Lately, I’ve been saying – sarcastically, to myself and a few close friends – that Design (at least as we know it) is dead. Definitely quite a dramatic statement, but it wouldn’t surprise those familiar with the Dutch context where I mostly operate, or anyone who looks critically at design’s evolution beyond industrially-born products of consumption in Western economies. This is an understanding that BASE, in particular, is bringing deeper into our Italian landscape – one that, if we exclude the revolutionary sparkles of Italian Radical design (whose legacy has perhaps survived its authors too long to feed a sort of national ego, both inside and outside borders), has little to offer beyond dreaming beyond the American Dream or the clichés of innovation and progress. 

Design, we dare to say, is dead; but designers are very much alive.

First, they have increasingly outperformed the field of design as it is or could be – what we might call the industry. They courageously invade other disciplines: academic research, investigative journalism, contemporary art, the performing arts, comedy, healing practices, restorative justice, biosciences, education, and politics. The list could go on. And they are alive in a designerly kind of way – borrowing here from the one and only Danah Abdulla. They create coalitions with non-designers and designers alike. For them, design is an action, a practice. Similarly, bell hooks speaks of Love as a verb: “We would all love better if we used it as a verb.”¹

I believe that somewhere between the “glorious” decades of capitalist consumption and technology “innovation,” we transformed design into a noun, an outcome, a product. Yet it has always been a verb, and I’m glad designers haven’t forgotten this, and that they’ve taken responsibility for reminding the rest of us. 

The list of designers and projects I appreciate in this matter would be long. I’ll briefly mention a few. From BASE’s selection, soon to be shown at Hello Darkness during Milan Design Week 2026, is the newly formed collective Common Index. These friends explore new ways of working through digital practices and installations, emerging from the need to rethink collective making while building a shared catalogue of references, gestures, and connections that define the contemporary.

Speaking about creating new coalitions, there’s the incredible curatorial project Design Signals presented at Faber in recent years, curated by Martina Muzi. Building on her remarkable work with VanAbbe Museum and Eindhoven Design Academy alumni on the GEO-DESIGN exhibition series, this project highlights the strength of collaborative approaches that form coalitions (sometimes unexpected) between international designers and Timișoara’s local industry. Born from Romanian entrepreneurs, this initiative has renewed an idea of design in relation to industry that incorporates social and cultural wellbeing while advancing design discourse, interrogating how designers can think, make, and ultimately design. 

Flora
Lechner
(2023 edition)

Théophile
Blandet
(2025 edition)

¹ HOOKS, BELL. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow Paperbacks, 2001.