic
disciplines.
Once the whole map of design is considered,
specific issues appear due, in part, to the need for
managing different cultural models defined anthropo-
logically. Within the broadly defined ‘Westernized’
area, it must deal with geopolitical areas defined
according to the economic development achieved, all
of them connected to one another in a globalized
scene. At Havana there was also a wish to overcome
the proposal at Barcelona to use the centre/periphery
distinction to articulate the map. In fact, translating
literally from Spanish4, the title of Barcelona’s confer-
ence was ‘doing history from a peripheral standpoint’.
At the time of its foundation, to focus on geography
was a claim to enlarge the boundaries of design his-
tory, and it has been proposed using the contrast
between a large periphery composed of many differ-
ent and rather unknown regions, against a unique
centre defined by the larger narrative shared interna-
tionally as the History of Design of reference. Of
course, this was an unbalanced schema articulated on
a vertical axis where regions and countries find their
own place according to the different viewpoints used
to characterize them: sometimes this is the scale of
economic development—and thus the map becomes
a geopolitical or geo-economic one; at other times,
the degree of modernization achieved, mostly through
design—and the map becomes a sociological one; or
the degree of Westernization—and thus the map dis-
plays the colonization process and the paths of dis-
semination of Western ways of life.5 There is also the
possibility to consider an intellectual or scholarship
map along with the others, in which the periphery
affects Design History activities, taking account of the
spread of research outcomes on an international scale.
The central/peripheral approach to the map of
design can be traced back to the 1970s and Gui
Bonsiepe’s writings about economically dependent
countries. His thesis was used subsequently by other
scholars, among them Victor Margolin, who wrote
373
about it when facing the question of the different
worlds that existed prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall:
‘I use the term Third World provisionally to include
those countries outside the sphere of the industrially
developed nations. Perhaps a better term is countries
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of the periphery which is used by Gui Bonsiepe and
others. The latter offers a better description of where
these countries are actually located in the world econ-
omy’.6 Perhaps Guy Julier is the historian who has
used Bonsiepe’s statement more often, combining it
with ideas derived from Jameson’s famous book The
Geopolitical Aesthetic (1992). In 1997, when speaking
about Spain and Hungary, Julier proposed an interest-
ing distinction between ‘countries that represent a
semi-periphery which may interact with the Western
Capitalist core or create its own centres’. This is a first
step to oppose the vertical axis in the relationship cen-
tre/periphery and the implicit interpretation posited
on the existence of influences working just in a single
direction. For the rest, in historiography, the argu-
ment goes back to Emmanuel Wallerstein’s book on
the World System and has been pushed further by
Ferdinand Braudel, considering the drawing of con-
centric peripheries around a centre as a powerful tool
to deal with all the human activities usually considered
by history: ‘The sketch is valuable not only for the
economic life. It is an engine capable of explaining
the whole history of mankind, of societies, cultures,
the States, all the ways of life’.7 Then, it is also worth
noting that nowadays many historians working in, or
studying the situation of, countries that are usually
considered peripheral, talk naturally about the periph-
eral condition of their nations as a starting point for
their research. This is the case for scholars such as
Alpay Er and Ozlem Er from Turkey but also for some
young Brazilian emerging scholars, such as Dijon de
Moraes.8 Their approach is clearly reflected in Er’s
words: ‘Now it is known that industrial design in
peripheral countries has its own character, and a dis-
tinctly different historical development (…) industrial
design in the periphery is described as being “peculiar”
since they have not emerged as expected’.9
On the other hand, the character of marginality of
some countries in the West was proposed by Tony
Fry in his well known article devoted to design made
in Australia but, although the reference to margins
has a more aggressive connotation than the peripheral
one, its meaning adds no new information to the
debate because, though sharing the colonialist
 Anna Calvera
approach, it does not acknowledge alternative experi-
ences that can be peculiar to local characteristics:
‘Marginal modernity is built upon appropriation
(…) desire is produced by the circulation of directly
or indirectly imported signs’.10 In fact, according
to Fry, ‘the notion of geography being put into play
is marked by the spatial, social, historical and the
economic as expressed in and relations of exchange’,
and thus, the relationship between countries is cen-
tred by the economic role they play. Design
History, and through it, design itself, are only seen
from the point of view of the establishment and
reproduction of capitalism which is, of course, a
model of interpretation quite difficult to refute.
However, Fry keeps a door open for local narratives
when he proposes that Design History scope might
take a new character and could be addressed ‘to
recognise the formation and place of design in the
rise and extension of modernity; the operation of
design as a generative medium in the formation of
the modern social subject through the globalisation
of the practices of capitalist means’.11 In proposing
this, Fry opens up the possibility of a richer concep-
tion of design, though it is still understood through
its relationship with industrial processes and means
of production. Fry also introduced an idea of Design
which already included the multicultural identity of
design to which Balcioglu referred in the quotation
above. In that way, design becomes, as Margolin
suggested in Istanbul, ‘an instrument of economic
and political nation building’ shared by many differ-
ent nations.
Moreover, culturally or socially speaking, the
peripheral approach has the advantage of combining
geo-economic information with cultural issues into
the analysis of a Design reality because it can be
understood completely in terms of intellectual or
knowledge production. In this case, it is necessary to
accept that sometimes the leading position corre-
sponds to economics while at other times it is taken
on by cultural or mentality developments. Then,
when it is necessary to compare different realities
from a worldwide point of view, the concentric
peripheral model of explanation offers, following
Braudel, the possibility to reflect how different are
the situations coexisting at the same time around the
globe and so, would probably show that actually there
are many different centres acting and having a dia-
logue between them.
374
What is and should be understood by a peripheral
or marginal country in design matters? From Barcelona
to Havana we tried to find a definition that allows us
to deal with those peculiarities Er was talking about.
