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BIKINI
design: Franco Bizzozzero
for Pierantonio
Bonacina
De hoogst
haalbare designprijs ter wereld is zojuist toegekend aan de Bellini Chair
van Heller. De door Mario Bellini in 1998 ontworpen stoel is zowel projectmatig als
voor particuliere toepassingen geschikt, zowel indoor als outdoor. Met een
bruto prijs van 84 Euro en een snelle levertijd bouwt de Bellini Chair een mooie referentielijst op,
zowel in België als in Nederland (o.a. ABN Amro, KPMG,
Golden Tulip)
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The
MAY DAY lamp was designed by Konstantin Grcic for Flos in 1998.
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Recognised
as a superior design, in 2000 it became part of the permanent
collection of the M.O.M.A. in New York and it has been awarded the
prestigious ADI COMPASSO D´ORO prize, now in its 19th year.
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LEGATO
Table. Particle-board wood top with ebony-stained wood finish. Tubular
steel legs with pressure die-cast aluminium joints. Designed
by Enzo Mari for DRIADE.
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Op 15 october 2001 zijn de winnaars
bekend gemaakt van de 19e editie van het Compasso d'Oro (Gouden Kompas)
ingericht door het Italiaanse ADI. Onder de 17 uitgedeelde trofees vinden
we volgende objecten uit de interieur-design-branche :
- Chaise longue Bikini van Franco Bizzozzero
(Pierantonio
Bonacina)
- Domotica-systeem My Home van Bticino
- Tafel Legato van Enzo Mari (Driade)
- Lamp May Day van Konstantin Grcic (Flos)
- Lamp Tite e Mite van Marc Sadler (Foscarini)
- The Bellini Chair van Mario Bellini (Heller)
- Lamp Saturno van Emilio Ambasz (Ilva Pali Dalmine)
- Bubble Club sofa van Philippe Starck (Kartell)
- Tafel Titano van Studio Cerri & Associati (Poltrona Frau)
The Aesthetics of Industrial Design and the Compasso d'Oro Prize: an
Italian Story
The trajectory of Italian industrial design has always crossed over into
the fields of artistic, scientific, and technological research and
experimentation; it is impossible to separate the theoretical and
practical activities of industrial design from their roots, roots that are
both historical and multidisciplinary.
Historically, it has always been this way: just think of the origins of
design and of the applied arts in general, especially in Anglo-Saxon
culture in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The Arts and Crafts movement, which was promoted in England with the aim
of stemming the decline in the aesthetics and quality of everyday objects,
found its first public expression during the Universal Exposition in
London in 1851. Obviously, production conditions had been completely
transformed during the preceding century and a half of not only
technological revolution, but also aesthetic transformations of behavior
and customs.
The fundamental idea is still valid today: it's not enough to manufacture
an object "well," focusing only on its functionality. Certainly,
a chair, like an automobile, must be first and foremost a safe, efficient,
dependable tool, in terms of both its comfort and performance; but is
should also be a dynamic representation of a concrete concept of beauty.
The aesthetic experience of "things," of industrial products,
and in particular all those products that relate directly to people, the
land, natural and artificial spaces, should be able to enhance their
design, manufacture, and marketing with the added dimension of
"design" understood as the most complete embodiment of beauty.
Since it was first awarded in 1954, the Compasso d'Oro, the most
important international design prize, has been the direct witness of
design research that reflects on the one hand the need to respond to
society's demands and peoples' needs and on the other the responsibility
to make the existence of things aesthetically relevant. This is the only
way to create a "form" that maintains "meaning" above
and beyond its simple use. The more than 1,800 objects that have been
awarded the Compasso d'Oro prize over the last half century constitutes an
unparalleled collection that enables us to reflect upon and define several
of these "meanings."
Faced with the increasingly widespread globalization of the industrial
manufacturing model, it is necessary to rethink the decisive role of
design inasmuch as there is a growing universal rationalization, founded
on several constants assumed as rules for the organization of production
and the global economy.
Let's take the example of the automobile industry. On the level of
globalization as well as that of diversification (i.e. expressive formal
potentialities) the automobile industry is capable of responding to market
pressures and thus to consumers by entrusting to design the function of
conjugating the variables of taste. Through the conditions of industrial
manufacturing systems, we are witnessing a series of phenomena that allow
the rationalization of investments and systems; in particular, a concrete
opportunity to design valid invariant structures for a broad range of
models; and technological innovation that is certainly more advanced but
also more accessible --- at the very least, more accessible compared to
several years ago, above all in terms of the reduction of time and space
necessary for communication offered by the new data processing
technologies.
Let's not forget that the more one innovates, the shorter the duration of
the innovation; thus the effect of technological novelty is attenuated in
relation to its persuasive capacity. On an industrial level, all this
certainly represents an extraordinary opportunity to produce better
objects; but if we are incapable of creating a "beautiful,"
fascinating, persuasive, unique form, then even the best product will not
be able to speak as directly to the consumer's heart as it does to his
head.
Precisely by virtue of this industrial situation, the role, but even more
the history and the future potential of Italian design constitute what may
be a unique and exemplary case where multidisciplinary skills, cultural
attitudes, crafts traditions, and historical models based on the workshops
of the Italian Renaissance are all simultaneously present. Italian design,
understood as a system of designers, businesses, and markets, is capable
of introducing "difference" into the uniformity of industrial
production and the standardization of performance quality.
Identity and difference, local and global: this is the dialectic between
the principles and rules of the global economy and the expressive
individuality that each product, each object must possess in order to have
its own "existence." Designing and producing objects that bear
some "meaning" beyond mere functionality is a very particular
activity that requires intelligence, entrepreneurial flexibility, and the
intuitive ability to understand the demands of a market that tends
increasingly toward "novelty."
So designing a product means always striving to go beyond the limits of
function - limits set by the rules of industrial organization - in order
to introduce into the creative process a broad range of other meanings,
meanings capable in turn of eliciting other interpretations, thus
establishing a relationship of symbolic identification between the product
and the individual that goes beyond the instrumental necessities of that
product.
Italian design as represented by the Compasso d'Oro Collection constitutes
an extraordinary compendium of this constant, endless striving towards
"the other meaning." Design makes us rediscover the pleasure of
"functional beauty," just as Marcel Duchamp made us rediscover
the mysterious meaning of the simplest objects, such as a bicycle wheel or
an old typewriter. Taste and intelligence enable us to discover, even in
the most mundane objects, an absolute esthetic value that surpasses their
simple, obvious functionality. Thus the Compasso d'Oro Collection embodies
the never-ending quest to go beyond the academic relationship between form
and function, striving toward an esthetic destiny that is always
"beyond."
A defined system of objects and products that embodied expected,
predictable symbolic values, a system in which each product had a single,
unique meaning and was therefore incapable of formally renewing itself,
would signal the end of modernity. To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, "We
have a horror of that which is merely useful." Any object, even the
most anonymous, is not just useful; it also represents infinite cognitive
potential - it can stir our imagination, transforming us from passive
observers of the market into active participants in cultural consumption.
A mature system of industrial design, as documented by the Compasso d'Oro
Collection, bears witness to a process of designing objects that function,
but that also have their own history, their own cultural autonomy, and
their own esthetic expressiveness - objects that are recognizable in every
corner of the world.
Aldo Colonetti
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