Design was the first ambassador abroad for contemporary Italy.
Anyone with even minimal knowledge of the sector already knows what I’m referring to: for the uninitiated, this concerns the exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape,” curated in 1972 by Emilio Ambasz at the MoMA in New York and immediately entered into history as a milestone of Made in Italy. It was this exhibition that consecrated design as the representative of Italian style. Before fashion, which became an ambassador of excellence a decade later, before our cuisine (at the time not valued at all) and even before the famous exhibition on the state of contemporary art in Italy, with which—in 1985—Germano Celant introduced Arte Povera to the American public.
But it was the establishment of Italian Design Day—known until last year by that name and now as the Giornata del design italiano nel mondo—that decreed in 2017 the role of Italian design as ambassador of contemporary Italy. This is a thematic showcase launched by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, in collaboration with and support from the Ministry of Culture, and developed together with the triad formed by the Triennale di Milano, ADI (Association for Industrial Design), and the Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano. An initiative that over these eight years has made it possible to promote Italian design with a vast and diversified program of events carried forward with the support of embassies, consulates, Italian Cultural Institutes and ICE offices abroad, thanks to the voices and interventions of one hundred design ambassadors.
Not by chance, Angelo Piero Cappello, Director General of the Directorate for Contemporary Creativity at the Ministry of Culture, observes from his long international career in Italian Cultural Institutes: “For decades abroad we have pandered to the cliché that sees us as bearers of excellence only in the Italy of the Caesars and the Popes, an image of Italy turned toward the past. Today, instead, we look to contemporary excellence. Among these, beyond art, design is the element most representative of contemporary Italy thanks to its innate ability to need no explanation and to overcome language barriers.”
The Giornata del design italiano nel mondo is therefore a moment of cultural promotion that through conferences, exhibitions, university lectures and workshops aims to support the strategic sector of our industrial production. To let the numbers speak: we count nine editions, 87 countries, 190 cities, 312 testimonials and six annual catalogs under the coordination of Andrea Cancellato, director of the ADI Design Museum. Ambassadors of different ages and types chosen from among architects, designers, curators, journalists—some appointed for a single edition, others for multiple years—up to the quintessential ambassadors such as architect Michele De Lucchi and Marva Griffin Wilshire, founder of Salone Satellite, with a full eleven cities to their credit.
The event identifies a different theme each year around which the entire program revolves: from the relationship with sustainability to the future of living, from innovation to new materials, up to the 2025 edition with the theme “Inequalities. Design for a Better Life.” The initiative was recently the subject of a conference held at the Triennale di Milano on November 5th with the emblematic title “Design Diplomacy.” On this occasion, the entire trajectory of the project was retraced, emphasizing how the scope of action was initially much more restricted and focused mainly on European capitals before gradually opening up to new countries and new continents.
From the first edition, pioneers Lisbon, Madrid, Miami, Beijing and Tokyo were present, to which many European cities were gradually added, capitals and otherwise, but above all many new countries and continents, reaching destinations like Khartoum in Sudan and Muscat in Oman. But while in Europe the activities were mainly conferences, it was in more distant destinations that ambassadors were involved in broader-scope and longer-duration actions, in some cases reaching actual tours with interventions in various locations.
As Filippo La Rosa, Director for the Promotion of Italian Language and Culture at the Farnesina, emphasized during the conference, the event—beyond historically having played a role in spreading awareness of contemporary design figures beyond the universally known design masters—has made it possible to create a channel of exchange and knowledge involving dozens of countries in a global operation in which Italy has not limited itself to bringing its representatives to a mature market, but also where a potential market can be glimpsed and, even more, where the market is still entirely to be built. An investment, therefore, in the long term.
It was precisely in this direction that my mission to Niamey, capital of sub-Saharan Niger, took place, where I was sent in July as a Design Ambassador, a role I have had the opportunity to fill since 2021. A mission organized safely by Ambassador Roberto Orlando, during which I also had the chance to visit MISIN—the Bilateral Support Mission in Niger, where we have been militarily present since 2018 and exclusively since 2024. Four days in the heart of Africa to tell the story of Made in Italy excellence in the field of contract design to the circuit of local architects but, above all, to conduct a three-day workshop with some local artisans selected by Diassibo Tchombiano, founder of the Taweydo gallery, in order to share possible transformations of local production for the domestic market.
An operation that left a small tangible mark, which today we might perhaps classify under the label of soft power, that involved engaging other worlds and other cultures to discover what lies behind mutual clichés.
The new directives move in this direction: seeking as much as possible to extend and diversify participation, opening increasingly lasting flows of exchange as in the case of the three exhibitions on Italian Design Manifestos, produced by the ADI Design Museum and made available with the possibility of local production. The next edition, with the theme of Re-Design, is scheduled for March 10, 2026, but it is already known that some countries will postpone it due to religious holidays, while others will wait for elections to take place or for more favorable climatic conditions.
A day extended in time, therefore, to tell what design does best: create immediate cultural bridges, free from semantic difficulties and united by the daily presence of design in our lives, private and professional, in the means of transportation we take, in the digital interfaces we use. In short, whether manifest or deliberately hidden, design is the universal language with which we Italians have gone to speak with the world.
Federica Sala is a Curator, Art & Design Advisor, and Ambassador for Italian Design at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