Then, in Havana, we defined the peripheral condi-
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tion according to the dependency of models whether
economic or cultural, coming from a centre; we also
stressed the fact that those models or ways of life are
usually not refused, but, on the contrary, they are
imported, accepted and integrated to fulfil a new real-
ity, and this is an important step if the aim is to
research and grasp local realities. So, peripheral works
and items are similar in character and features to those
made in the centre while always springing up a little
later. There is a delay, sometimes subtle, sometimes
quite large, which is culturally speaking the main
attribute of the peripheral character. Peripheral art
works or design items, although delayed, belong to
the main stream of history but they are rarely described
because they are nothing other than new examples to
confirm what is already known. They prove the
spread of a concrete movement and, in doing so,
confirm the style of the age; however, in the back-
ground, there is a tale which follows the spreading
paths and which only takes account of the arrival of
influences. Thus, peripheral narratives related to local
matters have always the same structure: a nation is
only known by a highlight moment or personage
but nobody knows anything about the historical
background which explains the work and the char-
acter of this highlight moment. The latter becomes
the main argument of the research.12
It is easy to see the connections between the objec-
tives of this research and a very old question in the
philosophy of history: how to overcome the bounda-
ries imposed by the grand narratives of history. Arthur
Danto perhaps put this question most clearly when he
showed that, according to Hegel and some later his-
torians, the selection of those who are set aside, or
who stand outside history’s boundaries, depends on
the argument to prove which is presented as a goal to
reach usually in the future. Danto himself proposed
this description as an explanation of the notion of
periphery.13 Now that the future is no longer held to
be predetermined, it is possible to enter into and build
history on a new basis taking account of the broad
and fascinating complexity it actually has. On the part
of peripheral or national histories, the job to face is
firstly, how to get a place, or the right place, in the
 Local, Regional, National, Global and Feedback
global history of Design and, secondly, how periph-
eral research can win credibility and be attractive
enough to locate its outcomes in Design History. It is
easy to deduce the first step is necessary and it is a
consequence of the statement about the boundaries of
history. To get a place in history and enter inside its
boundaries, it is necessary to have a history, and to
have a history, it is necessary to build up local and
national histories and begin to tell them. That was the
aim of the Havana conference and its promising title:
The Rise of Regional Histories. Its job was to encourage
the research done from a local frame to build those
many regional histories.
The proposition set out in Havana also had a meth-
odological element: to set aside the vertical axis of
economic dependence as the main argument to por-
tray the peripheral situation and to try to balance the
model focusing on those aspects that give originality
to peripheral experiences in order to build up a map
composed of equals. It could be objected that the
question, if posed in this way, becomes the expression
of a narrow provincialism. This may be so. But while
it is a danger, it could also be a challenge and so, per-
haps the rise of regional histories might overcome the
risk of provincialism because many provinces could
acquire new character and interest, as much local
research is already proving. The true challenge never-
theless is to avoid the danger of giving even more
legitimacy to the centre’s power, as Viviana Narotzky
noted in her Barcelona paper: ‘intellectual production
becomes a subsidiary condition when it is defined just
by reference to the centre’.14 Then, as many local and
peripheral historians have suggested, in line with the
views expressed above, the chronological delay in
cultural experiences becomes the core of the situation
in peripheral countries and, thus, the factor that gives
its peculiar character and identity. But how might we
justify the equal consideration of regions in a world
such as the current one, driven as it is by the forces
of capitalism?
The answer is perhaps to be found in the concept
of geography of culture, already developed in various
fields once the idea of postmodernism had developed
beyond its earlier stylistic definition to become con-
sidered as a transitional moment in history. It falls
within that general approach which takes complexity
as the key element of contemporary times. From this
point of view, the cultural map, and in consequence
the geographical outlook of history, is based on a
375
multiplicity of different experiences placed in a shared
and globalized ‘landscape’. Each then acquires its own
image and may be easily perceived, and in doing so,
it is possible to retrieve the polycentric character of
development.15 Following this trend, Victor Margo-
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lin proposed a method to discover the many centres
of spreading design cultures. He suggested that
‘grouping design literature per countries provides
some sense of National differences in Design thinking
and pinpoints those geographical centres where it has
been most intense’ (1989: 265). Previously, Edgar
Morin, when he was dealing with the concept of
complexity to grasp the character of the new episte-
mology, had introduced polycentrism to explain how
complex organizations, either biological or social,
perform and operate. From his point of view, a com-
plex nature depends on its capability to combine dif-
ferent kinds of centres to take decisions at the same
time, from the anarchic spontaneous interactions
which are a primary source of creative initiatives,
through to the strict obedience to decisions arriving
from a strong centre.16 He provides a very useful
instrument to think about the structural articulation
of the map. In fact, with a polycentric approach such
as this, the map reflects the coexistence of parallel, not
alternate, histories interacting with one another, gath-
ering together the particular histories of countries and
nations and gradually embodying modernity. Thus,
the geography of design becomes a crossroads, a puz-
zle of relationships and exchanges existing in the
design world which is made up of the growing
knowledge about the evolution of design in all those
different countries. The improvement of knowledge
about regional realities is thus seen as enriching and
adding complexity to the debate. To do so, as Michel
Butor has suggested, what is really important are the
elements which are comparable. According to him,
through contrasting and confronting we can build up
and achieve more dynamic outcomes for Design
History.17 This was the aim proposed by Oscar Salinas
in his statement for another Istanbul contribution:
‘the construction of regional history facing the trans-
formation of the International society as a whole’.
On the map—but whereabouts and
in what colour?
