Which way to go? Some complicated crossroads facing design culture in Aspen

Born in 1951 thanks to the efforts of the businessman and philanthropist Walter Paepcke, the annual International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) proved to be a highly influential experience for the development of design culture during the second half of the 20th century. A closer look at its history allows for a better understanding of the ever-shifting directions of the design debate throughout the years, as well as of its connections with other fields of practice and knowledge production such as architecture, visual arts, sociology, and philosophy. This contribution will try to dig into the main issues at stake in the first two decades of the conference, and into the uses and implications of keywords such as technology, business, responsibility, environment. More broadly, the aim is to shed light upon some of the crossroads design culture was faced with in an epoch that proved to be crucial for its own development.