Plastic paradise: Ibiza’s 1971 ICSID congress

This article discusses the use of plastic at the annual meeting of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), held in Ibiza in 1971. It focuses on the pneumatic sculptures of Josep Ponsatí and the inflated architecture of José Miguel Prada Poole, whose maquettes are today catalogued in museums as sculptures. The congress took place in the Sant Miquel cove during Franco’s dictatorship and exemplifies how plastic was understood under those specific social and political conditions, and how it was used on an island that embodied traditional Mediterranean culture, albeit dramatically transformed by tourism. The article also reveals the links established between this ICSID gathering and the plastics industry: Aiscondel, the factory that provided the materials for some of the sculptures, used documentary images taken at the festival in aggressive publicity campaigns in subsequent years. In adopting this focus, the article aims to show how the imagery of plastic has evolved in recent decades from the utopian vision prevalent at the time to its current association with a dystopian Anthropocene.