Italy: The New Domestic Landscape

Catalogue to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that explored sociocultural implications of Italian product design "environments." Contributions by Argan, Tafuri, Portoghesi, Gregotti, among others.

Produced by the Museum of Modern Art and Cento Di, Florence, this is an exhaustive, scholarly, intelligent, and fun examination of the dynamics of Italian modern design.

This book is ambitious at over 400 pages, with over 200 illustrations, and over 20 color plates. For the most part, it contains useful objects that are also objects of art -- furniture, appliances, utensils; also captured are some "pure" artistic objects, sketches, posters; many of the contributors look at objects in their contexts, thus spurring the depiction of floorplans, interior design concepts, and installations.

About half the book is divided into two categories: Objects and Environments. There are also 10 Historical and Critical articles, including Portoghesi on Art Nouveau in Italy, dell'Arco on Futurism, Cominotti on Italian Design and Social-Economic Planning, Celant on Radical Architecture, and Tafuri on Utopian design.

Thus, a book visually rich and intellectually pithy that values both text and image.