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Mood
Barovier&Toso, 2007
As a Milanese and an architect, what
do you think about the latest transformations
of your city?
In the last twenty years Milan has had an
interesting boost, linked to its way of being
a strongly dynamic city. I am very perplexed
about the architectural result of some
operations like CityLife. It is a formally wrong
urban choice, the creation of a piece of city
within the city, even if use and time will
mitigate this unhappy graft. As an architect,
I have to say there were better projects
presented for the area. As a Milanese citizen,
I saw that it was the most rewarding project
that won, and there were no architects in the
jury. Considering the historical trend of a city,
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what are some tens of millions of euros
compared to the fact that these buildings
will remain visible for many years within
its urban fabric? In this case the choice was
determined by money, and as a citizen
I consider that Milan, in this case, gave up the
governance of its urban forms for economic
reasons. The finance and the economy, which
are positive energies if well regulated, have
become prevalent compared to the collective
strategy for the public good. As an architect
and as a citizen, I love Milan and I consider
it the only truly European city in Italy, a city
always moving and in which there is often
a virtuous partnership between private and
public. Another example of why I like Milan
is that, notwithstanding the regulations,
my studio was built in an area of large disused
industries that the PRG, the urban master plan,
and science, are a bit dangerous. Practicing
irony is like instilling a bacterium that changes
your perspective and makes you smile. Irony
presupposes an attitude to smile, and it is also
a form of knowledge, because it reveals our
and others’ weaknesses and invites us to be
vigilant about rhetoric and banality. For me
it is fundamental, it is a non-aggressive form
of criticism and communication of thought.
Following these reflections, On/Off was born
for Vistosi and then edited by Luceplan.
It was conceived by taking as a creative cue
a technology theft: the gravity switch, that
of the lids of the freezers, as it were. I find it
interesting to take a component that belongs
to a certain world and see what happens
if brought into another. It was a perfect lamp,
removed from the catalogue for obscure
reasons; if it had been properly communicated,
it would probably have had a place among the
market and design icons, such as the Parentesi.
Without comparing ourselves to the Castiglioni
brothers, together with Santachiara and Meda
we created a perfect object, which, strangely,
was the son of three fathers, each one with
its own poetics, however without bearing any
sign of the three. And who knows, perhaps
for this reason it really worked out well.
La Classica, 1976. Collezione Design Centre
Pompidou dal 2015 / Since 2015, part of the
Centre Pompidou's Design Collection
had foreseen, years ago, for small craft and
commercial activities in the district. As a matter
of fact, it was the “creative tertiary sector” that
came to reside there (architects, photographers,
designers, showrooms, loft houses, art galleries,
clubs, etc.). Finally, the vitality of the real
economy has managed to change the PGT’s,
or the Government Territory Plan’s, forecasts
and settlement patterns. Everybody eventually
realised that inside a city, in transition from
an industrial economy to a service one, many
urban areas are freed, which will later be
occupied by growing productive realities, and
that urban planning must understand, favour
and regulate these transformations. For Milan,
it was fashion and design.
Is there a perfect lamp?
Well, there are the “right” lamps. As we said
before, they could be On/Off or Parentesi. Right
in the sense that they state an idea and a
constructive and aesthetic principle in a clear,
light and non-rhetorical way.
So, where is the design going?
I do not know, maybe it goes towards
a self-celebration that becomes self-extinction.
Fortunately, design continues to grow
commercially, but how much this growth
is a good thing to respond to our human
or philosophical needs in general, I do not
know. We miss the figures like Enzo Mari or
Ettore Sottsass, but they will reappear when we
will get back to the pleasure of finding meaning
in things without the marketing dictatorship.
Now and then you can do something that does
not sell, but that gives you the emotions that a
bestseller does not give.
For example, the Java, Mari’s sugar bowl in
melamine for Danese; it is an object that
contains a truly unique genius, rigor and ethics.
If I had to explain to a student what design is,
I would tell him to study Java, to understand
its every detail and then to redesign it
“by heart”.