Although it seems promising, to get into history from
the peripheral standpoint is not always easy and is not
 Anna Calvera
straightforward. A first problem is whether new data
coming from local and peripheral realities can add
genuinely new information to what is already known
and covered by global history. To offer an example
close to my own experience, Jonathan Woodham’s
last book on twentieth-century design18 showed
clearly the range of countries in which the arrival of
Design practice and the spread of Design culture hap-
pened in a similar way; through the building up of
institutions such as Design Councils similar to the
British one, and professional societies. It is the same
story of design professionalization described pre-
viously by Gui Bonsiepe in relation to the countries
of the Southern Hemisphere. As remarked by Guy
Julier, ‘at a most straightforward level this pattern is
applicable to all capitalist or proto-capitalist countries
and provides a useful starting point for design
historians’.19 Spain was not mentioned by Woodham
in his overall portrait, and thus, although the process
was very similar to that described by Woodham and
Julier, we can conclude that it was not been consid-
ered an experience significant enough to be included
in a global narrative, despite being well known to the
authors. Nevertheless, I wonder if a new case such as
the Spanish one, quite similar in spirit and process to
all those related, will add more information to the
argument. If it does not, as I suspect, then it will never
be interesting enough to be mentioned, except in a
footnote as statistical data to support the general argu-
ment. In cases such as this, the duty of a local histo-
rian is to explain to foreign colleagues what has been
different, specific or original about a local process, so
as to confirm, or otherwise, that the foreign colleague
is right about his appreciation of the universality of
the process.
On the other hand, the Spanish experience could
have an interest in its own right if the focus, instead
of being placed on the process of arrival, is turned
towards the development of the concept of design
once it had arrived by the mid 1950s and was diffused
through the setting up of an institutional system
which was similar to the best known and most suc-
cessful foreign examples. Thus in 1960, formation of
ADI FAD; in 1961, ADI FAD became a member of
ICSID, and a society of Graphic Designers was
founded; 1962, ADG FAD became a member of
ICOGRADA; 1973, foundation of the BCD, the
Catalan Design Council, and so on until the founda-
tion of DDI, the Spanish promotional entity belong-
376
ing to the Spanish government around 1987. This
beginning gives personality to the design made in
Spain afterwards and to the paths adopted through-
out its evolution until its international recognition by
the mid 1980s and beyond. It is worth mentioning
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here that Spanish is one of the few European lan-
guages which possesses a specific word to name the
profession and the activity as adopted during the
debates in the early 1960s about the concept and
nature of design. But as we have said before, what is
really interesting, because it is different, is what was
then understood by the word ‘design’ and therefore
what sort of design profession was set up. It could
add information about the particular character of
Catalan design since then, such as its constant drive
for cultural regeneration. I suspect a similar approach
can be used to begin an inquiry on design evolution
elsewhere, and might equally fit regions besides Spain
or, more specifically, Catalonia. Then, the story must
surely go on to identify those specific features that
provide a national or regional character.
If I take my local situation, there are others as-
pects of the relationship between national histories
and the global one that, in practice, are not devoid of
problems and difficulties. For example, the way in
which ideas accepted worldwide, or patterns of
interpretation shared globally are adapted and became
significant in the understanding of a very local reality.
Among those ideas, the most controversial is every-
thing related to ‘the Modern’ and its derived words
‘Modernism’, ‘Modernity’ and ‘Modernization’. Very
often, the history of design in developing nations
focuses on the adoption of modern ways of living as
the normal context for the arrival of design as
a professionally acknowledged practice, and the con-
sequent spreading of a design culture. Thus, the
identification of modern habits and manners, defined
by comparison with what is going on in the devel-
oped centre, has usually been considered symptomatic
of the emergence of Design. This has been the
starting point for many local and national narratives.
Confronting that explanatory pattern, which is so
broadly shared by national design histories, there have
been many reactions which deserve to be considered
more closely.
Modernism, Modernity and Modernization are
still sacred concepts for Design History, and arguably
they are still potent instruments when researching a
local reality, but we must also accept that they can
 Local, Regional, National, Global and Feedback
change their meaning completely, depending on
where and by whom they are used. In my own coun-
try, for instance, the word Modernism refers to the will
to reach modernization through cultural improve-
ment and up-to-date performance, an ideal articu-
lated by intellectuals and artists from the 1870s until
the 1910s. Therefore, ‘Modernism’ in Spanish refers
to that specific movement generally known abroad as
Art Nouveau. It was a cultural and artistic movement
before what we call the Modern Movement, that is to
say, the movement of rationalist and functionalist
architecture and design usually identified as modern-
ism internationally, mainly in the English-speaking
countries. In fact, the Modern Movement started in
Spain around 1927 and was further shaped during the
1930s through GATCPAC activities.20
When looking at the context of my neighbours,
other meanings and uses of the word ‘modern’ and its
derivatives arise everywhere, allowing these concepts
to continue to play an important role in research.
Lucila Fernández introduced new elements to the
debate when, at the Barcelona Conference, she showed
how far modernity was just a theoretical ideal which
arrived in Cuba through imported and imposed moder-
nizations concentrated in very precise stages of the
island’s history. Modernization means to her those
sudden transformations of society and their lifestyle,
including habits and values systems, adopted at a
stroke without having experienced a period of accli-
matization to the new reality, that is to say, without
living through a necessary process of transcultura-
tion.21 She continued the argument in her Istanbul
paper by following up the analysis of contemporary
Cuba and its historical roots by anthropological writ-
ers. From her point of view, the design idea which
emerged in Cuba was an imported phenomenon that
arrived through influences coming from different
centres and design cultures, initially from Western
Europe, then from East Germany and the socialist
countries. From her point of view, if modernization
is something different to the Western pattern of
modernity, as the social history of Cuba shows and
Lucila Fernández has remarked, both concepts could
became important tools to analyse how a change of
mentality can take place without having any influ-
ence at all in the current production system; moreo-
ver, without bringing about the economic system
where design culture grows naturally such as the
industrial system arising after an industrial revolution.
