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Maîtres of design
Style
We all know your great versatility in facing projects with different formal results: which are the common denominators? I believe above all in the freedom to experiment, facing the project with a certain openness. It means understanding the intent of the company I am working with, letting materials and available techniques speak, every time getting to diversified projects. This way of working is therefore not characterised by style elements that can determine common denominators of the many works I design.
Cultural models Can we say that your work, and above all the design of upholstered furniture, represents the best way to recognise your cultural models? I have really appreciated the first opportunity I got, which was Patrizia Moroso’s order to design “upholstered furniture” for her company. The occasion was a really positive experience since I found a great open-mindedness in Patrizia and the whole company. I came from the rigorous education of the School of Architecture of Madrid, a path I continued in Italyy after the fourth year. y
Hence my training brought me to be nearer the Milanese design school that is now defined through the great historical masters like Castiglioni and Magistretti, even though at that time the disruptive experience of the Memphis Group and Alchimia was greatly appreciated in Milan. I was more attracted, or rather fascinated, by De Padova’s store windows, with their coherence and Magistretti’s works they exhibited.
Priorities
In your designing path the priority is: the relation with materials, the household rituals, the company wishes, the poetic intuition? First of all I have to say that I find my activity really interesting since it allows me to face a multitude of realities. In this sense I never forget the reality, the company, with which I decide to co-operate. Since the project follows its own path, I prefer to let it go without tensions nor forcing solutions. I could define it a “sweet project”, without traumas, able to indulge and evaluate the company’s potentialities.
The Classics
Is there one object of the many you designed that you could define “classic”? According to Gio Ponti’s definition, “classic” means the object without any connotation: the chair was a chair-chair. Or would you prefer your objects to be appreciated and remembered for their varied formal and decorative connotations? I admire Gio Ponti and regard him very highly: I love keeping one of his small drawings on the wall behind by bed, but I think that the way to work and think doesn’t necessarily inply the research of “style”. I try and create coherent objects, but I don’t know whether I am working for something that will last in time. I believe in the contemporary object, whether it will live on will be determined by society.
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