On April 13th, the designer and architect – born in La Spezia and emigrated to New York after having fled overseas like many other Italian “Maestros” – inaugurated the Milanese fair in the main hall of “La Triennale”. “La Triennale” is also where Gaetano Pesce presented L’Abbraccio (The Hug – translator’s note) with the Verona-based company Le Fablier. The collection is called L’Abbraccio because design is joy and one must talk to the signs: L’Abbraccio is therefore a jubilation of colors, sensations and emotions. This is where we met him, or where we should have met him since he had already run off to another Fuori Salone location in the Milan Design Village where he presented the Sessantauna tables created in order to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy along with the famous Tramonto a New York (Sunset in New York, translator’s note, Cassina, 1980). These works were presented along with the Brianza-based company Cassina. Speaking to him wasn’t easy, also because of a form of influenza which kept him away from the limelight for a couple of hours (at least, this was the official reason and we like to think that it was the truth and not just an excuse so that he could get away from the Milanese movida for some quiet time). We like to think that he just found the necessary time to take an aspirin and that he went right back to the scene, like a real workaholic. Maybe we were also influenced by the atmosphere of Via Tortona and we like having a romantic vision of the designer who talks about emotions, thoughts and moods. When we finally meet him, there’s no time for the actual interview. He wants to know what we think about his new collections, he wants to know what we think of the exhibition, he wants an opinion and in asking me, he reminds me of the manic focus on work I was told about in the Fiera backstage. We ended our chat a few days later by calling him in his New York office. The Foam Man (a nickname given to him by Carlo Scarpa because of his continuous research on the use of materials, from polyurethane, to resins, to epoxy-rubber) talked about design and architecture, about emotions and innovations, about the obligation designers and architects have towards expressing their soul in their creations. This capability, in his opinion, has been lost, but, maybe, there still is one young designer who still has it: Lapo. Lapo Elkann.

Yes, I would say it is. There’s no doubt that nowadays design is art: any innovative expression, any expression which is capable of representing reality, any expression which is an ongoing commentary on our lives is art. “Design” is a pretty complete expression because it doesn’t focus only on creativity: it also focuses on marketing, advertising, new technologies and materials. This expression is very complete as opposed to that of so-called traditional art; therefore, I think that the design we hear about constantly has gone beyond the barriers that used to keep it separated from traditional art. We can say that it is not the applied art of the past. It’s Art, it’s art as we consider it today. At least it’s art the way I think it is today.

An artist is a traditional figure and I think this role has now lost its significance because it has been used so extensively that it has lost its value. When we run into someone who has nothing to do or is unemployed and we ask this person what he does, he will answer “I’m an artist” and this abuse has made the word “artist” lose its true meaning. “Designer” is a much more contemporary word whereas the artist reminds us of the romantic figures of the past.

No, I don’t agree with this opinion. There are artists who did not work in solitude. For example, Michelangelo had almost 300 employees in his atelier: therefore, I don’t think that an “artist” can be described as “he who works in solitude”. I think this is a superficial definition.

The role of the designer is to create objects which are not only useful and functional: theseobjects must help other people’s lives, they must help people to live better. But it is not only this. Nowadays a designer is a figure who comments on reality and expresses different points of view – philosophical, political, religious – by means of his work. The designer must comment on existence in general with his creations: this is the role of a contemporary designer. Given the above, if you ask me who does this kind of work and who represents this kind of work…

I cannot give you names, but I can say there a very few. Some young designers state that they aren’t satisfied by traditional design or by the way it is expressed by means of their creations. They look for non-defined expressions which can prove their will to expand their range of action. I have been commenting on reality with my work for 40 years and I hope to have some followers someday.

No, I don’t know them. There was a Spanish publication which named some of the people who follow my work in various countries – or at least try to follow it – but I cannot recall the title of this publication and I don’t have the book with me.

There are some young designers in Holland but I honestly don’t know their names. They try to go beyond the traditional frontiers of design. Even the English designer Ross Lovegrove (born in 1958) – one of the most famous signatures in international design who declares himself an “evolutionary biologist” – designs objects which try to go beyond the barriers of traditional design. I also recently saw the work of an Italian designer which comes to mind: Lapo Elkann. He’s at work in many different sectors and he is also a designer. For example, he designed the Officina collection for Meritalia and he was able to transport his identity into that work: he expressed himself, his meilleur, his best, where he comes from and this means automobiles. – The collection which was presented in Meritalia’s showroom during the International Furniture Exposition is designed with recyclable materials deriving from the world of cars. This collection includes the Roll Roll dining room table, the Boing Boing side table and the Wroom Wroom lamp. He created a series of lamps and objects with materials which are normally used for the production of cars. I found it interesting: that collection is not an abstract expression because it refers to someone’s life and tells someone’s story. Lapo is a designer who knows how to go beyond: he went beyond traditional functionality.

