THE DESIGN OR MODERATING UTOPY  Interview with Giuseppe Furlanis I recently came to read an interesting book by Vittoria Franco in which she faces the problem of the moral after the "death of God", after the fall of the absolute foundations. The author prefigures a scenery in which, necessarily, many "possible ethics" will live together... Transferring these considerations to the culture of design, which are nowadays the "possible plans" for a design that wants to recover the civil commitment? Owing to the acceleration of the transformation processes, the tumultuous development of technology, the fast changes in the social system, the design is going through a phase of impasse, and not because of a lack of design production activity - there probably are to many projects - but because we work in a condition of lack of ideal perspective of transformation. Our age, connoted by the fall of ideologies, represented inevitably a loss of the utopia of transformation. It seems nearly that the design is running after changes that proceed in independent way, almost for an inertial motion, no more predeterminable and able to be planned. I don't believe in this inevitability and I think it's dangerous to support it. Consequently I think that today the matter of an ethic of design means, above all, to face the problem of the utopia, of an utopia of the transformation. Let me explain myself better. I think that the concept of utopia at the end of this millenium is substantially different from the one that characterized the beginning of the century: The utopia in the early 1900's was founded on the idea of great plans of transformation, often traumatic, substantially revolutionary. Today, instead, the process of transformation connected to the utopia must be based on the reconstruction of balance systems. We can actually assert that the real revolution is to reconstruct the balance. In a society, like the contemporary one, that lives a sort of schizophrenia, because on one hand there is the clear will to build up integration systems between man and nature, between different people, between far cultures, on the other hand instead we verify an increasing tendency to distinction, to separation, the challenge is to realize a balance between development plans and environmental problems of , between poor and rich countries, the progresses of the technique and the world of labour, not according to a wishful-thinking position, so trendy today, but as an unrenounceable development of society. From this point of view the only, real plan of transformation is today an utopia plan. An utopia that elsewhere I have defined "moderating". We are eversince used to consider these two terms - utopia and temperance - as antithetic: utopia contains the sense of dynamics and of transformation, sometimes violent, of reality; temperance means to stop in order to meditate, to think. I think that nowadays we have to aim to the target of a moderating utopia as reaction to a world in which everything looks, or is accelerated... We need to have the time to sit down and think... A man of progress is the man who thinks, who doesn't rush. So design is not the pursuit of problems that seem to run too fast but it means to stop and think on the same essence of these problems, because only if we aim to the target of a transformation model we succeed also in giving sense to our plan... Umberto Eco in his book "Cinque scritti morali" starting from the concept of possible ethics, finds out as today the difficulty of the problem of moral is above all to find a common point in these ethics. It's the "concept of "alter in us" as basic point of departure for our acting..." other "as next but also as nature, planet we live on, future generations... I totally share the considerations of Umberto Eco, that also are the foundings of my idea of school. Since I'm at the lSIA I have tried to introduce the concept of confrontation with problems, but also between different cultures, as characterizing element of approach. If the beginning of the century as been characterized by a culture of diversity, meant not as enrichment factor, but as differentiation, selfish protection of our own way of being, the big effort that the man of the end of the century has to do is to make the confrontation related to diversity an element of greater enrichment for his own cultural increase. I think this is part of that conception of the utopia I referred to before : the utopia of balance and the utopia of a balanced confrontation, in which doesn't exist a dominant or dominating element, because when these are present the confrontation very rarely leads to enrichment, but on the contrary to exploitation. In my opinion this is a fundamental aspect for the development of man. And here I refer to the problematic profiles for a design school. We left an utopia the one of Modern, that characterized the first half of the century, based on a kind of internationalization of culture as first step towards a fair world, towards the end of the conflicts between countries. A risky attitude, as not far from the danger of a dominance of Western countries on other cultures. Today we have instead understood that from the universality we can obtain richness, and that cultural unification creates a kind asphyxia. All this is at the base of my way to mean a design school whose main aim is to teach students to process their own culture of the plan that is technical, but also founded on to enable critic, on one ideal spin. School, facing these subjects related to the culture of transformation, cannot have an doctrinal approach because it wouldn't miss that aspect I was talking about before, founded on the richness of confrontation. Here's the invitation to teachers who have different cultures, antithetic ways to figure out