In each case,it is always quite clear for whom the book's reading is intended:for those who are interested in design as a locus of experimentation and a factor of development;for those who,at design schools,teach or are learning how to grapple with designing.
For some time,my chief concerns have included that of not betraying the task assigned to the ethics of teaching,especially when I am discussing design topics.This is all the more the case during these years,years in which my relationship with the school,in all its forms,has become difficult,and often tiresome.
The reasons,the more personal ones,survive in the fragile and fatal rhetorical combination in which the figure of the teacher and the faces of the pupils—together in a classroom not necessarily composed of walls—share useful knowledge.And"useful"is a demanding word,especially when examining the complexity of the task we take on in having to train,through the use of theoretical models and practical activities,those who wish to design the artificial world—starting from an artefact.From here on,as a natural consequence of the role I inevitably feel I am still playing,I have drawn inspiration to put together a sort of critical itinerary-a subjective repertoire starting from the fact that it covers no assigned topic comprehensively,but instead follows a personal，"incomplete method."This is likely the only method that can give balance to certain narrative needs dictated by my variable interests in dealing with certain untarnishable convictions.While what is read may appear,by my choice,fragmented in content,my ideal interlocutor—whoever is interested in design as a locus for experimentation and factor of development for looking towards such a future for all-would not be.
Context ＞ Knowledge,but above all understanding of the context in which the design action is expressed,is the first and necessary passage for accessing the complexity that the conception of a new work,big or small,demands.However,for a designer,context is not to be immediately and superficially exchanged with that of an environmental nature we are conventionally used to.That one is always there.It is a rhetorical locus—insidious but foundational:the"cultural territory of design."And,if I think of the current one,I cannot help considering its slipperiness.While apparently free of encumbrances,it is rife with deceptions.It is an ambiguous area,because its nature is fleeting.I am referring to the Postmodern,the culture of the temporary.An invasive and interstitial culture that is the mark of our contemporaneity.
Umberto Eco effectively outlines its role and effects:"The Postmodern marked the crisis of the ‘great narratives’that they thought they could superimpose a model of order on the world;it instead devoted itself to a revisitation of the past,and in ways intersected with nihilist impulses;the Postmodern has represented a sort of ferry from modernity to a still unnamed present;a present in which an entity that guaranteed individuals the possibility of solving,in uniform fashion,the various problems of our time disappeared.From here on,the crises of the ideologies were outlined,as well as,in general,the crisis of each appeal to a community of values that allowed the individual to feel he was part of something and interpreted his needs.With the crisis of the concept of community,an unchecked individualism emerges,where no one is anyone's travelling companion anymore,but an antagonist to be watched out for.This ‘subjectivism’has undermined the bases of modernity and made it fragile:everything is dissolved in a sort of fluidity […] and the only solution for an individual without reference points is appearing at all costs,appearing as a value,in a sort of bulimia with no purpose other than to scrap the old in order to take part in this orgy.What can replace this liquefaction? We don't know yet,and this interregnum will last a rather long time […] The trouble is that politics,and to a great degree the intelligentsia,have yet to comprehend the scope of the phenomenon."[1].
This is a reading of contemporaneity that,in order not to remain a vox clamantis in deserto,must produce,in each of us,a new and impassioned propulsive energy:it must encourage our renewed attention to the content of the things we design,rather than to the ephemeral dimension of their appearance.In doing design,man must return to being the focus of our objectives.The design of the artificial must be restored the simple and inalienable ability to interpret man's needs,in order to transform them into products destined to improve his life and his social relationships.
In these latest times,I have noted recent and special conditions for a critical space within which to glimpse an almost philosophical support for these aspirations of mine on the function of design,in two evocative events:the 14th Venice International Biennale of Architecture,curated in 2014 by Rem Koolhaas;and the exhibition"Neo preistoria—100 verbi，"curated in 2016 by Andrea Branzi and Kenya Hara,on the occasion of the 21st Milan Triennale.
