“Design of furnishings, upholstered furniture, lamps that I imagine for a simple, natural house, that can be mixed and matched with other elements without affecting their character.” From the poetic to the ethic of design. “Good design can conceal drawbacks, revealing only the merits of a particular intrinsic identity.” Behavior thus expresses the meaning of creativity.
As Jean Baudrillard observes, “In creating or manufacturing objects, man makes himself, through the imposition of a form (i.e. through culture), into the transubstantiator of nature. It is the passing down of substances from age to age, from form to form, which supplies the archetype of creativity, namely creation ab utero, and the whole poetic and metaphorical symbolic system that goes with it. So, with meaning and value deriving from the hereditary transmission of substances under the jurisdiction of form … the task is to reveal and perpetuate it. So too, with the form perfectly circumscribing the object, a portion of nature is included therein, just as in the case of the human body: the object on this view is essentially anthropomorphic.” This is design as the “disclosure and perpetuation” of substances.
“Precisely,” continues Piero Lissoni, “through the interpretation of a technological principle in steady, unflagging change, for the sake of the correct performance of the action. Design as research, experimentation of those levities, those connections at which Eames was the greatest, the taste for simplicity, lived and enjoyed, with an omnivorous curiosity. Woe to the fake intellectual honesty that pretends to research the relationship between form and function while, precisely because of this, all ties with reality are distorted. Quality lies in ways of doing, not mystifying.”
In 1986, Piero Lissoni, together with Nicoletta Canesi, founded Studio Lissoni and Graph.X in 1996. The office created projects for industrial design, graphic design, architecture and interior design, art direction and corporate image. Today the Studio Lissoni Associati Milano + Graphx employs about seventy architects, designers and graphic artists who design for brands which include Alessi, Boffi, Cappellini, Cassina, Flos, Fritz Hansen, Kartell, Knoll International, Poltrona Frau, Porro and Tecno, together with forays into the fashion for Elie Tahari and Benetton. In 2005 Piero Lissoni was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Interior Design in New York and in 2006, with his Table System for Boffi, he was honored with the Best Kitchen Award by Elle Decor and the Good Design Award of the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture. The Beam Glass table for Porro appeared the following year in the exhibition on Italian design “50+2Y Italian Design” at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
“I don’t like wasting materials, especially if they are found directly in nature. Whenever I happen to use stone or marble, I always try to bring out their quality, which does not depend on an arbitrary typological classification. Whether we like it or not, we have to recognize the nobility of all natural stone materials without exception and respect their dignity, so often abused by their irresponsible use in the form of floor tiles. I clearly understand how the dimensions, weight and thickness of stone slabs are always points to be given due attention.
Today it is no longer justified. I try to represent the soul of the material, removing the useless weight and reducing the thickness to 3-4 mm. In combination with technological supports, panels in carbon composite, I redeem them from useless burdens, preferring excellence to excess. I do not attempt a mimesis, I don’t present a fake. The surprising effect of lightness does not denature the components of connection. In fact it enhances their aesthetic values. In this case design reveals and perpetuates the essence of substances. The supports may vary from time to time as appropriate, but it is important to establish that the criterion is applicable without discrimination, when the specific imperfections of all natural materials reveal the beauty of the soul. Think of the madness that some time back led to Bardiglio being relegated to second, third or fourth choice, when it’s a wonderful marble varied with gray or even bluish tones. And just because the coloration due to infiltrations does not satisfy the aesthetic canons of Bianco P marble. Or, in another field, the low rating of pietra serena, a cheap sandstone, because its small internal concretions are seen as defects, though they are actually a merit. Stone is stone, not plastic. It is identified with infinite durability, imperishable poetry.”
In its formal balance, the design of Yule, the new table by Piero Lissoni for Porro, acknowledges the nobility of marble, and the “tiny part of nature” embodied in the object.
Decio G. R. Carugati
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