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One November afternoon, under a grey sky and with a slightly pungent air that let you imagine the arrival of winter, we go to meet the architect Giorgio De Ferrari, who welcomes us in his villa of the early '900, a house with few furniture but well selected. The living room where we start to converse has two windows overlooking a garden with a majestic persimmon tree, the same represented on the ceiling decorated with the same, on the walls there are several works of modern artists, with pieces of Pistoletto, Lichtenstein, Mondino or Jones.
How did you start your work in the world of design?
I graduated in '60, at the Polytechnic of Turin in the Faculty of Architecture, design at the time did not exist, neither as a degree course nor as a discipline, there was the discipline of furniture in which I did my first design project with Ermanno Isola then teacher: we participated in a competition for a company of laminates, material that later replaced the American sheet. These were the foundations of design, a period when furniture was being studied and the term "design" was not yet used. As soon as I graduated, I went into my own studio in Isola.
So what was design if there was no design?
In the 1960s there was no design school in Italy, except the Isia in Milan, which was an institute of applied art. Let's say that at the time design was a study understood as research on the object: we went from what to do to how to do. For me design is the project, the drawing that is produced in a serial way to respond to a function. Design was born in Italy and developed in the world of architects with the exceptions of the case: Joe Colombo, with whom I worked for years, for example, had not graduated in architecture, yet he knew how to design and draw.
Design schools have now grown: a statistic at the last Salone del Mobile in Milan states that among the novelties presented by the first 20 Italian companies, less than 20% are projects by Italian designers.
Is the excellence of Italian design such thanks to the designer or entrepreneur?
The beauty of the glorious years is that there was a great fusion between designer and entrepreneur, for example Gavina: he said what to do and why, there was a real friendship between designers and producers. At that time the meeting was generally casual. Often the designer would go to the company and thus build a relationship that would become continuous: the sales manager would realize that there was a need for a certain product and propose to the designer to design it. Now it's different, I would say that the excellence of Italian design is due to the entrepreneur: foreigners come here because they find the entrepreneur prepared to take risks. Today there are no big names in Italian design, compared to before. The Salone del Mobile is important because Milan has managed to organize an extraordinary event: the reality is that the projects conceived by Italians are a small part while Italian entrepreneurship is still a great thing.
How do you design an object? Is there a precise method or are there different schools of thought?
There are different approaches: there are less educated producers, who ask for and expect many proposals among which they identify the best, a bit like a contest; this is the method of low level design schools. Instead, culture, scholars, try to find a single solution, and present themselves with that one proposal, the one that according to the designer is the best. The young Colombo (Joe, ed), claimed that the project must respond to the functions, no stylism or aesthetics. He thought that if the problem is studied in a radical and profound way, whoever realizes it, the result is the same, a single solution, regardless of the person who designs.
And at this point, on the one hand, we find the designer who designs without knowing who is the user of the project and, on the other hand, the interior designer who designs for a space and for a person he knows: this is the philosophy of Mollino who developed the project for the place. Visions at odds with one another: Joe Colombo didn't call them furniture but equipment, because they were needed for everyone. I believe that the designer designs for the maximum common divider, while the interior designer designs for the minimum common multiple.
For example, your "Piega" lamp produced in the 70s and now reissued for Stilnovo, which you presented at the last Salone del Mobile, how did it come about?
The Piega was born this way: we had to make a supply for a certain college of students, a very strong thing, that it wouldn't break, that it could be moved. So we needed something that wasn't on the market. At the time Stilnovo was a primary company, which is why now it is always present in the design auctions, but productively speaking they were all made with a base, arm and light, usually all metal. Then I thought that the sheet metal was good for our use, because it was light but at the same time strong but I didn't want to use it as Stilnovo used it, that is with the cold drawing technique. A bit thinking about the teaching of Joe Colombo, who always said that a good way to start the project was to look at what everyone else had done and then do it backwards, I decided to make it flat, also because working by bending the sheet is much cheaper, with the fold giving a shape and steps from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. So I did a study, a proposal and it was accepted. Now the Piega lamp is still made of sheet metal but lit by LEDs.
Do you think that nowadays the materials to produce are cheaper than in the past?
No, it may seem because before you used more glass, more wood, while now you use more and more synthetic materials, but it is also true that before you designed using the materials that were available, now often beyond the object you design the material or anyway you make a project already thinking of that type of material, often more performing and reproducible. At the same time, we must admit that the industrial production with these materials loses the magic of craftsmanship that was intrinsic in the production with other materials: some objects made of wood made it necessary to pass through where man had to put his hand, now it is different and a curl chiseled by hand in the wood is more beautiful, you feel like touching it, which maybe does not happen where the object is totally industrial.
So, what do you, as an architect and designer, prefer?
We as a studio have moved from the design of industrial design for living, to industrial design for the city, our most famous masterpiece I would say that is that waste bin of the series Sabaudo where the name of the city is merged: Piano uses it in all his projects. The design of the house is fun, you live in salons, a bit like fashion, it has a very strong recreational component and you can produce many times by injection so the cost of the system is not high and, if it goes wrong, do not ruin anyone, see how it goes on the market, and this is definitely very fun and more free. I'll tell you, however, that it's much more difficult to live on design than on architecture.