At the Milan show，100 verbs express 100 human actions:the invariants to which man,in his evolutionary space,has made precise instruments correspond.We are thus moving among inventions and objects that have marked the development of human civilization.The verbs that are used recount the practices of measuring,of navigating,of writing,of cooking,of playing music,of killing;others,on the other hand,express feelings,intangible abstractions,but all the same expressions of invariants that,in the history of mankind,have been formalized in objects-and thus terms like to love,to charm,to imagine,to invent,to think.Life is associated with the aspirations of man,in whose evolution they are expressed with the desire to eat,and thus to cook,with the ambition to fly,with the desire to communicate-which is gradually expressed with signs,or by looking into each other's eyes,and then with words,and later with writing,and nowadays with all those media capable of doing all this without barriers.At the same time,contact with death cannot be avoided,which is why the list also includes such verbs as to annihilate,to pierce,to threaten,which evoke all the evil that can be generated in the man's mind,with no difference between past and present.For both,each activity articulated by verbs is thus made possible by the invention of new objects that are increasingly evolved in performance,form,and technologies.As Branzi puts it,scrolling through 100 verbs in 100 instruments represents"the flow of a vital and mysterious energy that,from the darkness of history and of an infinite space,through the frontiers of scientific research,expands human survival through the production of our body's spare ‘parts’[2].For Kenya Hara,these"spare parts"give material form to man's desires because"humanity has developed its skills through utensils;and at the same time,through utensils,it has increased its desires,so the ‘history of man's desires’may be understood as the ‘history of utensils’."[3]And now that we are in the 21st century and are fully proceeding towards the age of artificial intelligence,it is very important to reflect on what evolution humanity will have,and in what situation it will be found,and what verbs and utensils humanity will need,by seeking the reflections of the wisdom and errors of the past.
Branzi and Hara's lesson is one that goes deeper into,explores,and exhibits all the design skill of homo faber,and the knowledge with which he has improved his articles of use.But it also leads us to reflect on the need to interpret man's actions,even in the smallest object.While the technological differences separating prehistoric objects from contemporary ones are clear,the same cannot be said as regards their design status.The will to shape matter according to one's needs creates a thread that holds together the entire universal history of the human being.Materials and technical/scientific possibilities change,but the skill and ingenuity to invent tools capable of satisfying desires and meeting always new and unexpected needs do not.These are needs that people in design must work alongside of with the necessary humility in order to configure real solutions,and not the result of the meandering formal self-referentiality of-as we would put it today-the starchitect.
In the very theme of the Biennale,Fundamentals,Rem Koolhaas clearly distances himself from the figure of the architect in his extension as starchitect,and returns to devoting attention to an architecture rediscovered starting from its own foundations.He restores these foundations in the manner of an exhibition,recreating a special sensation of a museum of Architectural Histories.With Elements of Architecture,in the Central Pavilion,Koolhaas explores the genealogies and mutations of architecture's individual constructive components.He digs down to the foundations of the past in order to investigate the present and be projected with clarity into the future.With this sort of rereading of the alphabet of architecture,he appears to uphold a message of hope in implicitly stating that the culture of modern design has not been entirely emptied of identity and left flattened under the stresses of globalization.Koolhaas is asking us to overcome the effects on the form of the city produced for so long a time by the strong crisis of ideologies,that spoken of by Eco(from Weak Thought to Deconstructionism,from Relativism to the Postmodern).Or perhaps he is asking us to encourage architecture and design to take renewed interest in the subject for which they are ethically destined:man.And for this to take place,Koolhaas believes it is necessary to take a new look at the constructive invariants of homes,of buildings,of the city—inalienable elements of a material DNA,used by every architect,always and everywhere:floors,walls,ceilings,windows,façades,balconies,hallways,fireplaces,staircases.It is an exercise that is naturally concluded by traversing patterns,models and established typologies,in order to later experiment—starting from the need to offer new models for the new man—with the new technologies to the extent needed.
Type and model ＞ Both material and immaterial elements come down to notions of type or model.The first is the historical consolidation of elements whose constitution,although subject to evolutionary processes in forms,functions,and technologies,is immutable.The second is the formalization of a new arrangement,designed to respond to new functions for man's new needs.The model is therefore the reference from which new types may be born.Both the type and the model are likened to the fundamentals,to the constituent materials of both architecture and of articles of use,and in their turn of the forma urbis,in a strange blend of flow and persistence that has endured for more than 5000 years.The fact that the elements change,one independently of the other,according to cycles and economies and for different reasons,can therefore transform architecture and the article of use into a collage:complex,archaic and modern,unique and standardized.Type and model,if re-examined in their constituent invariants and organizational arrangements,allow us to recognize cultural preferences,forgotten symbolisms,technological developments,political calculations,regulatory requirements,and so much more.