377
Something similar can be seen if the word in ques-
tion is Design. Just as modernity changes meaning
and actual performance moving around the world, so
does design as seen in relation to Spain and to Cuba.
A necessary and urgent step for the Geography of
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design is to inquire into the different meanings the
word design has taken on when arriving in a particu-
lar regional situation.
Extending the thought, it is possible to assume, or
to propose as a hypothesis, that the arrival of the idea
of design in many geographical areas around the
1950s or 1960s22 is not related to industrial produc-
tion but simply to the wish for economic develop-
ment and, thus, to a culturally changing society which
adopts design models as a way to reinforce its chang-
ing aspirations in the social area. Thus, if the notion
of Design has traditionally been determined by its
origin in industrialized production, the experience of
peripheral countries can help us to see design as the
outcome of a change in mentality, as the word mod-
ernization suggests. A hypothesis such as this could
help to explain why some products and visual lan-
guages have been so rapidly accepted all over the
world. To cite only the examples given by Jonathan
Woodham, the Sony walkman, IBM computers, the
Internet, Phillips cassette and Alessi’s masterpieces
(Woodham 1997: 160). We can also include the
acceptance of Far East textiles in the east coast of
Africa where they look perfectly African (as in
Somalia and Ethiopian markets such as that of Harar).
One might assume, intuitively at least, that to analyse
modernization as a civilizing process offers a good
alternative to the broadly accepted idea, according to
which design’s history, if it has not been imported, is
the natural outcome of the evolution precipitated by
the industrial system of production and the technical
division of labour.
On the other hand, people from Latin America and
Asia often point out that they understand modernity
as the Western lifestyle and values system, and thus
the word has connotations of imperialism, or even
colonialism, importing the cosmopolitan values it had
in its modernist past.23 I do not regard these two cases
as identical historically mainly because westernization
has been (and I am still playing the role of a foreign
historian) a constant and positive element of the
‘Criolla’, this is to say, the Creole culture24 all over
Latin America before, during and after the modernist
period. In the case of Asia, it is still necessary to
 Anna Calvera
explore the effects in countries such as Turkey or
Japan which have a strong and potent craft tradition
and a well structured culture in their historic back-
ground.25 Concerning Latin America, a first step on
the road to a Geography of Design History is to take
very seriously the peculiarities of Creole perform-
ance, not only because this can help us to understand
its historical background and define an identity for so
wide a region, but mainly because this embodies
multiculturalism as its essential character; and this has
been the case at least from the beginning of the col-
onization five centuries ago. In fact, everything Creole
shows an early and ancient operation of transcultura-
tion related to cultural modes where many standards
are coming from Old Western Europe, others from
Africa and others from Native Americans as well.
When modernity is understood and explained in
terms of westernization and, consequently is only
seen as a negative factor because it was imported to
suit economic and geopolitical interests—which is
completely true in most cases—many doors are closed
to the understanding of local realities and the com-
plexity and originality of their Design experiences.
What is really lost there is the potential of Design to
play a role in criticism, renewal and transformation of
society that it had when it arrived in a peripheral or
undeveloped country, even if built after a Western
pattern. This is something to realize when trying to
answer the question of why Design arrived in a given
nation: why did its inhabitants import an idea such as
this? When did it become an ideal and not merely a
profession? Was it only an expression and a means to
reach development according to geopolitical and
economic interests, or did it express the ideal of
improving the ways of living of ordinary people?
Among Western scholars there is a prick of regret-
ful conscience that deeply affects the idea of design
available for local historians. From a peripheral condi-
tion of awareness, Design is too often presented as an
achievement belonging exclusively to Western cul-
ture and so its theory and explanatory concepts are
rejected because it seems they are able only to describe
the historical process lived by developed countries
after industrial revolution and during the span of
modernity as defined either by philosophy or archi-
tecture. Then Design is defined as ‘part of a specific
process of mass production’ to use Margolin’s words
in Istanbul. From that point of view, the meaning of
design seems too narrow because, in that case, it could
378
only be applied to a range of means and productive
systems existing in times and places that are histori-
cally and geographically limited. The consequence is
to see design itself as exclusive, unable to catch reali-
ties outside the Western way of life and economic
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values. Thus, objections are addressed to the official
definition of Design made by a group of designers
coordinated by Maldonado and spread by ICSID
since then, and so a new concept of design is
claimed.
The ICSID definition is nonetheless still useful to
help us understand non-Western and peripheral expe-
riences. It helps us to grasp the reasons of unequal
development existing between different regions and
the resulting map of developed Western countries.
On the other hand, outside the West, it sets out the
idea of design actually imported, and by comparison,
it allows us to think about what has been in each case
the originality of the translation, and the way it was
adapted locally to work in its new situation. In this
way we come to a new phenomenon of transcultura-
tion in which one of the ingredients is Design itself.
This question deserves careful consideration.
Following Margolin’s elaboration of Maldonado’s
definition and his stress on industrial basis and back-
ground, the existence of Design has only been possi-
ble in particular places and times. This is certainly
true, but its consequences are not so restricted as it is
implicit in Margolin’s argument. Yet this narrow def-
inition of ‘Design’ might play an important role in
world design history thanks to its simplicity. In fact,
through Maldonado’s concept, Design becomes a
phenomenon clearly delimited in history. It locates
design both as a cultural and productive system that
suits a historical stage, the main features of which are
clear. It is, of course, the process of the industrial revo-
lution as it happened, first, in North Europe and
North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, and mass production later, during the
twentieth century, once a true mass culture was
underway. In that sense, the mere existence of a com-
munity of designers struggling to be recognized as
such in a certain country far away from the core,
becomes for historians a symptom that a deep histori-
cal change is going on in that country. Moreover,
from the period paradigm standing,26 the rise of
design and its conceptualization in the everyday
language and culture of a certain society could be
perfectly interpreted as the starting point of a
 Local, Regional, National, Global and Feedback
transformation process experimented by this society
and thus its embarking on a new age in its history.
