Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

Itineraries for a Design Culture in Uruguay
FARKAS, Mónica / BA in Arts / Universidad de la República, Uruguay - Universidad de Buenos Aires / Argentina
CESIO, Laura / Architect / Universidad de la República / Uruguay
STERLA, Mauricio / Architect / Universidad de la República / Uruguay
SPRECHMANN, Magdalena / BA in Communication / Universidad de la República / Uruguay
Design / Field / Uruguay / Policies / Industry
We will discuss the emergence and consolidation of a Design Culture
in Uruguay by means of three episodes which allow us to visualize
challenges and issues in the constitution of said field, recognize
territories with unstable overlap and articulation borders in
various dimensions, as well as formulate a series of hypotheses
for the construction of different histories of design
1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to discuss the emergence and consolidation
of a design culture in Uruguay by means of the presentation
and analysis of three episodes which we consider allow the visualization
of some of the challenges and issues in the constitution
of this field (Bourdieu 1983).
In the context of a wider research project 1 , some of the concrete
experiences which have enabled the formulation of a series of hypotheses
–which led us to name the studied cases as episodes–
will be analysed. We consider that its mapping would permit to
construct several design histories (Calvera 2010).
Our starting point is that the growing presence of design in the
development agendas of developed countries and in those with
economies regarded as emerging 2 has raised awareness about a
diversity of objects of study according to the perspective, the assumptions
and the conception of design from which to implicitly
or explicitly approach it.
Also, these objects have made possible the recognition of territories
with unstable overlap and articulation borders in many dimensions:
• socio-economic aspects which articulated public policies and
private initiatives.
• institutionalization of the teaching of design.
• art-handicraft-design relations.
• trade-industry-design-technology relations.
From this approach, we intend to detect the local specificity in a
number of agents and events with diverse degree of cohesion,
produced by actors in different circles who co-related material
1 “Cultura del diseño y comunicación visual: perspectivas histórico-críticas para
la formación de un campo del diseño en Uruguay”, Comisión Sectorial de Investigación
Científica, Montevideo, 2011-ongoing.
2 Like many categorizations utilized to ascertain the degree of regional-national
development, the notion of emerging economies has drawn criticism.
and visual repertoires with political, economic, technological and
industrial visualization strategies in which the practice of design
and its derivations occupy a central role. We expect for the progressive
denaturalization of the objects of study to make possible
the relativization of essentialist, normative and teleological looks;
of productions de productions admitting of interdisciplinary, diverse
and co-existing, contrasting and complementary, theorizations
and historizations.
2. Art School
In the early twentieth century, in the two terms in which José
Batlle y Ordoñez was president of Uruguay, a reformist democratic
policy, which is considered the second modernizing phase of the
country, was encouraged (Caetano 2008).
The agro-export model was severely questioned, and a heated
debate developed which involved the government, a set of private
actors and teaching institutions. At the core of this debate was the
question of industrial development as a paradigm of progress and
as a means to increase productive capacities.
By the end of the nineteenth century, an industrialist mind-set
had already appeared. The government sent observers to Europe
to collect experiences and articulate state policies based on those
ideas considered leading edge. Several chronicles recorded these
visits to various European industrial exhibitions. Pedro Figari travels
to Europe between 1886 and 1893 as an inescapable requisite
of the education of Uruguay’s governing elite.
A multi-faceted protagonist of his day, Figari presented in his capacity
as House Representative a Bill for the creation of the Fine
Arts School in 1900. This School would fill the gap left between the
Mathematics School, which had an academicist leaning, and the
Arts and Crafts National School, aimed to satisfy industry’s need
for labour. It produced a handcraft-artist profile oriented to a wide
scope of applied arts, which according to his view included industrial
products, of which he stressed their artistic dimension. His
rationale also pointed at the social aspect, at the development of
the middle reaches of society through independent medium-scale
handcrafted work, and its counterpart in small industry, as an
economy-dynamizing agent.
This law was not passed, but in 1905 the Circle for the Promotion
of the Fine Arts was created by a private initiative, which included
in its evening courses the training of artisans and which shortly
thereafter implemented a program of “art applied to industry”.
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7