The translation of the notion of type as constituent material in the sphere of design as well does not come immediately.It is a translation that,for articles of use,passes through the verbs evoked by Andrea Branzi and Kenya Hara:they are actions,activities,human desires—that consolidation of which historical invariants are made.It is no accident that articles of use respond to man's needs as if they were prostheses for his limbs and minds.This is what took place,for example,as man defended himself and went on the offensive,availing himself first of elementary rocks and gradually going on to more complex objects.
As may be seen,it is all a succession of artefacts,of articles of use,that are renewed by making the previous ones obsolete starting from their formal and classificatory nature.In fact，"both in the phase of their design/fabrication,and in that of their recognition/use,part of our knowledge of artefacts is a ‘typological knowledge.’"Without this permanent framework of things,we would feel dispersed in a universe of unrecognizable material substances we would not know what to do with.We need every design to have and to maintain,to the extent possible,its own identity,or"that particular formal,structural,and functional configuration that sets it apart from the other technical objects […] Design,for its part,determines the distinctive characteristics of objects,and builds their identity through the specific configuration of each technical element.Their configuration,then,makes them recognizable in any variant they have within a typology of objects,especially at times of strong technological innovation […]"[4].However,this taxonomy shows its inevitable incompleteness in the face of what has taken place in the world of research,of production,and of products in recent years.
Téchne and artefact ＞ Of all animals on Earth,man is the one that,by his physical conformation,by his sensory apparatus,is the weakest,and thus destined to succumb in the daily struggle for survival were he to be forced to grapple with any large predators in nature,with his bare hands.If we consider sight,for example,we find there is no comparison between the visual acuity of certain animals and that of man,and even less so if we measure his ability to adapt to darkness.
Some beasts see at distances ten times,a hundred times greater than those man can,but above all they have the exclusive ability to appreciate,through sight,both the path to take and the amount of time needed to reach a designated point.This ability is an extraordinary tool in hunting.It allows them to assess,for prey they have sighted,the time needed to approach it,and thus whether or not it can be captured,given the distance from which the chase begins.And yet it is man-who is not barehanded-who prevails over animals,because he uses his ingenuity.And he uses it to conceive and develop prostheses of every kind,whenever it is necessary to make up for the most disparate shortcomings.Starting with tools,from clubs on,conceived for initial,basic defence,human beings have gradually produced instruments increasingly useful for the purpose:the axe,the knife,the arrow,and so on,down to the revolver and all that followed.Therefore,the distances man does not cover with his sight he covers with glasses or binoculars,or with apparently invisible devices like contact lenses with which he can alter the colour of the iris,thus modifying the aesthetic nature of the eye.A prosthesis is thus used to introduce apparently superfluous needs,if we consider the primary ones they probably stemmed from.
This initial discussion of sight and prosthesis introduces—and,it would appear,simplifies—the concepts of téchne and artefact.Téchne,in our case,is the use of instruments and procedures suitable for obtaining a product—a prosthesis,we might say—to improve the conditions for remaining in the environment we live in.This process of transforming a need into a prosthesis is the"simple"result of man's ingenuity and artifice.In particular,with ingenuity,by defining its performance requirements upstream,he designs a product that responds to a declared need;on the other hand,with téchne,he prepares and controls the materials suited to the pre-established purpose,the instruments,and the working methods adopted for making the artefact.When the sequence just described dissolves into the direct participation in the act of execution,the separations between those who theorize and those who do are cancelled.And it is the vision typical of the so-called artisinal product,which is to say the result of a process in which"the activity of thought"corresponds to a heritage of cultural references and knowledge related to circumstances of time and place,while the"activity of doing"corresponds to the employment of methods and instruments suitable from time to time for transforming materials into objects,by means of aptitude and ability acquired through training and apprenticeship.
The work has no autonomous artistic validity,but at most expresses a collective aesthetic intentionality.It is a practically unlimited path:the product's requirements are not defined once and for all;the artefact is therefore always susceptible to further improvements,also by subsequent generations.Téchne is then developed by gradual accumulation of experience,on the basis of an ongoing tradition.It is easy to take the products of the material culture and of the applied arts as an example of this concept.For instance,the domestic tableware that maintains constant the function of collecting,preserving,and cooking food products.These are artefacts whose improvement takes place slowly,over generations.
