Professor Francesca Balena Arista speaks about the design, which reinvents matter, in Academia Gallery on the occasion of Italian Design Day
2026.03.11
The National Academy of Art is an institution of intercultural dialogue, creative pursuits and contemporary art education. A vivid proof of this was Academia Gallery, brimming with guests, students and lecturers on 10 March, which for yet another year hosted the central event in the programme for the Italian Design Day around the world. Within the framework of its tenth, anniversary edition, the guest speaker was the Ambassador of Italian Design for 2026–the architect, designer and lecturer Prof. Francesca Balena Arista–who delivered the lecture “RE-DESIGN. Challenges in Design: Regenerating Spaces, Objects, Ideas”.
For the third consecutive year, the National Academy of Art has successfully partnered for this initiative with the Embassy of Italy, the Italian Cultural Institute, the ITA Agency, the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria and Confindustria Bulgaria. The event was attended by the Rector of the National Academy of Art, Prof. Georgi Iankov, the Ambassador of Italy to Bulgaria H.E. Marcello Apicella, the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute Maria Mazza, the Director of the ITA Agency in Sofia Andrea D'Andrea, the President of the Italian Chamber of Commerce Alessandro Geretto and the President of Confindustria Bulgaria Nunziante Coraggio. Among the attendees was also Prof. Agostino Bossi, long-time Dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Naples. This forum is a natural continuation of the active cultural exchange and strategic cooperation between the institutions, building on the sustainable dialogue, the beginning of which was laid in 2024 with the lecture of Raffaella Mangiarotti and developed through the creative laboratory of Asya Karagyozova in 2025.
In her lecture, Prof. Balena Arista shared her view that design is an integral part of our everyday life, and the artist's task is to learn to "interpret" reality in its entirety. She paid special attention to the role of the Academy–a place that has to, above all, "nourish" minds. According to her, higher education is a kind of “school for self-study”, an environment in which the student develops as a critical observer of the world. A special emphasis in the exhibition was the presentation of the Italian “radical design” of the 1960s and the 1970s–a period of profound rethinking of the discipline in conditions of social and cultural crises. Prof. Ballena emphasised the connection with matter and the history of places, reminding us that only through real knowledge of matter can we connect with the primary, sensory world around us. During the lecture, she analysed the ideas of significant figures such as Andrea Branzi and Michele de Lucchi, whose work continues to inspire contemporary concepts of urban regeneration and sustainability. Prof. Agostino Bossi also took part in the ensuing dialogue, noting that “abstraction is the mother of all matter”, and provoked young artists to “dematerialise enclosures”, to think openly and on a large scale.
For the students at the National Academy of Art, such meetings are extremely valuable. Along with the profiled training at the Academy, they have the opportunity to observe and gain experience directly from leading foreign specialists and lecturers. This lively contact with global processes and the ideas of the international avant-garde enriches their general culture and sensory perception of the world. By positioning design beyond the creation of objects, these meetings present it as a powerful tool for regenerating ideas and relationships–an experience that encourages critical thinking and inspires them in their constant visual and intellectual search.
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