Nowadays we hear talk about “Less is more” pretty often, but I think that, after all these years of talk about more and less, this less has come to zero. Nothing more can be diminished: this is a time in which our creativity must enrich history, not diminish it. This is why we are obliged to discover new frontiers for design. These can be autobiographic, they can tell stories about our identity or about the place where we live or about the religion we believe in or even about our potential political engagements. The field of design in very vast.

Yes, yes and again yes. The great designers of the past, for example Castiglioni comes to mind – Achille Castiglioni (Milan, 1918-2002), an Italian architect and designer who was among the founders of ADI the Italian Association of Industrial Design – were people who only expressed functionality through design. They recognized the superiority of what was identified as art in a period in which design was considered an applied art. Without diminishing the work of these great figures such as Castiglioni, Marcello Nizzoli – architect designer and artist, he was an Olivetti designer since 1940 who was born in Reggio Emilia in 1887 and who died in Camogli in 1969- , Marco Zanuso – a designer and town planner who was born in Milan in 1916 and who died in Milan in 2001 after being one of the pioneers of industrial design, the President and founder of ADI with Castiglioni and after having designed the golden tridimensional compass with Alberto Rosselli- and Enzo Mari – born in Novara in 1932, Mari is an architect and designer who is universally considered as one of the major theorists of international design- and many others, I think today’s goals for design are of a very different nature. Taking for granted the fact that design must be useful just like art was in the past – for instance, in the past when an artist painted a portrait he did something useful because that portrait could help someone remember his ancestors – design nowadays has this exact role with all the necessary amplifications. Design has become a mature, adult and complete expression of art.

Traditional limits are those dictated by functionality and practicality. Design must have a function but it must also express feelings, moods, sensations, thoughts which are not concrete things. These are personal points of view of the author and they are the things the author believes in.

I don’t see many people who have jumped over the bridge to broaden the range of action of design. I don’t see many people who have done this so that is why I say that design is a bit static. This gives me the opprtunity to talk about something else: everyone says that Italian design is going through a period of crisis. I live in New York and looking at Italian design from the outside and looking at the different countries I have lived in – Pesce has worked in London, Paris, Helsinki and New York – or at the different countries I have visited for my work, I can say that Italy is quite apart from the other countries because if we think about the work of designers from France, Germany, England, America or Brazil…

They are missing profundity. Italian designers are born in a high level artistic milieu which is that of Italy’s history as a country: when someone grows up in a city like Mantova he clearly develops a stronger sensibility towards the sublime expressions of architecture. This cultural and artistic context allows you to think about creativity in a more profound manner as opposed to people who do not grow up in a country like ours. We need to remember that studies and researches prove that 65% of the world’s artistic patrimony resides in Italy and that the other countries divide the remaining 35% among each other even if they are important realities such as Russia or Germany. In Italy there is an important substrate that influences the way of thinking of its citizens and of its creative minds.

Yes, we are more open minded and we have a different profundity of thoughts. This is the least we can say and it applies to Italian industrialists who are, in their own way, creators because they accept new ideas, they love challenges and make progress with their products and they express new contents. I can say they are also a part of this country of creativity called Italy. A French industrialist doesn’t have the same kind of creativity, nor does an English industrialist. They excel in other sectors but not in design. They are very rational. Even Americans – and I live in America – lack in curiosity and haven’t understood that the industrial product expresses contents which are not only practical nowadays.

I do not know what she meant. I cannot express someone else’s concepts. I would say something else in this respect: we need to rely on our 5 senses because vision has been exploited far too much. We have seen too many things and if we want to express facts we need to use other senses such as our sense of taste, our sense of smell, our sense of hearing and our sense of touch. Objects of design need to speak to these senses. If we have the capability of speaking to other senses and not only to vision, our message is perceived in a more profound manner. I don’t know what Paola Antonelli meant, but this is a very important point. Nowadays, the formal aspect of things is of secondary importance. It is important to be able to speak to senses which have been forgotten and to use them as recipients for our creations.