In this regard,I would like to discuss some children's toys as emblematic of a collective aesthetic and technical knowledge.In an impoverished region of our continent,I have seen a toy similar to a yoyo,made with a stick,shrubs,a rope,and a piece of a fruit rind,called merely"briquedo"—that is to say a general definition to indicate the object as a toy.It was a simple yet complex artefact,bringing together:knowledge of the statics that held the various parts under stress together while playing;the notion of transformation of work into kinetic energy;the basics of the principles of acceleration and inertia;a profound knowledge of the breaking limits of the materials it was made of;and,lastly,the general principles of ergonomics,as seen in the proportions between the grip and the hand holding the toy.This knowledge was nothing more than the gradual"piling on"of experiences passed from one generation to the next,settling in layers upon this object.The child who made it perhaps did not even know how to read.But it is certain that the artefact had deposited onto itself a large quantity of technical knowledge that had become collective heritage.
This also took place with reduced-scale reproductions of bicycles or of other objects that represented an opportunity for play.The model of reference was substituted by a simulacrum that was increasingly refined,increasingly close to the model,increasingly accessory-rich(also at the risk of altering the proportions between the parts)，and increasingly varied in colour.The artefact born as a personal game is transformed into a sort of commercial product,the result of a craftsmanship that is paradoxically highly evolved since it can be reproduced unaided by equipment and systems,but by hand alone,and by personal skill alone.
Lastly,there is the simplest of the toys,a truck,an imitation that allowed children to transform themselves into users of an impossible dream:owning and driving a tractor-trailer.And who knows whether the most entertaining game was fabricating it,rather than that using it as such.Here,the artefact let itself be admired starting above all from the material used to make it—wood."Wood,ideal for its solidity and tenderness,for the natural warmth of its contact […]，eliminates the cutting of excessively sharp corners […]，and when the child handles it and strikes it,it neither vibrates nor screeches.It makes a sound both muffled and clear at the same time;it is a familiar and poetic substance that leaves the child in a continuity of contact with the tree,the board […] Wood does not cut,nor does it go bad.It does not break or wear;it can last a long time,live with the child,and,little by little,modify the relationships between the object and the hand;if it dies,it does so by reducing,not swelling like those mechanical toys that disappear under the hernia of a broken spring.Wood makes objects essential—objects for always."[5].
It may be maintained that when the conceptual plan and the executive plan are integrated,artefacts are reproduced that are emblematic in technical content and constructive practices,to be transferred in terms of widespread experience accessible to everyone.If the conceptual plan is maintained separate from the executive one,then there is a design and a designer.The use of procedures and tools to make a product then becomes a reproductive or mechanical practice;the operative autonomy of the labour is practically nil:the product is concluded in the design.The design defines,entirely and a priori,the functional and formal characteristics of the artefact,and the subsequent execution procedure introduces no aesthetic value that is not already determined with the design.These include the material execution,which is to say the assessment of the intrinsic possibilities of the technology of the time for the purpose of making the product.
And this is what took place in the transition from preindustrial to industrial civilization,in assessing the production of the daily or technical article of use.And it is even more markedly taking place in post-industrial civilization and the civilization of communication,where it is thought that it is man's instruments and not his ideas that determines them.Right from the first acts of design,the designer's role is decisive in interpreting the results of research and of scientific discoveries,so as to borrow them in technological choices and execution processes,in the better organization of the artefact's performance requirements in order to best respond to the demand that generated them-a demand that does not end with the demand for functional performance.
In fact,there is increasing attention to the product's communicative values,to its aesthetic content,to its symbolic value,to the need for exhibition.Also to the superfluous.To all those values that shorten a product's consumption time,exponentially accelerating the obsolescence of its content.
The prostheses born to survive among other animals and in hostile nature with all its hazards,born as functional apparatus,were then transformed into artefacts that were high-tech,highly communicative,and increasingly intended to satisfy the superfluous.
To remain among the examples that refer to technical objects and the articles of use that have always been the result of the designer's decision-making process,let us consider what shows the time:the clock.The measurement of time is certainly a function that man was soon to find essential in order to dominate the distance between day and night,the cycles of the phases of the moon,the passage of the seasons,the duration of pregnancy,his very stay on Earth,and the social economy.For these purposes,he conceived and built devices that relied on shadows—sundials—or the reading of a material that changed position in a determined period,which is to say the hourglass.Gradually,he perfected the technical content,applying the principles of mechanics in the wind-up watch or the pendulum clock,until achieving absolute accuracy.For a very long time,the parameter of assessment for choosing a timepiece was its accuracy,and it was of little importance whether it was designed by an unknown maker,and whether its appearance held little content.
