Juan María Montijano.

The meaning of ‘good’ and the enhancement project of San Carlino in Rome.

Resumen

Starting from a thought conceived by Juan María Montijano regarding the metaphysical nature of design, considered to keep the real meaning of the objects that surround us, the study analyses the ‘intangible value of material products’ with the intention of inviting people to pay attention not only on the couple form-function but also on the intangible stratification that supports it. A dimension considered privileged as here meet the design process and the experience of us, both contributing to get objects free from anonymity of standardization and the risks of depersonalization, providing them with a sort of ‘biography’. In this way, things become stories, languages and expressions of relationships.

In support of the thesis of the ‘metaphysics of design’, the third paragraph investigates the thoughts of academics and philosophers from the Twentieth Century –Barthes, Baudrillard, Selle, Kopytoff, De Fusco– whose researches converge from different perspectives towards the idea of a cultural dimension of everyday life built through the meanings and signs belonging to its small and bigger components. Following this idea, the term ‘heritage’ is also considered as an active deposit to increase over time adopting tools capable of enhancing its contents by updating them and making them accessible and usable.

These include the technique of storytelling, a narrative channel that highlights in particular the immaterial, finding in ‘cultural containers’, such as archives and libraries, dimensions useful to develop strategic actions aimed at increasing knowledge and culture. From here, the last part of the paper examines the enhancement work carried out by Juan María Montijano over fifteen years inside the Library and the Archive of san Carlo alle Quattro Fontanein Rome, in order to protect, narrate and transmit the historical memory that holds.