Before the eighteenth century in Europe, for exam-
ple, the theoretical dichotomy craft/design has been
an important criterion to select among the productive
reality of the time that was significant for design his-
tory, but it has also been a powerful tool to under-
stand how different were two historical situations
existing side by side in a transitional period. From this
point of view, design also acquires a sense of rupture
which hints that a change is going on in history and
thus, it becomes a historic concept as well. For this
reason it is arguably not helpful that design history
includes craft history inside its boundaries, as Simon
Jervis once upheld.27 In that way, it could happen
that peripheral regions, or even nations with a strong
craft tradition, lose the opportunity to explain their
recent history and the transformations lived every-
where that modernization is carried out by design
practice and discourse. On the contrary, craft and
design are two different ways of conception and plan-
ning of material and visual culture which fit different
historical epochs and represent different stages of the
whole evolution of the productive systems
everywhere. Craft and design histories have to be
constructed taking care of and dealing with those
elements which better provide the specificity of
respective historical contexts and periods.
If it is accepted that design and the items produced
through designing are the outcomes naturally obtained
when industry and mechanization are introduced
according to what happened in the capitalist core,
then the concept conveys a sense of historical
disjunction that historians should not reject. While
keeping unchanged the old concept of design related
to mass production through industry, it could be eas-
ier to understand unexpected events such as what was
hinted above; that in many regions all over the world
not yet incorporated to industrialization, or still being
in a backward stage—as proves the lack of a working-
class movement in the Maghreb and Far East areas, an
idea of Design arrived which was mostly a cultural
achievement, soon becoming an ideal of progress, the
visible symbol of economic development.28 In those
cases, design has been imported because it was seen
as an agent for driving industrial development and so
it becomes a reliable factor to stimulate the economy
even if transformation does not fit the historic and
well known pattern of British industrial revolution.
379
Modernization could also arrive through design items
and debates instead of growing from production
processes.29 This is what we said in Havana: ‘There is
a subtle link between modernisation processes exper-
imented by a society through its desire of modernity,
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and the arrival of Design idea since its early promo-
tion and diffusion until its setting up and reaching of
a popular familiarity’.30 Nevertheless, the fact that
professional design could exist without being a conse-
quence of changes attained by labour processes and
traditions does not imply that industrial systems and
mass production are not embedded in the design
concept itself.
We might conclude that concepts such as mod-
ernization, modernity and modernism, emptied of
their historical and stylistic reference to Modern
Movement items, could help us to understand cul-
tural evolution in different regions. Underlying this
line of thought there is the question of local identities
and their social and cultural basis. As a historian, I feel
nervous whenever the idea of identity is proposed as
an argument to prove the need of preserving tradi-
tions. There are several traditions that should be set
aside throughout the world, even if the price of doing
so is that less structured cultures result, as some
anthropologists have warned. It is relevant to men-
tion the Spanish experience which, with its pro-
nounced Romantic flavour for foreigners and its
background in dictatorship for many inhabitants,
serves as a telling example of what it is not necessary
to preserve. On the other hand it must be acknowl-
edged that, to oblige other cultures to preserve their
identity because it makes sense for us spectators and
foreigners who feel bored when faced with the loss of
diversity in the world is also a sort of cruel imperial-
ism. In Barcelona, for example, the modern image of
the town based on the 1992 Olympic Games has in
many points contradicted its Spanishness. These days,
local identities or regional characters may not func-
tion outside the tourism and souvenir industries.
Besides, in Western design history, the question of
local identities is a very old one. We recall the
Deutsches Werkbund and its efforts to define a
German form. Traditionally, identity has been an
argument made by governments whenever they face
the need to export industrial or home-made products.
Francois Lyotard might have been the first author
to point out the extent to which local identities and
cultural differences are exploited economically as
 Anna Calvera
merchandise by the global market since the Second
World War.31 Some years later, Andrea Branzi
devised what could be considered the most searching
criticism of the quest for local identities and the will
to preserve regional cultures because, he argued, they
bring about ethnic confrontations and enmities. On
the other side, however, it must also be recognized
that not to respect cultural identities at all, if it is a
political imposition, could bring similar results.
According to Branzi, ‘international culture is made
up by the wide system of failures, of questions never
answered that local cultures leave open’.32 In that
sense, when cosmopolitanism was still an ideal of
progress, even Braudel, in his writings on the history
of civilizations, often warned against those nostalgic
discourses recalling a lost identity when faced by the
uniformity brought about by globalization. In short,
although an ideological issue, it is still interesting to
understand the transformative force the Design idea
has had when it emerges in many countries around
the world. The next step is to analyse how craft tradi-
tions and cultural background have influenced the
idea of Design, making up a new synthesis and, argu-
ably, a new and different modernity.
The nature of the global and the
need for a larger narrative
When we deal with a global narrative, whatever
its character, we necessarily deal with some
very different, overlapping, and often confusing
concepts. We might ask, do Global History, World
History and General History mean the same thing
methodologically?
Until now many design history teachers have
organized their own personal general history narra-
tive in order to provide their design students with a
broad knowledge of what they need to be able to
perform as design practitioners, not to have to re-
invent garlic soup, or the wheel, and to become pro-
fessionals able to move around the world as informed
designers. The outcome has been a kind of Ideal His-
tory, which Renato de Fusco once called Transcen-
dental History, because it rests on local situations, and
is therefore a general history quite similar in spirit to
that old Modern Narrative. Objections have often
been raised since postmodernism, and even before
that, by the critics of the Pop movement. Do we, as
380
local or national historians, need a general or ideal
history such as that proposed by De Fusco in order
to start our work? It depends on the character of
this larger narrative; however, we might assume that
some sort of larger narrative would still be a very
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useful instrument to have.
