Tomás Maldonado
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Tomás Maldonado (1922, Buenos Aires, Argentina). Argentine painter, designer and thinker, is considered one of the main theorists of the so-called Scientific Design movement.
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[edit] Biography
Born in the Argentine city of Buenos Aires, his artistic formation took place at Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón [1].
[edit] The Early Years
In this early period he was invovled with the Argentine Avant Gardes, in fact, he was one of the founders of the painters' movement called Arte Concreto-Invención.
[edit] The Italian Experience
Between 1964 and 1967, in collaboration with his German colleague Gui Bonsiepe he created a system of codes for the design programm of the Italian firm Olivetti and the department store La Rinascente. In 1967 he established himself in Milan, continuing to teach in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Bologna, working almost entirely now in philosophy and criticism influenced by semiotics. In one of his last essays, "The Heterodox", he claims that the role of the intellectual is to awaken or reveal the collective conscience.
[edit] The Academic Career
Tomás Maldonado is professor of Environmental Design (Progettazione Ambientale) at Politecnico di Milano University.
Between 1955 and 1967 he also taught at the "New Bauhaus" (the Hochschule für Gestaltung) in Ulm [2]. Between 1954 and 1966 he was the director of this institution, which he oriented towards an extreme rationalism and scientism, an example of which is his essay entitled, "Ulm, Science and Design".
In 1965 he became "Lethaby Lecturer" at London Royal College of Arts. The following year, he became a Princeton University's Council of Humanities Fellow.
Between 1967 and 1970 he taught "Class of 1913" at Princeton's School of Architecture.
Between 1976 and 1984 he worked as full professor of Environmental Design (Progettazione Ambientale) at University of Bologna's Faculty of Humanities and Philosophy [3].
[edit] Works
- Ulm, Science and Design . (1964)
- Industrial Design reconsidered.
- Is Architecture a Text?
- Towards an Ecological Rationalism.
- Technique and Culture, the German debate between Bismarck and Weimar.
- The Heterodoxo (1998).
