Design, intangible cultural heritage and "activation of the authentic": designing the value of cultural heritage as an "open-ended knowledge system"

Abstract

When talking about design for cultural heritage, it is more appropriate to talk about design processes for cultural heritage rather than design competences and scope. In this view, the valorisation of cultural heritage can be seen as a set of design processes (Lupo 2009). In an ideal lifecycle of cultural heritage, whether tangible or intangible (Lupo 2009), which we propose as linear (note that this simplification is only implemented as a rhetorical device and communicative expedient), we have at the beginning a cultural good that is still potential (which does not exist as it does not have a form), which is realised in forms of good and which, when it is collectively socialised and recognised, becomes an explicit good, and then a good that is enjoyed or activated by a community when it 'appropriates' it or participates in it in various forms. In the transition from one stage to the other, processes occur that are called respectively production (of the form) of the cultural good, recognition (of the meaning) of the cultural good and activation (of the function) of the cultural good.