It is clear that if the larger narrative is simply the
story of legitimation of different events as part of that
history, then it will not be at all useful since we do
not yet claim to know what should be legitimated. In
that sense, an Ideal or General History is simply a new
expression of the idea of history proposed by philoso-
phers from Vico and Hegel to Croce and thus repre-
sents a backwards step. Yet de Fusco’s explanation,
while inherited from the debate about Croce’s think-
ing, includes a very interesting situation of feedback
between local and general. He said ‘The eternal ideal
history is transcendental with regard to the particular
histories of single nations but it doesn’t exclude a
relationship between them: one implies the others
like the relationship that exists between the real and
the ideal, between what ought to be and what is,
between the norm and that which could develop and
become a norm’.33
Very often we have compared what happened
locally and what happened abroad, using a sort of
general-ideal history like this as a model to which to
refer. It has also been used as a tool to measure the
real worth of local contributions, to demonstrate the
degree of modernization, or the level of current
awareness achieved locally. I know that epistemo-
logically, I am using a very idealistic concept of his-
tory which can only be justified by reference to the
philosophy of history, but this is not the right place to
develop an argument such as this. For the time being,
it is preferable to focus on the very practical problems
constantly faced by a local historian.
The need for a general history takes on a different
meaning when we are dealing with influences. For a
local or national historian, there is a more complex
task to do than to register influences because there is
a process of adaptation of the ideas and aesthetic ref-
erences, or technological innovation, coming from
abroad and, through feedback, results become subtly
different. Seen in this new light even those regions
which adopt and develop foreign influences are
achieving a synthesis of their own, and thus it is never
too late to propose their own story to build the gen-
eral, largest narrative. To place national, regional or
 Local, Regional, National, Global and Feedback
metropolitan experiences in the international context
is an important job for all historians, and it will always
help to introduce corrective elements to the main
stream of History. Fernand Braudel invariably asked
national historians to consider their near and distant
neighbours in order to capture the extent to which
local reality depends on global and general actions. If
history were to be organized geographically, the
larger narrative could emerge through the compari-
son of particular situations placed on a map drawn up
as a network. For the time being the comparative
method is revealing itself as an important instrument
to deal with different histories placed on an all-
embracing map. When discussing Pierre Vilar’s book
on Catalan history, Braudel quoted Marc Bloch’s
words in favour of a comparative history: ‘comparer
pour s’évader des cadres particuliers, ceux du temps
comme ceux de l’espace’.34
Anna Calvera
University of Barcelona
Notes
1 See Balcioglu, Tevfik, ‘On the priorities of regional design
historiography’. La Havana: 2a. Reunión Internacional de
Historiadores y Estudiosos del Diseño, 2000. www.
culturadeldiseno.cult.cu.
2 See Calvera, Anna, ‘Historia e historias del diseño: la emergencia
de las historias regionales’. La Habana: 2a. Reunión Internacional
de Historiadores y Estudiosos del Diseño, 2000. www.
culturadeldiseno.cult.cu; see also Calvera, Anna: ‘Design in
Barcelona: Its history and its future in the globalised scene’. The
Design Journal, Vol. 4, Issue 2, pp. 4–13. See also Alpay Er:
‘Development Industrial Design in the Third World’. Journal of
Design History, vol. 10 no. 3, pp. 293–307.
3 Woodham, Jonathan M, ‘Recent trends in Design Historical
Research in Britain’. Calvera & Mallol: Proceedings of the 1st
International Conference in Design History, Barcelona:
Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2001: 85–97. See
also Julier, Guy: ‘Towards a “Third way” in Design History’,
íbid, pp. 112–116; and Narotzky, Viviana: ‘Consumir diseño:
de lo privado a lo público’, íbid, pp. 155–159. See also
Doordan, Dennis P. (ed), Design History. Chicago: The MIT
Press: 1995 and his references to Kruger & Mariani: Remaking
History, 1989. They are the authors of the term ‘alternate
histories’ to refer to all those nowadays acknowledged mar-
ginalized or neglected groups inside western and developed
tradition.
4 The Barcelona Conference had two titles not exactly meaning
the same due to translation: in Spanish: ‘Doing History from the
Peripheral Standpoint: History and Histories of Design’ while in
English the title was ‘Design History Seen from Abroad: History
and Histories of Design’. When the pun was discovered, an
interesting debate concerning how to evaluate and describe
different regions came to the stage together with a need to find
381
the equivalent words. Peripheral seemed soon a very victimist
and ideological word to English-speaking people while
‘Marginal countries’ proposed by them following Tony Fry,
had the same or even worse connotations to Spanish speaking
people. The debate was explained in La Havana together with
the proposal of thinking about the Geography of Design in a
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way that overcomes the dependent relationship implicit in the
geopolitical discourse, and to enjoy an egalitarian horizon at
least at the starting point of the research.
5 In Istanbul, it was the subject of a strand devoted to analysing
what Westernization means in countries such as Japan and
Turkey, which have a strong craft tradition and cultural
heritage behind them.
6 Concerning the quotation by Margolin, see Epilogue ‘Post
War Design Literature’ in Design Discourse, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 285, no. 19.
7 Guy Julier, ‘Re-Drawing the Geography of European Design:
The Case of Transitional Countries’. Stockholm, 2nd EAD
Conference, 1997: http://www.svid.se/ead/ead-Julier.htm.