Let’s think about the console called La Principale which was presented at La Triennale. I worked on the resin and mixed in a couple of drops of a specific essence so that it would have a faint perfume. Perfume speaks to our sense of smell, it moves us more than just seeing the console.

When we create objects, we need to touch them in order to understand them and when we touch them, we find out that they are not rigid, they are warm and elastic, they almost remind us of the human body. That moment is hard to forget. On the other hand, if we looked at the same object without touching it wouldn’t be more than another image among billions of other images in our heads, so one more or one less would make no difference.

Forms are important in the final stage of processes. For example, let’s think about the Abbraccio wardrobe designed for the collection. First I thought about traditional closets, big and dark catafalques which had a mysterious and scary tinge to them when we were little. The closets we create today don’t communicate anything: we put our clothes inside them, we close the doors and nothing else happens. So I decided that this container needed to be expressed in different forms: while still keeping its original function it could communicate something else. In order to create this new collection, I thought about how important the affective aspect of objects is in general and about how we have forgotten this affective connection and bond in our everyday lives. I therefore decided to design a closet which would remind us of hugs which are a gesture of affection and love. Through this work, I wanted to express the need to develop this kind of feeling more than the austerity of traditional containers. This is why I gave this closet the shape of a hug, but I do not start from the form or shape. I start from a careful consideration on anything that could help our life be better.

Yes, that is correct. These needs are not only physical and practical: they are also psychological. Many years ago, I designed a lamp – Giacomolamp, 1994, a Gaetano Pesce production for Open Sky – for people who live by themselves. When these people went home, instead of feeling lonely, they felt as though someone were with them because this lamp had a certain presence in the domestic space, just like a real person. Today, objects can also help on this level, on a psychological level. If this psychological help is also an optimistic expression it’s even better, especially now that we are going through negative and difficult times. If objects speak to us about positivity and not about abstract and repetitious geometries it is better still.

I’ll give you an example. A couple of days ago I was in Milan for the International Furniture Exposition and then I went back to the US: I came here on a plane, not swimming. I must reaffirm that we need to use the means of our times otherwise we risk ending up like someone who goes to a ball in the XXI Century dressed like D’Artagnan and ends up being considered a retard. Even with regards to materials we need to be curious and capable of using today’s materials, contemporary materials. We dress according to our times, we travel according to our times, we eat and live in spaces according to our times…

They are all synthesis materials and there are thousands of them. We could be spoilt for choice. The traditional materials which have allowed many people to express themselves up until now are no longer capable of expressing our times. For example, a metallic architectural structure is more tied to the XIX century, which is the century in which this use for metal was discovered, or marble is a material that reminds us of the Greeks just like bricks remind us of the Romans…all these materials are tied to a specific historical period. If some people want to continue using these materials that’s their problem. But, if one wants to be true to himself, to his society and to his times he should use materials which are aligned with his times. Nowadays we live contemporarily with all the progress made by techniques and technologies: we don’t go to the dentist and find out he still uses a crank handle drill. We go to dentists who use the newest discoveries in machineries and utensils. This happens in certain fields and it should also happen in design.

It is sufficient to take a look around. I’d say that most of today’s designers continues to use traditional means and materials.

I would have to list many names, but they are so insignificant that I don’t even pay attention to them. There are many marble tables around and they must have been designed by someone…

I really do not have any name in mind.

It’s the same thing. Architects still focus on forms so we see abstract and repetitive towers where every floor is the same as the other. These are retarded forms of thought. You call them archistars, I would call them repeaters of styles or of inventions made by architects a century ago. They are repetitive architectural structures: for example, an architect designs a structure in Peking that has nothing to do with the Chinese tradition and then the same architect designs the same structure in Buenos Aires…so architecture becomes a decoration and not the masterly work it should be. Architecture is the queen of all arts and it should be capable of expressing the place in which it is built and it should be capable of speaking about the traditions of that place, although not in practical terms. So if a certain place has a style, one must not continue creating in that same style but – and this is why architecture is such a difficult job – one should know how to interpret the context in terms of invisible significances. One should know how to express and transmit the expression of a place by means of architecture.

