For the academic year 2017-2018, the course Bellezza Italiana at the Design Faculty of the Milan Polytechnic has been renewed. Entrusted to the Cologni Foundation, the course is aimed at the diffusion of knowledge of Italy's immense creative heritage, a crucial element in competing on the luxury-goods market. Beauty is explained as an expression of talent, an instrumental characteristic of Italian products, and the result of the country's diverse types of high artisanship in crafts and the applied arts.
Through the comprehension and analysis of the "construction" of beauty, it is possible to recognise the material and immaterial heritage that has been a long-standing source of inspiration to designers and other creative professionals.
The course – taught by Alberto Cavalli, the director of the Cologni Foundation – is patronised by the City of Milan, allowing the lessons to take place not at the Bovisa campus of the Polytechnic, but at numerous significant locations in the city, including the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the Teatrino at Palazzo Visconti, the Poldi Pezzoli museum, the Bagatti Valsecchi museum-house, and the marionette theatre Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla & Figli.
