WORDS IN DESIGN

The MAG - 03.23

By Cristina Morozzi

In 1994 Segesta Publishing House published, edited by Paolo Frello and Roberto Marcatti, Parola di Designer (Words of Designers), with reflections, words and opinions of the protagonists of projects in design. 

To quote some of them: 

“Take away instead of adding” (Bruno Munari).

“Details are not details. They make the product” (Charles Eames). 

“The goal of design is not to ideologize false memories, but to communicate to others messages of curiosity, fun and affection”(Achille Castiglioni).

“A project is an act of war” (Enzo Mari). 

“Life is full of opportunities to gather, of trinkets that are objects to think about” (Le Corbusier).

 “A house is a machine for living in. An armchair is a machine for sitting in” (Le Corbusier). 

“Take away everything, but not excess” (Oscar Wilde). 

“Design stands as the most advanced and explicit possibility of creating a complete artistic experience” (Mario Bellini).

Milan’s IULM University held a poll to choose the 2023 keyword between “doubt, risk and the unknown”. 

Events, keeping house, and the unexpected suggested certain keywords to me: 

• lightness; 
• mobility; 
• transferring the past into the contemporary, without distorting it; 
• revival of applied arts and craftsmanship (as proposed last December by Artino FAAA, an annual festival of applied arts in Milan at the Casa degli artisti (House of Artists);

“Contaminate”: not seasonal trends, but their coexistence in the same space; the coexistence of the abstract with the narrative, the geometric with the figurative; the essential with the decorative. 

Surrounding oneself with objects one does not need, because, as philosopher Emanuele Coccia argues, one does not inhabit empty spaces, but lives with things. Creating penumbras, rediscovering the opaque and, conversely, transparencies; favoring compact materials like paper, cardboard and felt; natural ones such as wood, terracotta and leather. Cultivating memory by establishing corporate museums, like those of Kartell, Poltrona Frau, Riva 1920, Poggi and Molteni. Exploring the future of the modern garden, drawing inspiration from the exhibition Garden Futures: Designing with Nature sponsored by Vitra Design Museum, curated by studio Formafantasma (March 25-October 3, 2023). Visiting Arte Sella in Borgo Valsugana, where trees, logs, branches, stones, with the collaboration of well-known international creatives, become an artistic path.

History is written not only by great events, wars and pandemics, but by wild and cultivated nature, everyday things and appropriate words.