Then came electronics,an exact science par excellence,and printed circuits-miniscule,extremely low-cost components,onto which an electronic device's operating process is printed by means of industrial processes.With their aid,the technical content of the timepiece became unsurpassable,with an accuracy leaving no room for improvement,and above all at low cost.Something else came into play to define the object's value:its figurative qualities,its symbolic meaning.Its design.
The Swatch was emblematic of this process.Its"original design"was the true factor making it a market powerhouse.It almost immediately became a collector's item,chosen for its design,with no one disputing its accuracy and technical content.And the fact that the particular nature of its design makes reading the time complicated in some models becomes yet another mark of its originality.It is the dimension of the superfluous prevailing over that of the useful.In fact,the object's form is increasingly denied a relationship with the function of use;often,neither the form nor the materials have an organic relationship with the item's intended use.
Valid for this purpose are all the examples in which it is clear that ambiguity and deception prevail in the item's design,and the use for which the item is intended is almost hidden,giving rise to forms of ambiguity fully benefitting advertising.So an octopus is concealing a juicer;vaguely metaphysical shapes emit a light that looks like a lamp to us;we strain to recognize we are holding flatware,rather than artworks,in our hands;forms that deceptively allude to a feather are instead humble toothbrushes.Then there are buildings conceived as objects,and objects made as if they were buildings.
One perceives the clear,strong contradiction that Pier Paolo Pasolini—one of the most important interpreters,and not only in literature,of the transformations produced in the extraordinary transition from agricultural civilization first to industrial and then to post-industrial civilization—was already warning against forty years ago.Indeed,he grasped how the transformation processes were being increasingly agitated within the modern-day contradiction of the terms"development"and"progress";between ideal political demands and emerging social models.An abstract concept like"progress"—an ethically indispensable factor like the evolution of scientific knowledge and of technologies for improving humankind's living conditions—is placed in comparison with the real dynamics of"development，"which is to say between the pragmatic demand and the day-to-day relationship with economic facts,with the production and consumption of superfluous goods.It is a contradiction that is reproduced in the"consciousness"that sustains the ideology of human rights and with it the idea of progress,and in"existence"founded upon the consumerist ideology,and thus upon the values of development.
Design between state of the art and invention ＞ Continuous verification of the relationship between theoretical and practical thought is central to design experimentation.This means that theoretical thought takes shape only in the presence of practical thought,without which design does not take substance in the finished organism.Theoretical thought arises from our culture,from our set of knowledge,from the storehouse of our memory.Practical thought,on the other hand,is the result of training,of practice,of a continuous verification and updating of technical knowledge through the instrumental apparatus accompanying our craft on a daily basis.
Design fixes,once and for all,the principle of the form and the performance content of a manufactured article rather than an artefact.But design is under the constant surveillance of technique,because it is technique that makes form tangible,whatever its nature is.But without the action of practical thought,or,if you will,of the art of doing,design is a tenuous subject.
Before design,however,comes the plan:for example,the word"vestibule"is written in the plan,and the architect must transform it into a place for gaining entry.
Between plan and design,there is an intermediate space that is consequently transformed into nothing other than the recipe of required ingredients.This change of state starts one instant before the designing begins,but is perhaps already within the design,and certainly represents its foundational moment.It is the moment when the designer—starting from the ambition to govern the relationships between the irrational of the design and the rational of techniques—is alone with his white piece of paper,with the list of ingredients at his disposal,with his storehouse of memories,with his own knowledge of history,of natural and artificial materials,of production systems and technologies,of the contradictions of reality,but with the certainty dictated by three truths:the design's theme,his practical thought,the places and the man for whom it is intended.
Starting from the theme and the place,the generative conflict is developed,which will then continue throughout the creative process.It is a combined conflict of forms,institutions,people,materials,and construction systems,a conflict that finds its resolution in the gradual process of knowledge,through logical construction,always the same as itself:an emotional nucleus that escapes analysis but is connected with the theme and the place,and will grow as the knowledge of the theme and the place grows.This initial emotional datum is associated with a specific typological solution,which is taken apart,analyzed in its functional,constructive,and figurative characteristics,and lastly put back together.
It is the phase in which long experience and in-depth knowledge of the rules of the art of building carries great weight.It is a procedure that aims to give the right tension to the design practice,to the space of exploration that is opened,restoring meaning to artefacts,to architecture,to the figure of the technique that operates in this dimension.
