AN ARCHITECT (AND A DESIGNER) MUST BE A MASTER OF ALL TRADES
Interview with Massimo Mariani |
Between the founders of the Bolidismo, Massimo Mariani is today the appreciated author of original projects of design, interior design and architecture. Shining student of Leonardo Savioli and Remo Buti, Mariani preserved in the time a fresh and eclectic creativity that characterizes his first productions of pieces of avant-garde furniture – as Studio Stilema with Alberto Casciani –, and also the bolidist objects of the eighties, the original private houses and, finally, the projects for bank offices and branches of the Credito Cooperativo in Tuscany. Now he is realizing important projects in province of Florence – a multifunctional building in Fucecchio, the Benozzo Gozzoli Museum in Castelfiorentino – and in Ponte Buggianese (PT) – a school, a library and the expansion of the cemetery.
First of all, out of curiosity, when you were young an icon of the sixties the Super Onda by Archizoom, emerged in Pistoia where you were born, out of an exhibition of young graduates dedicated to Superarchitecture. During that period, that was absolutely loaded with excitement and tension, and as a young boy from the province, how did you experience your own cultural growth?
In 1966 I was fifteen and going to high school in Pistoia. I think I might have even seen the Superarchitecture exhibition at the Galleria Jolly, but my interests were more focused on painting. However I remember an exhibition by Umberto Buscioni, (of the Pistoia school Barni-Buscioni-Ruffi-Natalini) at the Galleria Flori in Montecatini very well, which took place in the same year.
I was very struck by Umberto's ties, motorcycles, shirts, and shoes, and I met him some years later.
My youth was extremely easy going, I was aware that there were conflicts going on and that some of them were relevant to our part of the world. I remember when I was seventeen I had a very smart girlfriend, she was much smarter than me, and we would take the bus to Florence to go to the legendary nightclub Space-Electronic. I only became aware of the links that this place had with radical architecture much later on.
What influenced your choice of study?
I finished high school in 1969 and spent a lot of time contemplating whether or not to enter the Faculty of Architecture. I enrolled, but halfway through the first year I wanted to switch to the Accademia delle Belle Arti. I had wanted to go to art school since high school, but at the time my parents were opposed to the idea.
For many professionals, the university years and those right after graduation are a mixture of professional activity, research, and training. Do you have any particular recollections?
Up until 1974 the faculty didn't hold any interest for me. I was consumed by inner conflict, in addition to which I had not found what I was looking for in my studies so I spent a lot of time painting. At the end of 1974 I enrolled on a course run by Leonardo Savioli where I met Remo Buti and things changed. Finally I had found some characters with whom I felt I had something in common. After an exam in furnishings they took about thirty of us aside and Leonardo Savioli asked us if we would like to do our thesis with him (this was common practice then).
Following that I was an assistant to Remo Buti for many years, which was a truly special experience. In 1977 I graduated with a thesis on Arts and Craft Centers in Fucecchio which outlined a sort of industrial archaeology – the restoration of a container from the thirties.
Fairly early on – as Stilema, together with Alberto Casciani – you created productions that were halfway between art and design. What do you remember of this first experience of linguistic research and how much of this research was subsequently carried through to the productions that followed?
I met Alberto Casciani in 1977. Some years later we founded the Studio Stilema, to design and produce avant-garde objects and furniture. Back then Alberto had a furniture shop in the center of Montecatini and he was a great expert on design and figurative art, as well as being a great craftsman and artist. We worked together from 1980 to 1984, and then Alberto decided to concentrate his energies on restoration, becoming one of the major experts on stone restoration in Italy. The first project undertaken by Stilema was the production of a collection of objects – one of a kind objects – that we worked on for a year resulting in a show called Oggetti e Citanti mounted in December 1981 in our studio at Montecatini. The studio was called "Stilema" because we worked on other people's styles charging them with new uses and meanings. "Oggetti e Citanti" made reference to noted projects by contemporary artists such as Andrea Branzi, Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Hans Hollein, Salvo, Mario Radice... It was a conceptual enterprise based on Duchamp, fairly rigid but also ironic. During a period of formal exuberance we were more interested in the idea itself rather than the formal practice. During that period, the established rigid method had relaxed a little, perhaps for the best, but a design must always be based on an idea. I think I was profoundly affected by this experience. I am obsessed with method and want every project to have a meaning. I believe I have held on to this idea for all these years right up until the present day, even during the Bolidismo period.
For the generation of the Archizoom and Superstudio the innovation of the visual language of Pop Art required a formidable effort to break with the past and create an identity born on new foundations, which were perhaps not yet firmly culturally established, but were very focused on emerging in the fields of both design and architecture. Did, Mutatis mutandis, the fresh and atypical language of the Comics, change something for the better for you and the other founders of the Bolidism movement?