The museum in Bilbao, although after that work, Gehry – Frank Owen Goldenberg changed his last name to Gehry in 1954. He was born in Toronto in 1929 and is an architect known for his sculptural and organic approach to design. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was inaugurated in 1997 – did nothing. He was unable to build another structure as innovative as this one. Renzo Piano – born in Genoa in 1937, the architect, among many other prizes, won the Pritzker Prize, the world’s most prestigious architectural prize, in 1998 – on the other hand is an intelligent architect but his works are repetitious and they still belong to the international style that ended 80 years ago. Koolhaas – Rem Koolhaas a Dutch architect born in 1944 – created many projects in Peking – the headquarters of China’s Central Television between 2004 and 2008 – that have nothing to do with the city…there’s a lot of superficiality, probably because schools don’t teach architects to be thorough in these aspects. Architecture remains the expression of a beauty from the past that doesn’t interest us anymore and that expresses itself by means of geometrical structures which are not a part of the current reality. The beauty of geometry doesn’t interest me anymore and I think it doesn’t interest many other people who are not experts, but these people observe the architectural structures in cities…

The three towers of Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and…I can’t even remember the other one’s name… Arata Isozaki…They are the three towers of rubbish from the evolution of architecture standpoint. We are in 2010 and unfortunately Milan has chosen architectural structures which have already been seen 60/70 years ago in other cities. Milan is an extremely avant-garde city with an elevated artistic content – in fact, in certain periods it becomes the capital of the world like during the International Furniture Exposition – but when it comes to building three skyscrapers it calls three architects who create architecture with forms of the past and that is a pity. For example, for the Expo, I had proposed a pluralist tower where every floor was supposed to be designed by a different architect so that this structure wouldn’t have been homogenous and so that it would have expressed pluralism and democracy and at the same time it would have become a commentary, a manifesto on the architecture of this period with a testimony of young and old architects form the South, the North, the East, the West… Milan would have had the first pluralist expression of architecture and this is what this city deserves. It doesn’t deserve a traditional skyscraper that the architect is stupid enough to curve as though it were a doorknob. Unfortunately, this is the cultural tardiness of architecture: architecture is an art which progresses like all other arts and it must find its expression in connection with this period in time and not in connection with the past century.

I designed this project many years ago for a Brazilian constructor who wasn’t able to build it because of the crisis which hit Brazil. More recently, I proposed it for the Expo because Milan is the capital of design. I spoke about it to the Director of La Triennale, Andrea Cancellato, to the President, Davide Rampello, and to Silvana Annichiarico, the curator of the “Rumore del Tempo” exposition that I presented at La Triennalea couple of years ago. And last May, they called me to tell me that the project was a success and that it had been inserted in the Master plan. But they also told me that the project would be changed: it won’t be a tower. It will have a horizontal development. It will host two representatives of each of the Countries which will be present during the Universal Exposition and after the vent they will become apartments. I know nothing more. As of today it is still a project. I am also thinking of re-proposing an old project I did for Japan, the Vertical Garden. I could also create pluralist vertical gardens. We’ll see.

No, not yet.

Shanghai and Tokyo will probably substitute New York as capitals of the world in 20 or 30 years, but as of today they still do not have the network of services New York City can offer. They are still cities in becoming.

I don’t have a good relationship with traditions. We shouldn’t be interested in the past because it is the past: we should be interested in the past as a reflection and as knowledge because knowing where we came from can help us understand where we are going. Progress is surely not a straight line in the sense that we can draw a straight line from the past knowing exactly where we will end up. It is a sinuous line. The past is not a goal, it is merely an instrument of knowledge to understand what we should do in order to progress, in order to allow progress to go on.

Yes it does, because I think Italy is the perfect place to express two concepts. Italy made a great effort in order to reach its unification 150 years ago and this table wants to commemorate that important date and at the same time it suggests the idea and hope that someday not only will Europe be united but even the world will be…that there will be a sole democratic government that will act in the best interest of every country, distributing richness…

It is a dream that represents the destiny of globalization. Globalization has a dangerous risk in itself that is the potential elimination of territorial differences, of cultural and linguistic differences. And even in this case Italy is an example: our country is made up of differences, it is united but different at the same time. I wanted to transmit this message with my collection: you consider it political and I agree with you, but these tables underline the fact that it is extremely important that every territory, every person, every city, every region maintains and reinforces its differences which are our richness.

That is correct. Diversity is the future of industrial productions. Series are no longer series of copies. They are series of original pieces and each piece is unique. This is true for regions, nations, for individuals, for objects. We are going towards a period in which essence, diversity and individuality of objects is evidenced. This is the value of the future. Standardized cultures and the planning of countries, cities and individuals is a long forgotten dream.