Vitruvius's account of the formation of the Corinthian capital is a complete metaphor for explaining the relationships that exist between state of the art and invention.
Here is how Vitruvius tells the story:
"[…] A Corinthian virgin,of marriageable age,fell a victim to a violent disorder.After her interment,her nurse,collecting in a basket those articles to which she had shown a partiality when alive,carried them to her tomb,and placed a tile on the basket for the longer preservation of its contents.
The basket was accidentally placed on the root of an acanthus plant,which,pressed by the weight,shot forth,towards spring,its stems and large foliage,and in the course of its growth reached the angles of the tile,and thus formed volutes at the extremities.
Callimachus,who,for his great ingenuity and taste was called by the Athenians Κατατηξιτεχνοs(Catatexitechnos)，happening at this time to pass by the tomb,observed the basket,and the delicacy of the foliage which surrounded it.Pleased with the form and novelty of the combination,he constructed from the hint thus afforded,columns of this species in the country about Corinth,and arranged its proportions,determining their proper measures by perfect rules […]"
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio,De architectura,Book IV
I like to point out that Callimachus(or，"he who exalts material with technique")is credited with the invention of the Corinthian capital in accordance with a combined procedure in which theoretical thought exercises control over proportioning,and practical thought exercises control over the way of working the material,to arrive at the formation of the architectural figure as an act of balance and synthesis.
Sincerity and ambiguity of materials ＞ The technology on which the fabrication of buildings and of articles of use is based has radically changed over the last fifty years.The building has progressively dematerialized and at the same time been enriched with functional performance features through mechanization,electrification,and computerization.These innovations have brought the effect of separating the construction shell from the bearing structure,thus creating a sort of skin around the building skeleton;they have progressively transformed the unitary and homogeneous nature of the architectural organism,in the building's organization in systems and components:from that of foundation to that of systems;from the structural frame to the envelope.Each of these systems gradually grew more and more independent of one another,each with its own criteria and specialist skills.This tendency is easy to imagine growing more and more with the rise of telematics,an area indicative of the importance given to the efficiency of the systems of comfort and communication,in relation to the physical durability and the representative value of the built form.
One example known to many is provided by the intensive use of air conditioning,even in dry climates,where protection from the sun was often obtained with thick walls,eaves,and cross ventilation,or by building sunshades,and by a general ability to open and close windows and shutters at the right time.Since,in a perfectly sealed air-conditioned environment,it is impossible to open at least one window when the weather is mild,we are disarmed.But the justification may be found in the perverse mechanism by which one technology must provide remedy for a non-spasmodic use of another technology.It may then be said that the application of air conditioning in sealed structures is justified by the pollution arising from the generalized use of the automobile.A perverse,inescapable circle is thus closed.
What occurred in buildings also took place in more technologically advanced technical objects,in an even clearer way:increasingly light,increasingly high-performance,in which weight and performance are more and more inversely proportional.One need merely consider the iPhone,or the MacBook,defined in Apple's advertising as"lighter than light."Apple explains that with the MacBook"we set out to do the impossible:engineer a full-size experience into the lightest and most compact Mac notebook ever.That meant reimagining every element to make it not only lighter and thinner but also better.The result is more than just a new notebook.It's the future of the notebook."
Apple's enigmatic words refer to another contradiction involving the use of materials,in relation to the language they express.With the processes of dematerialization of architecture and of articles of use,alongside the traditional way of interpreting the communicative content of materials,a more critical and unsettling—but,I believe,more effective—way of observing the changes taking place survives.It is the theme I like to define as the"sincerity and ambiguity of materials，"and it is a way to affirm that the relationship with materials constitutes,in design,the reference of an emotional tension and of a relationship with the historical memory we constantly have to come to terms with.
Materials are the literal constituents of artefacts,as they make them tangible.
It is materials,the entities that have concretely formed human places,that have interacted over time with construction and production techniques,modelling them and modifying them in order to continuously adapt them to their own prerogatives.Materials are the premise of art,and thus powerfully immediate and knowing in evoking a culture in its continuity.
Stone,clay,wood:they are chosen as elements to make"things"depending not only on local natural resources,but on their constructive virtues,their endowments of static power,durability,workability and collaboration with other materials,malleability for shaping,and beauty.Materials are key elements par excellence,live realities that can return to grappling with the technology of our time to be once again reinterpreted and re-proposed in new versions and associations,but also to cross-breed with technology,orienting its experimentation and productive choices through the great strength of their cultural imprinting.
