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The increasing use of ICT is radically changing research methodologies in art history. In such a rapidly evolving context, predictably, art history shall increasingly benefit from Knowledge Representation & Automated Reasoning methodologies related to several aspects, namely data classification and integration, interoperability between different data sources, and semantically driven response to archival queries. In particular, the Semantic Web and interoperable archives seem to embody the universalist dream of some 20th century visionary projects. In the light of the challenges posed by new technologies, the archive remains a significant space that calls for reflection on conceptual models for the representation of knowledge and on the effects that the logic of computation will have on the way we experience cultural heritage.

In light of the intense critical debate on the role of Giulio Carlo Argan that has been recently increasing (Gamba, 2009; 2012; Dantini, 2013), my proposal aims at studying the specific perspective of Filiberto Menna about the design. Thought he started his career embracing the lesson of Argan, he achieved an autonomous stance which aimed at harmonizing “rules” and “chances”, “freedom” and “constraints” (Menna, 1970). The studies on the theory of architecture, the design, and the italian “arte programmata” have been the subject matter of the Menna’s analysis since 1962. At that time, he published his first investigations about design remarking that the design is a “specialized project of human environment”. The Argan’s lesson concerning the school of Bauhaus emphasized the moral aspect of the design, and, more in general, the failure of the avant-garde utopian project. Filiberto Menna has never openly contested the Argan perspective although his stance has not been comparable to that of the master. As a matter of fact, by comparing the numerous essays by Argan (p. ex. “Progetto e destino” wrote in 1964) and those by Menna (p. ex. “Design d’ambiente” wrote in 1968), it’s evident that the old master was keeping on thinking to the “project” as a “structure” while Menna has brought forward the design matter into the post-industrial society. The Menna thought about the design is connected to an issue that plays a central role in all his works and it is broadly explained in the book Profezia di una società estetica, published in 1968, and in the preface of the second edition thereof (1983). Menna considers that the problem is the “disentanglement of the artistic issue from the aesthetic one” and the design could constitute a solution. In the Menna’s essays, the major investigation focuses on the problem of the subject that is no longer founded on an ontological basis but, at the same time, it doesn’t give up “reconstructing itself on temporary, unstable, ephemeral bases” (Menna, 1983).