To a certain extent it did but not very decisively, partly because the Bolidism movement was very shortlived. In a famous photograph published on Epoca, June 1987, during which Bolidism was introduced, I had a Lampada grassa (Cactus Lamp) in my hand and at my feet was the Valigia del Naturalista (Suitcase of the Naturalist) containing some Lampade insetto (Insects Lamp), Stefano Giovannoni and Guido Venturini were showing a series of objects covered with colored foam, Pierangiolo Caramia had some vases in the shape of bishop's hats, Studio Electra showed some sculptural objects, Massimo Iosa Ghini and Maurizio Corrado had a Memphis chair that evoked speed, as did the group's logo which was drawn by Maurizio Castelvetro. As a whole the iconography was quite varied, but surprising... By the time this photograph was released Bolidism had already passed, as quickly as the wind.
Among the cultural references and suggestions of the Bolidism movement, perhaps for the first time in a fresh and innocent way, the figurative power of a historic avant-garde re-emerged – Futurism – considered by many to be the cultural reference closest to Italian design. In fact the Manifesto of 1916 declared that the art of the future would not be able to escape comparison, and contamination, with the means and techniques of mass production. Nevertheless, from not much older than the age of twenty up until today, both you and Massimo Iosa Ghini distinguish yourselves with a reasonable output of architecture and interior design - disciplines which, among other things, have much more in common with the unicum than with multiples...
It's true. Over the years I have created more achitecture than design. I have designed a series of banks or mass produced banks, and perhaps this is where my mass production lies. However it is mass production with a difference, where the bank is the base upon which to put "make-up", a process that is conceptually analogous to Make-up 100% by Alessandro Mendini. In fact, I still don't want to even call them banks. I'll call them communications, stages, places where communication dominates over function... They will be named with my initials, a progressive number and the date and location, just as Vanessa Beecroft named her performances. Each one of them represents a project born of my close emotional association with the place.
There is a constant trace and recurrence of references to domestic figures in architectural works created by designers, for example the works by Ettore Sottsass in Empoli and Montelupo Fiorentino, or the London houses by Ron Arad. Often they are not literal references to objects, but rather references based on the research of an accessible figure. An icon that is already recognizable both mnemonically and emotionally, an entity with which one could idle away the time and have an intimate, almost tactile experience. It is not a coincidence that one of your themes is the hand...
When a designer designs an object it is likely that he will attempt to capture the essence of the subject matter, and try to evoke other psycho-sensory sensations by using certain figurative elements. If I touch a log made smooth by the sea or a stone from the riverbed I appreciate its roundness and softness, I feel it's alive, almost as if I were touching a cat or a dog. If I touch stainless steel it feels cold, but like Narcissus in the pond, I see my reflection in it.
I worked with the theme of the hand for a period of time. I wanted to experiment using a single iconographic sign, both for architecture and design. I chose the hand because it lends itself to several things. One can be "hand in hand" or "hands in hand". I designed a hand rail with one hand and called it Corri-mano (Hand-runner). I called a ceramic vase covered with hands "Attenti alle mani" (Beware of the Hands), and I called a building I designed for a competition in Spain, which was covered in hands to imitate waves, Palazzo del Benvenuto (Welcome Palace)...
Tactility is at times born from suggestion and memory. Referring to your New Office for the Banca di Credito Cooperativo in Castagneto Carducci, you yourself speak of the "soft sand shapes of the colored buckets of a child..."
The office for the bank of Donoratico is another thing altogether. I think it illustrates my best example of integrating architecture with interior design. From the outside it appears to be a fort, with rounded corners, soft and almost rubbery, and covered with a textured sandstone, giving the impression that it could almost have been created by a child's bucket while playing on the beach. The inside reveals a surprise: the ground floor is completely covered with blue mosaic – from the floor to the walls – and resembles a basin of water. Thanks to the contained dimensions everything is within reach and can be touched. The offices on the floor above are arranged around a well. If you look up you see the sky and if you look down you see the red and gold fishes depicted in the mosaic moving towards the center. It makes one wonder... are those fish intended to be us?
In the recent Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Fornacette in La Fontina - Pisa, your deliciously ironic vein fully emerges, present in works since Hans – improbable alongside the series Oggetti e Citanti. Enormous vases (Vas-one by Luisa Bocchietto and Top-pot by Ron Arad) placed high up in the interior recreate an unusual bank micro-cosmos where stairs come into play twisting and overturning truths...
Yes, it's like I said before. In MM48 of 2003 in La Fontina the overturning of the vases corresponds to a switching of meanings, where reversal and revolutions intermingle with the performances of the people carrying out banking procedures.
