Emilio Ambasz (Editor)
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape -- Achievements and Problems of Italian Design.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collaboration with Centro Di, Florence, 1972. First edition. 0870703935 430 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 8" x 9.45", is bound in printed white wrappers, with black lettering to spine. Book shows very light shelfwear, with minor creases to spine. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and bright. Profusely illustrated. Dust jacket displays sunning to spine panel, with small, closed tear to lower half. Sunning is also visible on rear panel of jacket. 
"During the last decade, the emergence of Italy as the dominant force in design has had a profound influence in Europe and the Americas. This phenomenon is important not only because of the high quality and diversity of the forms produced, but also because it has generated a lively debate on the sociocultural implications of product design, raising questions of vital concern to designers throughout the world.
For many designers, the aesthetic quality of individual objects intended for private consumption has become irrelevant in the face of such pressing problems as poverty, urban decay, and the pollution of the environment now encountered in all industrialized countries. Consequently, they are increasingly shifting the focus of their attention from the well-designed object to man's total environment, seeing the designer's function as one that can mold patterns of behavior by creating new settings for freer, more adaptable life styles. Some, however, despairing of effecting social change through the design, regard their task as essentially a political one. They therefore abstain from the physical designing of either objects or environments and channel their energies into the staging of events and the issuing of polemical statements. Their approach thus parallels that of many artists in other mediums who view art in primarily conceptual terms.
This publication, issued in conjunction with a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, is the first to deal comprehensively with these challenging developments. Over 150 objects of Italian design of the past ten years have been selected for the show and are all reproduced in color or black-and-white, as are the dozen environments by well-known Italian designers specially commissioned for the occasion, and two awarded prizes in a concurrent competition for young designers under thirty-five sponsored by the Museum. Each environment is accompanied by a statement in which the individual or group responsible for the project clarifies his position regarding the present and future role of design.
In addition to essays by Emilio Ambasz, Curator of Design at The Museum of Modern Art and director of the exhibition, the book contains contributions by a number of outstanding Italian critics and art historians. Together, these compromise the first historical survey of contemporary Italian design and a critical analysis of its intellectual and formal position with the context of international design today."