The Black Book: Emilio Ambasz’s University of Design

In 1972 a two-day symposium entitled “Institutions for a Post-Technological Society—The Universitas Project” was held at MoMA and organised by its then curator of design, Emilio Ambasz. Its vision was nothing less than to establish “a new type of University concerned with the evaluation and design of our man-made milieu.” Three years in the making Ambasz managed to draw in an incredible list of attendees and participants. A number of these were picked out to respond to a provocation written by Ambasz and forwarded to them as a booklet—it was to become known as the “black book.” This chapter will closely examine both the provocation and the responses to it to identify the debate over a nascent philosophy of the artificial and what this may mean for an idea of a new form or approach to knowledge, and therefore of the university. Perhaps it is only now that what was seeded by Ambasz has come to fruition—the possibility of a university of design.