design, the relationship with the object, environment, reality; the confrontation with problems that are faraway from the world of the students; the reflection about products expression of different cultures' richness. All for a school meant as place where every individual is able to discover a variety of debate that really exists also outside, in the world, but that is not perceived because dimmed by mass media that, reducing the confrontation, lead inevitably to a strong flattening. As correctly noticed, within the possible projects, the one of the challenge of sustainable development seems to be extremely urgent. The big difficulty for the culture of design is that if we want to obtain concrete results above all we don't have to think in terms of product but of satisfaction of needs. Let's think about the case of packaging, shouldn't only be analyzed and solved in the vision of recycle but facing the problem from its beginning, trying to understand how can we transfer that certain product from A to B. Also on the merely didactic profile is not easy... It's true that the culture of design is going through an evolution phase. For a long time the ISIA, with personalities as Vittorio Bozzoli and Jonathan de Pas, has faced the problem of eco-compatibility heading to the characteristics of the product: we used to talk about energetic saving, use of clean materials, not polluting productive cycles, disassembly, reduction of transport expenses... The matter is that today we verified that these aspects, correctly considered, do not have a real incidence on the environment. Just an example: Florence is a city with a very low life quality because it has a high pollution rate that forces us, several times a year, to block the traffic of not catalytic cars... To think that, basically, we can solve the problem with catalytic converters is totally wrong because it however determines the emission of unloaded gas and cars would keep on making the city difficult to live owing to the lack of parkings, to frquent traffic jams... Moreover: it isn't absolutely true that using recycling plastic materials for a product - I'm referring to some commercial campaigns pushing right on this aspect - we can make it everlasting, because materials decline inevitably during the recycling process so we have to use them for underproducts... without considering the impact of the processes employed... From this point of view the ecology of the last few years is extremely deceiving, if not dangerous. These are all substitutes that don't attack the main problem of eco-compatibility. In this way we keep supporting a strong acceleration of the dynamic of consumes and waistings. Recycling actually, as a paradoxe ,pushes even more towards this acceleration process. I'm not saying that recycling is a totally negative thing, but this policy makes sense in a transition phase to ecology like the one we are going through nowadays, but thinking that this is the way to solve problem is deeply wrong. So going back to the question, for a new idea of more compatible product we have above all to break through the actual system of consumes. A difficult way because the commercial competition is based right on price cutting with a consequent reduction of the quality and the lasting of products. To take part in the logic of consumes means to turn up side down this way to thinking and to acting. The main element through which is possible to develop a new ecological culture, therefore, is not so related to the transfert from the object to the service but to the construction of an ecology of mind. We live a kind schizophrenia: on one handther's the will of the education to ecology, taught in the schools where we do differentiated collection of the products, we organize advertising campaigns, on the other hand we have a culture, regarding the city development and the product, which is basically opposite, in which the wealth is measured on the quantity of owned goods. Proposing this new perspective it is necessary not to forget that the problem of environment concerns the topic of respect between men, we have already mentioned. The passage from the product to the service is with no doubt a more advanced phase of the one based exclusively on recycling but is still founded on the logic of consumes that represents the main element of crisis. So we have to focus on the main problem that is to build up a one real ecological culture which can take place only if work in the direction of a different world and,hopefully,a better one, based on new levels of balance. There are signs of a radical change of direction: I'm thinking about the interest of young people - I have much confidence in the last generations otherwise I would not work in a school - about the voluntary social service and this despite the influence of a culture, like the mediatic one, that does not push to confrontation but glorifies success and profit. For this reason, stubborn and in spite of everything,I keep on being confident. Beside the professional activity developed in the fields of planning and industrial consulting, Giuseppe Furlanis interests of "pedagogy of the project" through teaching, publications of articles and essaies, seminars and lectures in italian and foreign schools and universities. In 1985 he begins the activity of "expert" in design of the Department of Cooperation and Development of the Office of the Foreign Business. He promotes shows and conferences in different countries: he develops didactic activity and of coordination to the Art and Design Centre of La Valletta and for the center of Industrial Design of Montevideo. He is coordinator of I.S.I.A. of Florence.

Text by: Giuseppe Lotti I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. x. In cooperation with: Elena Granchi Sonia Morini TOP