This talk aims at discussing the artistic status of the design object and the ambiguous relationship between visual arts and design. To this end, the specific aspects of the "project culture" will be defined and issues like the use value and the aesthetic value of a work as well as related concepts such as "function" or "emotion” will be highlighted in order to analyse which are the essential features of the culture of project exposed to processes of dematerialization, collaboration and participation, provided that there is a distance between the conception and execution of the work that forces us to rethink key-concepts such as the "authorship" of the work.