The reference book in French on the
Global Tools design movement linked to the
Italian radical
architects of the 1970s: the first French translation of the
Bulletins,
Global Tools (1973-1975) is an exceptional edition that gives an account of the research initiated by Global Tools and extends it through the making and the manufacturing through a renewal of
Progettazione.
Through unpublished archives, this book analyses in depth the very first French translations of the two Global Tools bulletins, exclusive interviews with
Andrea Branzi,
Gaetano Pesce,
Gianni Pettena, Ugo La Pietra,
Alessandro Mendini and two writings in dialogue, one by Paolo Deganello and the other by Franco Raggi.
The latter presents Global Tools as follows: "Those who founded or participated in Global Tools were interested in building a programme of educational and productive research activities that started from below, with the theoretical aim of liberating individual creativity from the cultural superstructures that prevented or slowed down the capacity for expression, according to the hypothesis of free, anarchist (but organised) work, experimentation in the field of design, living and building... The attempt was also to return to a kind of 'primary condition' of making that involved the individual 'tools', the first utensils at our disposal to interact with the outside world as hands, feet, senses, body, and their perception. Among the topics discussed were also a series of topics that came from the experience of American, English and Austrian anarchist groups. We have condensed a very generalized and pervasive, though underground, trend. An experimental and expressive research combined with an anti rhetoric of the project and a quasi-annulment of the canonical design practice to conceive its cure through 'self-therapy'."
See also
Global Tools – When Education Coincides with Life – 1973–1975.
Nathalie Bruyère is a designer, founder of the architecture and design agency Duffau & associés and of Ultra ordinaire. She teaches design at the Institut supérieur des arts et du design de Toulouse.
Catherine Geel is a design historian. She teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paris-Saclay, at Sciences Po Paris and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Nancy. She is also a researcher at the ENS Paris-Saclay-Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création industrielle.
Victor Petit is a teacher-researcher at the University of Technology of Troyes, where he is in charge of the IMEDD master. His research is at the crossroads of the philosophy of technology and design and the philosophy of ecology.
