How to (De)scribe Design – A Talk with Emanuele Quinz

«It is impossible to define design».

This assertion, increasingly common among historians and theorists, is not merely a gesture of caution, but rather a symptom of a deeper transformation. Today, design is an expansive field, a set of techniques, concepts, and ways of thinking that span diverse cultural horizons and make it impossible to confine it within stable disciplinary boundaries.

So: how can we describe design without reducing it to an object or functional intention?

Monday, October 27, 2025 at 11:00 a.m. at Abadir DELIDA (map) Emanuele Quinz, art and design historian and independent curator, talks with Paolo Casicci, journalist, Vincenzo Castellana, architect and director of the Master in Strategic Design and Creative Direction – From Ford to Ford, and Lucia Giuliano, director of Abadir, exploring the ways in which the project becomes theory and the theory in turn becomes a project, starting from the essay Against the Object. Conversations on Design, published by Quodlibet in 2020 and winner of the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award in 2022.

In this perspective, Design is no longer a domain to be defined, but a critical construction site in continuous movement, a language for thinking and acting in the world.

EMANUELE QUINZ

Emanuele Quinz (Bolzano, 1973) is an art and design historian, lecturer and independent curator. He is Full Professor of History and Theory of Contemporary Art at the Université Paris 8, Associate Researcher at EnsadLab – École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and at the Cluster Matter of Activity of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.

He has curated several international exhibitions in Italy and Europe. With Samuel Bianchini, he conceived the experimental performative round table project. Dissect, presented at the Centre Pompidou, the Grand Palais and the Humboldt-Universität, in collaboration with architects and artists such as ecoLogicStudio, Marco Donnarumma and Tomás Saraceno.