LUCE estratti Luce 327_Calatroni_Franco Raggi | Page 8

As journalists linked to the world of design,
we tend to associate a lamp or an object with
a name and vice versa. In our case it is Oz.
Would you tell us more about it?
Oz was born in 1980, in the same year I was
working with Alessandro Mendini, Daniela
Puppa and Paola Navone at the exhibition
on post-modern design for the Venice
Biennale, alongside the Strada Novissima
by Paolo Portoghesi. Since design was not
present in homes in 1980 as it is today,
we decided to do an exhibition using
anonymous objects. Our reflection started
from the fact that the buyers of a design
object were a niche, cultured and intellectual,
while the great mass of consumers happily
bought anonymous objects, between banality
and kitsch. We therefore thought to display forty
“normal” products, without any apparent
quality, showing a cynical view of the world
of objects. The exhibition featured products that
we had bought in supermarkets or on
our travels, but that told a concrete and uneven
material culture; whether they were beautiful or
not did not matter. We decided to decorate
these objects with fluorescent pins that at night,
under the light of Wood, would shine, showing
their essence/absence. To illuminate the objects,
I designed a “precious” glass lamp: an opal
glass cone, cut and bevelled, and with a sloping
crystal plate that crossed it. In short, it was
a both precious and stinging object.
Fontana Arte created it for the occasion, and
then it entered the catalogue also in a table
version, resting on a transparent crystal base.
Looking at your work I noticed three possible
design approaches. The first one is the use
of primary forms (Flûte and Oz), the second
is the research (Trifluo), and the third is the
innovation (Mood and Domo). What do you
think, am I right about these approaches?
I do not know. I can say that in my work I like
to explore extremes. Let us take for instance
“to do little”, and the Flûte lamp. It was
minimal, in transparent borosilicate glass and
aluminium; the glass served only as a support
and did not have the function of filtering the
light. The beauty of borosilicate is the
possibility of combining the shapes without
moulding, the perfect transparency and the
possibility of cutting holes in it without
chipping. The funnel derived from the classic
shape of the “flask” that is flame annealed
to the neck. The diffuser was in aluminium,
suspended in the glass structure thanks
to three rods. Flûte explored a subject that has
always fascinated me: the subtraction. I tried
to work on a lamp not as a decorative element,
but as an essential element, and therefore
made up of a few elements whose quality was
in their essence. If there is little, there is little
that ages. I have already told you about Trifluo.
With Mood and Domo, for Barovier & Toso,
we innovated by changing the way in which
pieces of classic chandeliers were placed in
space. In the Venetian chandelier, the cups,
arms, glasses and leaves, blown in immutable
shapes by the master glassmakers, are typically
assembled to compose a galaxy of parts
revolving around a centre. The process was
to take these pieces and arrange them in
a different way in a sort of “glass-and-lights”
ikebana. Then I decided to show the electrical
cables and mechanical parts that were usually
hidden. Both Mood and Domo were a different
way of making an unusual order in the
iconography of the Muranese chandelier.
Irony is an element found in many of your
projects, such as On/Off or Cap or in your
Esperimenti. Would you like to talk about it?
Irony is a very useful and serious way of not
taking yourself too seriously. It is a positive
attitude that will remind you that what you
are doing may not be true. Irony is also a way
of facing the world without too much certainty;
because certainties, apart from mathematics
and managed with a remote control that
allowed you to mix the colours obtaining
infinite chromatic possibilities. The Trifluo lamp
was created around the layout dictated by
the 6 light sources, so it was a thin object with
a micro-prismatic diffuser that allowed you
to read the colours and to spread
a homogeneous coloured light. It had only one
flaw, it was expensive. I proposed to Gismondi
to make one with a chromatically fixed light,
more affordable and easier to use. However,
it is vital that a company has visions and tries
new ways of research and experimentation
even if, in the end, certain products will
not be a commercial success.
With Fontana Arte and Barovier & Toso, there
has been a more continuous relationship over
time. If I were an entrepreneur, I would not
look for the big names, but for someone with
whom to engage in a long-term dialogue,
even on issues unrelated to lighting or design.
I would talk about art, politics or philosophy,
because making products is not just a
relationship between a client and a designer,
it is something more complex and
multifaceted. I started working with Fontana
Arte in 1980, when Gae Aulenti became the
Art Director. I met her thanks to my work at the
Venice Biennale as a coordinator of the
exhibitions in ‘76, and then as editor of the
Modo magazine. I think it was my way of
telling and writing that was of interest to her.
The fact that the great Aulenti called someone
like me, who had never designed anything,
has always seemed to me an act of generous
unconsciousness and farsightedness together.
And from there a collaboration with the
company started, lasting thirty years.
A remarkable team had been created around
Gae and Carlo Guglielmi: Gae Aulenti,
Piero Castiglioni, Pierluigi Cerri, Ettore Sottsass,
Daniela Puppa and myself. Thanks to
everyone’s work, and to the continuous
dialogue with Aulenti and the company,
Fontana Arte became, once again, one of the
most prestigious Italian brands. It was them
sold and everything changed, they widened
the horizon and involved many designers
on call, with spot collaborations that worked for
the marketing, but which damaged the image
coherence of the brand’s collection. A story
similar to that of Luceplan, grown thanks to
the close relationship between Riccardo Sarfatti,
Paolo Rizzatto and Alberto Meda. Then again
everything changed and the relationship turned
off and the innovative tension too. With Jacopo
Barovier it was a different but equally casual
meeting, it happened after having heard me
speak in 1981 at a conference on the design of
useless and of appearance, and on the banality
of marketing. Together, we redesigned the
image of the company confirming it as a leader
in the production of classic Murano glass and
its evolutions in the modern sense. Also in this
case a professional and cultural relationship
of exchange and friendship was created that
went beyond work.
Domo, Barovier&Toso, 2009
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