The paper examines the interactions between core and
periphery in design entrepreneurial terms; he followed the
argument at his 2001 Annual Conference of the Design History
Society held in London, not yet printed. See also Braudel: ‘En
guise de conclusion’ (1977) Les écrits de Fernand Braudel.
L’histoire au quotidien. Paris, Editions de Fallois, 2001, p. 248:
‘Le schema ne vaut pas seulement pour la vie économique. C’est une
machine à explique l’histoire entière des hommes, les sociétés, les
cultures, les États, toutes les formes de vie.’
8 See H. Alpay Er, many papers on Turkish design reality and
experience presented recently at Conferences and international
meetings (Milan 2001 Designing Researches; 4th European
Academy of Design Conference, Aveiro 2001); see also Ozlem
Er ‘Newly Industrialized Countries’ in The Design Journal, vol.
0, no. 1, 1997, pp. 30–40; Design Issues vol. 19, no. 2; Spring
2003, pp. 17–28. See also Dijon de Moraes’s paper in the
4EAD Proceedings, Aveiro 2001.
9 H. Alpay Er, ‘The Advantage or Disadvantage of Delay?
Peculiar Characteristics of Industrial Design Education in
Peripheral Countries. ’ Luisa Collina & Giuliano Simonelli
(eds), Designing Designers: Training strategies for the Third
Milennium. Milano: Politecnico di Milano, 2001, pp. 27–128.
10 Tony Fry, ‘A Geography of Power: Design History and
Marginality’ Design Issues 1989. Margolin & Buchanan (eds.),
The Idea of Design. Chicago: The MIT Press, 1995,
pp. 204–218.
11 Ibid.
12 As an example, see György Haiman’s article on Hungarian
Design and Matthew Turner’s ‘Early Modern Design in Hong
Kong’ both in Dennis P. Doordan (ed.), Design History.
Chicago: The MIT Press, 1995, p. 52 and 200, respectively.
13 Arthur C. Danto, Después del fin del arte. El arte contemporáneo y
el linde de la historia (1997). Barcelona: Paidós, 1999, p. 48.
14 See Viviana Narotzky: ‘Consumir diseño: de lo privado a lo
público’. Calvera & Mallol, Proceedings of the 1st International
Conference in Design History, Barcelona: Publications de la
Universitat de Barcelona, 2001, pp. 155–9.
15 For a definition of geography with those similar words, see
Giuseppe Barbieri: ‘Storia e geografia della cultura’ in Barbieri
& Vidali, La ragione possibile. Per una geografia della cultura.
Milano: Feltrinelli, 1988, p. 116: ‘recuperare un policentrismo
dello sviluppo’. According to him, ‘la geografia mostra con
immagini, fa vedere, distribuisce i fenomeni che osserva in un paesaggio’.
 Anna Calvera
The argument was proposed as the main subject for a confer-
ence held in 1985 n Italy: ‘in una pluralità di modi, forme, strategie
di ragione appare nel panoraman culturale contemporaneo la possibilità
di una geografia che rimanda all’esistenza di un paesaggio, il paesaggio
composito e alterno in cui l’uomo contemporaneo sta disponendo i
materiali e i progetti del proprio sapere e delle sue trasformazioni’
(1988: 8) The polycentric awareness has been also defended
many time ago in Design Issues vol. 8, no. 1 (1991) pp. 74–77
Letter from Munich: ‘artificial world follows (…) polycentric
and extremely differential logic.’
16 Morin, Edgar: ‘Le vie della complessità’ in Gianluca Bocchi e
Mauro Ceruti: La sfida della complessità (1985). Milan: Feltrinelli,
1991/6th: 51: ‘un primo livello di complessità organizzazionale. Ma
al livello delle organizzazioni biologiche e sociali abbiamo anche un
tipo di complessità che è relativo alle questioni del centro e del
policentrismo. Le organizzazioni sociali sono organizzazioni complesse
perchè sono in uno stesso tempo acentrate (funzionano cioè in maniera
anarchica, attraverso interazioni spontanee), policentriche (caratterizzate
da numerosi centri di controllo, or d’organizzazioni) e centrate
(dispongono cioè nello stesso tempo, di un centro di decisione). Così le
nostre società contemporanee si autorganizzano a partire, nello stesso
tempo, da un centro di comando e di decisione (lo stato, il governo), da
molteplici centri di organizzazioni (le autorità regionali, le autorità
comunali, le imprese, i partiti politici, etc.) e anche da interazioni
spontanee fra gruppi e fra individui’.
17 Butor, Michel, ‘Geografia della cultura’. Barbieri & Vidali
1985, pp. 224–237. ‘Ciò che conta per noi sono gli elementi di
comparazioni e ogni elemento diventa assolutamente prezioso; è a
partire della nozione di confronto che possiamo costruire delle
conseguenze dinamiche e arrivare a delle previsioni molto più sofisticate
di quelle in uso ancora all’inizio del secolo (XX)’.
18 Woodham, Jonathan, Twentieth Century Design. Oxford,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
19 Guy Julier, ‘Re-Drawing the Geography of European Design:
The Case of Transitional Countries’. Stockholm, 2nd EAD
Conference, 1997: http://www.svid.se/ead/ead-Julier.htm
20 GATCPAC means Group of Catalan Architects and
Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture. It
was a group of several architects whose internationally better
known member is Josep Lluís Sert, a close disciple of Le
Corbusier. The group was formed in 1931 and dissolved
in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. He worked in a very
modern style and introduced modern architecture to Barcelona
in 1927, when a first exhibition took place. For many
reasons the group has often been considered as belonging to
the second generation of the Modern Movement. After the
war, Sert went to the United States while other members
went either to Chile or Argentina. Mercè Vidal has been
researching those journeys due to exile as the paths through
which influence travels around and establishes links among
distant cultures. See, for example, her paper read at the
Barcelona conference on Antonio Bonet’s work in Buenos
Aires: ‘Diseño contemporáneo y recepción museológica.
