Edition Bauhaus 41, Theorie und Geschichte des Designs 1. Einführung / Italien und Japan, examines the fundamental relationship between design and art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and ties this in with ecological design. The book juxtaposes two poles in the development of design in the late twentieth century: Italy and Japan. Following a loose chronological sequence, the lectures also focus on the movements in international design since the nineteenth century: from Michael Thonet, the Chicago School in the USA, Russian constructivism, the Werkbund and Bauhaus in Germany, and de Stijl in the Netherlands all the way to Alvar Aalto in Scandinavia and postmodern design in Italy in the 1970s. The publication is based on reconstructions of Heinz Hirdina’s lectures. Numerous images illustrate the content. Heinz Hirdina is considered one of the foremost design theorists of the GDR. Together with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Spector Books is publishing a three-volume set of the lectures on the Theory and History of Design that Heinz Hirdina held between 1988 and 2004 when he was professor at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. Heinz Hirdina (1942–2013)—design expert, editor-in-chief of the magazine form+zweck, and professor at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin—was a key proponent of a transdisciplinary perspective on the design history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.