“Southern Europe: Italy, Spain, Portugal. Design Between Craft, Radicalism, and Dream” — the seventh lecture in the series “The History of Design: How Things Changed the World.”

Southern Europe gave design temperament, imagination, and a sense of form.
Italy became the center of radical experimentation: in the 1960s–70s, studios like Archizoom, Superstudio, and Memphis turned furniture into a manifesto.
Barcelona became a laboratory of ideas — from Gaudí’s modernism to the Olympic rebranding of the 1990s.
Portugal sought its own path between craft traditions and modernism, preserving a human scale.

Southern design is always about emotion — and a protest against anonymity. It speaks of freedom, play, individuality.

At the lecture, we’ll discuss:
— why Italians turned design into a philosophy,
— how Spain united architecture, graphics, and urban identity,
— and why Portuguese modernism remained a quiet but profound voice of Europe.