Un caso concreto: la silla BKF’ Barcelona Proceedings, 2001,
pp. 294–303; the La Havana paper relates Rodríguez Arias’
experience in Chile and the setting up of Muebles Sur,
www.culturadeldiseno.cult.cu.
21 Fernández, Lucila: ‘Modernidad y posmodernidad en Cuba’.
Calvera & Mallol (eds.), Historiar desde la periferia: historia e
historias del diseño. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de
Barcelona, 2001, pp. 71–84. See mainly p. 71: ‘en países sin
una industrialización orgánica, el diseño nació al calor de
influencias exteriores, por lo que es urgente comenzar a
382
deslindar lo propio y específico o la manera en que se
reinterpretan estas influencias (…) En Cuba, al igual que en
otros países fuera del escenario europeo, no se puede hablar de
modernidad sino de sucesivas modernizaciones que, de manera
importada, han sido introducidas por diferentes acontecimientos
a lo largo de la historia. Modernizaciones son transformaciones
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bruscas sin tiempo de adaptarse y aclimatarse a nuestras re-
alidades, es decir, sin la adecuada transculturación’.
22 The statement that design spread internationally around the
1950s and 1960s outside the Western industrialized core is
supported mainly by the activities developed by ICSID and
ICOGRADA since its foundation in order to embody societies
from different countries all around the world. Latin American
countries are good representatives of that process and Spain
and Turkey as well. Other centres spreading design influ-
ences around the world during that time were the HfG Ulm and
the Basel Graphic Design School. Drawing the map of the arriv-
ing of Design in all these peripheral countries could be done by
searching ICSID membership and its conference attendees.
23 See for example the outcomes of a working group devoted to
globalization in the 17th ICSID and ICOGRADA joint
Conference held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in October 1997.
A report is available in tipoGráfica, 38. Buenos Aires, March
1999, pp. 4–7.
24 ‘Criollo’ corresponds to the English word Creole. The word is
also used to designate everything which is specific of Latin America
and its culture. What is really interesting is that it is also the first
identification of a continuation on an old cultural synthesis, an
aspect which is not usually remembered by Latin Americans
themselves as an important heritage of their own culture since the
spreading after romanticism of the ‘indigenist’ myth.
25 As did the strand ‘Facing the West in the Near, Middle and Far
East’ coordinated by Haruhiko Fujita in the Istanbul Conference
dealing with Westernization and Near, Middle and Far Eastern
Cultures.
26 Regarding the period paradigm, see Franco Cardini: ‘Grandezza
e miseria del paradigma epocale’. Barbieri & Vidali 1985,
pp. 289–305.
27 See Simon Jervis, Dictionary of Design and Designers.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984. For a general overview and
most common approaches to the question among British his-
torians, see John Walker Design History and the History of Design.
London: Pluto Press, 1989; chapter 3 ‘Craft and Design’.
28 It is also worth a reminder that a definition of design so clearly
limited historically encloses many problems when looking to
the future. As Margolin himself pointed out in his Istanbul
address, it is necessary to take into account ‘the changing role
of the designer in relation to the evolving methods of
production’ in postmodern or an after-postmodern age which
I presume is just beginning now.
29 Guy Julier pointed at this phenomenon from its more sad aspect
when dealing with post-communist Hungarian society and the
popular success experienced by the strongest symbols of late
capitalism such as MacDonalds. See Julier 1997: 2 of 10.
30 Calvera, Anna ‘Conferencia de Anna Calvera: Historia e
historias del diseño: la emergencia de las historias regionales.’
Lucila Fernández (ed.), Memorias de la 2nd Reunión Científica
Internacional de Historiadores y Estudiosos del Diseño, ‘La emergencia
de las historias regionales’. La Habana, junio de 2000. www.
culturadeldiseno.cult.cu/conferencias/cannacalvera.htm
31 See François Lyotard: La posmodernidad explicada a los niños
(1986) Barcelona: Gedisa, 1987: 46/47.
 Local, Regional, National, Global and Feedback

32 See Andrea Branzi: Introduzione al design italiano. Una modernità essa non si basa più nel sistema delle certezze da proporre al
incompleta. Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 1999, p. 175 ‘Tutti mondo, ma su un sistema problematico aperto’.
coloro che hanno che contro il mercato planetario potessero
33 De Fusco, Renato: ‘Artifici’ per la storia dell’architettura. Naples,
ancora valere le alternative locali e le culture regionali, hanno
Rome and Milan: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1998, p. 86:
costatato che da queste ipotesi non sono emerse che guerre
‘La storia ideale eterna è trascendente rispetto alla storia
etniche, conflitti religiosi e separatismi devastanti; anche
particolare delle singole nazioni ma non esclude la relazione fra

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possiamo dire che se c’è una costante presente oggi nel mondo
attuale, essa è costituita del fallimento puntuale di tutte le
culture locali, rese al suolo dalle communicazioni di masse, dai
mercati globali appiattite dal consumismo che ne ha distrutto gli
improponibili modelli (…) La Cultura internazionale è costituita
dal vasto sistema di fallimenti, dalle domande senza risposta che
le culture locali hanno lasciato aperte. Paradossalmente, dumque
le due: la implica come la relazione tra ideale e reale, tra il
dover essere e l’essere, tra la norma e ciò che a la norma può
elevarsi’.
34 See Fernand Braudel ‘La Catalogne, plus l’Espagne de Pierre
Vilar’. Annales, (April 1968) in L’histoire au quotidien. Vol III.
Paris: Fallois, 2001, p. 493.

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