PESANDO A.B. e DELLAPIANA E., In front off and behind the Mirror. Women in Italian Radical Design

Seventies the social changes stimulated by the international counterculture and the debate on design, with a renovated overlapping between art, architecture, industrial design and communication. As a Consequence of feminism in universities and in professional world, women began slinding their roles: from avanguardist or part of a couple, they become components of groups and firms and more and more active in specialized magazine editing or managing position. We can find women in several radical groups as Archizoom, UFO, Superstudio, in temporay association as Global Tools, U e/o R (Utopie e/o Rivoluzione) or in countercultural magazines as Pianeta Fresco, Modo or Domus (Mendini dir.). On the other hand they are the more evidente witness of the change in the world of the image: always more often the advertisings of the new pieces of furniture or devices represented them as users very far from the house angel of the post-war period or the bourgoise working woman of the economic boom, and the change in home design and communication run togheter with the women’s one: informal, affordable, multi-use, at least aggressive. The paper aims to investigate which is the real weight of women in the transformations both of the design culture and the communication trough a recognition on the fields in wich they were really engaged (i.e. they continued to be interested in fashion, person care and social activities)