One step before organizations: Networks, actors and trajectories in Argentine design (1938-1962)

Abstract

The history of design in Latin America was once based on the author-work model, anchored on the idealist philosophy and its mark on modern historiography. This model overstated the importance of biographies and ideas in the constitution and transformation of designs in the continent. Among other issues, this traditional historiography did not allow to understand the way in which thoughts on design were nourished by a set of networks and paths which linked artistic, publicity and architectural practices with institutions and makers of design in the region. Such networks were key to explain the characteristics of professional design organisations created from 1960s onwards.This paper seeks to reconstruct such networks. It discusses the relation between actors, intellectuals, editorial initiatives, public and private institutions, governmental policies and the international context which shed light on the emergence of designs as modern disciplines in Argentina during the period between 1942 and 1958. This period began with the publication of Arturo in 1942, a pioneer journal which counted with the active participation of Tomás Maldonado, and ended with the creation of the National Institute for Industrial Technology (INTI, as per its initials in Spanish) in 1958, in which the Centre for Research on Industrial Design (CIDI) – first institution of public policy on design – was based. These initiatives were inscribed in post-war and cold war scenarios, with the resulting transformations of the concepts of national industry and regional market.