In both natural and artificial scenarios,matter is ambiguous or sincere,vague or authentic.It is ambiguous like the earth or the sand when,aside from the colour,we see nothing;it is sincere when the sand itself tells a story and directs our imagination in a precise direction,or tells us of its formation,of events,of the nature or of the person that gave it shape and colour,the profile of a woman,the characteristics of sphinxes.Matter is sincere like the rippling water announcing to us its undulating motion driven by currents;or it is vague as in the abstract drawing that the water itself paints in a fresco without time or place;it is ambiguous when,as in a sheet of metal attacked by rust,it dematerializes,lacerated by corrosion and dotted with the shapes reflected by the play of lights and shadows;or it is sincere in the spare,undulating metal sheet,where the form speaks to us of a stiffening system that gives it a static efficiency allowing it to stand vertically.It is ambiguous when,with iron,it evokes geometric outlines that are fascinating in their design but do not communicate performance and functions,or it is sincere when,with the spiralling geometries of springs,it evokes univocal functions.It is sincere as in the iron of gratings that,with their grid pattern,trace in space the account of a trilithic system that is transformed into a three-dimensional arrangement;or as in the wood of a structure where the history of all the working operations it has undergone for its construction is recounted by the weaving of the geometries and outlines that constitute its shape.But it is also the Earth,from which everything originates,that opens space for flights of the imagination:journeys through landscapes that the cracks of a quick dehydration have made similar to the deep furrows of canyons,or natural highlands burnt by the sun.
It is the walls of compact limestone quarries that,in the few traces of processing,tell the story of mankind's arduous labour to transform nature into artifice:squared blocks of stone placed on site by geometric rules,capable of transfiguring a natural depression into a large-scale architectural event,like the theatre in Syracuse;or to transform,without interruption,a rocky cliff into the base of the smooth wall of a human settlement.
More generally,it is a matter of converting the quarried matter into walls,vaulted systems,and articulated spaces in which the material conserves this dual vocation:a rough,sincere character when it is used in forming pillars where individual pieces of stone are counted;sincere again when the material designs capitals composed of stones sculpted and juxtaposed in apparent equilibrium;and sincere yet again,as in Gaudi's Park Guell,where artifice appears illusory and nature shows itself as the true maker of space.
Material is sincere yet again when it tells us the story of the single tower of a pillar at the Temple in Paestum,with its grooved section,the result of skilled,refined chisel work,which gives consistency to the columns by capturing light through chiaroscuro,or in the more elementary construction system:two columns and a beam transfigure the trilith—the most elementary of construction systems—into an artwork,into an archetype.Material is,on the other hand,ambiguous when the pillars become geometric columns that,behind the gleam of the surfaces,conceal the account of the albeit difficult working operations of the maritime theatre at Hadrian's Villa.The material tells a sincere story when,in the very procedures of its fabrication,a productive design is required,a modular and serial principle underlying,for example,the invention of the minimum unit of masonry:the brickwork that is split into two areas:rational production that requires time;and the flexibility permitted by the weight and by the small dimension of the piece,which determine the regularity and the intrinsic rules of brick construction,so as to make a brick wall the form of its work site.Contrary to what is evoked by the brick wall,or by the stone material through which,beyond the size of the pieces,one may glimpse all the working operations that gradually determined its final form,in the technologically advanced curtain wall matter is profoundly denaturalized.Eaves disappear,the metallic weaves become as thin and gleaming as possible;the abolition of all architectural intermediaries with their changing sections and their"gradations"of shape,material,and colour,transform the façade into a single,glass surface with the building's corners rectified and the windows flush with the wall.
In a sort of leap of scale,in which the elementary piece—the glass pane—becomes the reference for the final outcome,the building is proposed as a paradigmatic piece of a technology that,in its refinement,has the ability to represent an articulated apparatus of elements that contain or conceal the bearing structure of the building,which holds a complex performance apparatus.And for objects,via a sort of transitive property,the same applies.For them,too,the sincerity and ambiguity of the materials determines factors of ambiguity and excellence.
On the design of the near future ＞ How will the way of designing change in the near future? Clearly,in practice,it has already for some time shown a strong discontinuity with the past,in the ways of designing and producing industrial artefacts.It is a phenomenology that may be ascribed to what,with regard to the productive environment,we define as post-Fordism and that in the cultural setting is placed within Postmodernism.It is a complex pairing that leads,through an inevitable technological itinerary,to open-source civilization.This phenomenon is produced by new information sciences,to which 3D printers bear conscious witness:objects,not even particularly complex,able to transform an idea into physical form,in real time.In this way,the classic sequence attributed to the physical conformation of products is interrupted;it is a sequence marked by the need to involve a variety of professional figures in the vertical supply chain that,from design,continues through production and ends in marketing.The supply chain,when it exists,is now horizontal,and is metaphorically unbound from the need for large-scale mass production,given its tendency for productions that are potentially customized and in the desired quantities.But beware:"[…] the task of design in this case must be more ambitious.Perhaps it will have to change the way of designing;perhaps its placement in the supply chain of the division of labour will be different […];but the designer [in this case,ed.] can rethink and invent typologies.If on the other hand the perspective is that each of us can,with a home printer,become a designer and design our own objects,the risk might be not that of an endless explosion of variables,but of a radicalization of typologies.In the end,this would lead to a stereotyping of our material culture […]"[6].
What I perceive is a wind that moves in an obstinate direction and counter to the demands for renewal,which is to say to the need to rid ourselves of the harmful effects of Postmodern culture,a synonym for a liquid society so greatly held up as a useful model for enabling new models of participatory democracies,but that instead made it possible,due to the lack of cultural constraints,to replace"big narratives"with"small"ones.
The aforementioned"information society，""post-Fordism，"and"Postmodernism"foreshadow beneficial effects in society,due to the spread of a presumed democratic well-being.However,their fatal and combined synthesis appears to me to betray their theoretical mandate and,conversely,shows us a unique and updated extension of the Taylorization of labour and society,with the tendency to set living time and working time in conflict with one another,in a progressive social confusion.
Indeed,a dual and contradictory reading is possible:believing in the spread of small activities rooted in the territory and still marked by a human relationship between employers and workers,or in large industry trying to break free of labour market regulations and trade-union controls.But can the protectionism of a new localism truly slow a thirty-year trend and induce multinationals to repatriate factories,to relocate on national territories jobs that had ended up in China,Mexico,or India? Apple,the Queen of hi-tech,has a productive and logistics chain based on calculations of cost,and also quality.It assembles in mainland China,but integrates sophisticated components manufactured in Japan,Taiwan,and Germany.Bringing that galaxy of branches and suppliers back to a single place in a single country would be a long and costly operation.This is unlikely.
Capitalism,then and now,must grapple with a radically different demand,marked by a fragmented and varied population of consumers.Arising from this is the need for flexible specialization,which is to say the ability of producers-aided by new information technologies and by adaptable labour models-to modify their output depending on the change in demand,even if from small and different groups of consumers.This condition,which favours small enterprises(but not only)，has produced,according to post-Fordism theorists,a gradual"disorganization"of capital,which is impacting the production of goods in addition to the organization of social relationships.
In this unstable landscape,the technologies and devices supporting design will change.In support of things,the things themselves may respond differently to new needs we can only imagine today.But there is one need I hope will not change:for the designer to grapple with that emotional nucleus-which precedes the technical one and complements the aesthetic one-that gives rise to the ethical reasons of a design act resulting from the moral responsibility the designer bears,and that leads,in the best-case scenario,from the concept to the work.I believe that even the most advanced technologies will bear real fruit only if they are useful instruments for the quick evolution of ideas destined for humankind.
注释
[1]Umberto Eco,La società liquida,in:"Pape Satàn Aleppe";La nave di Teseo,Mi-lano 2016.
[2]Andrea Branzi,Neo-prehistory"100 verbi,in:"Neo-prehistory：100 verbi,"Triennale di Milano and Lars Muller Publishers,Milano 2016.
[3]Kenya Hara,Poesia sul desiderio degli essere umano,in:"Neo-prehistory:100 verbi,"Op.cit.
[4]Raimonda Riccini,Il senso del design per il tipo,in:"Type&Model|idee,progetti,azioni，"Planning design technology Journal n.4，Rdesignpress,2015.
[5]Roland Barthes,Giocattoli,in:Miti d'oggi,trad.Lidia Lonzi,Einaudi,Torino 1975.
[6]Raimonda Riccini,Il senso del design per il tipo,Op.cit.
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