But are we the best observers of ourselves?
Another theme that strongly characterises your work is color, above all in the interiors: pastel tones in the Banca di Credito Cooperativo in Montelupo Fiorentino, primary colors at Poggibonsi, acidic colors at the Pontedera branch...
Colors is a part of the design. It's true that I use it above all for the interiors, because I believe that it is discovered slowly and not revealed immediately. I prefer it to be discovered when one least expects it, and this is why it then fills us with energy.
To what extent and in what way is the interior design affected by the nature of the commissioning body?
I think the interior design of a house is the most difficult thing.
The house is like a dress and must be worn to perfection. If someone requires a "fashion designer" they must find the right one, or else it is better that they do it themselves.
At the end of 2004, while at the exhibition Medesign, currently showing in Genoa, Vico Magistretti maintains that he is not entirely convinced that it is right to base an exhibition on "a design linked to the sea and navigation, a design linked to unique events and rarely repeatable in great numbers, which is in fact the main characteristic of design", the work of Marcel Breuer, a child prodigy of design and a master on architecture of the last century is on exhibition at the Candiani Center in Mestre. In design and architecture he presents a literally two-faced figure. Among other things, aspects that have perhaps not been explored as a whole can be appreciated, such as for example, the constant study of new geometric variations for use in the facades of prefabricated structures. Mass-produced products respect one of Breuer's most important principals: architecture should create shapes capable of maintaining repetition. I think also Enzo Mari has developed a fairly similar obsession in his work. Perhaps it is the constant relationship with the archetypal that connects the works of architecture and design?
We are speaking of design in terms of limited circulation or great numbers again. Magistretti had to side with the second hypothesis, but I believe that the two can exist side by side.
Marcel Breuer is considered, for his excellence, to be one of the historic hybrid figures and undoubtedly if I look at the dormitory facade at St. John's University (1965-'67) I will still consider it to be very up-to-date. It demonstrates a perfect integration between art, design, and architecture. The play of light that sets the panels in relief brings to mind an optical painting.
I still find the theme of prefabrication very interesting, one need only look at the beautiful Simmons Residence Hall at MIT by Steven Holl.
In Italy unfortunately the art of prefabrication is yet to be discovered. The only unfortunate examples we have are in industrial areas that are generally lacking any form of design, that is to say, the design is dictated by the companies that produce the prefabricated components. This is still virgin territory, where I believe there is still a great deal of work to be done. Just recently, with the studio we have dedicated ourselves to a low cost design for prefabricated buildings in an area of mixed expertise (artisan, industrial, commercial). With a single symbol, which changes only in dimensions, we have managed to design the architectural mass, the texture of the windows and the entrance systems.
Turning to Bolidism it is also true that, even if it only lasted for one photograph, the bolidista sign meant much to supply businesses such as Moroso, for example. The very first works of Massimo Iosa Ghini clearly mark the generational passing of management from Agostino Moroso to his daughter Patrizia. Moroso today means Arad, Gricic, Massaud, Dixon, in fact a great contamination between art and furniture...
I love the hybrid figures and those works of Massimo seem to have been released from his comicstrips. The same has happened with the metal chair sculptures by Arad, alchemy has managed to transform them into soft domestic sofas. This happens when there is a willingness on the part of the companies to renew, risk and invest, and when they believe in their designers. When everyone does what they are best at, the designer designs, the companies provide their research and technologies, and work until the ideas are realized. Very rare. On the contrary, many items found on the market are replicas.
Some time ago you told me of your missed meeting with an important entrepreneur, of the necessity to defend a design idea for it to not lose value, of your refusal to continue working as a product designer because of the excessive number of "compromises" with the company every time an idea was proposed to you. Looking from outside the field of architecture it seems to be even more tightly restricted...
If I have to design objects and I find myself physically spent at the end of the project then it is better not to do it. Objects have an important presence, they make up a part of one's life, and if they are well made they release positive energy, otherwise they can be harmful. First of all they should transmit the love of the creator, otherwise it is better to let it go. The world is too full.
In Italy architecture is a very difficult field and there is a continuous discussion on this subject. Though I must add that in the last ten years something has changed. Some new architecture has been born and one can see that some people in the profession who are under forty have created at least one work. In addition... perhaps, in Italy architecture is going through a sad phase where retrospective permission is granted for unauthorized building works but at the same time Arata Isozaki is rejected from Florence, but this is another discussion.
I consider myself to be lucky. Working on public buildings (banks, schools, cemeteries, museums, offices) I can express my own style, providing the authoritative bodies do not censor it. In general terms the people who work within my architectural structures are happy. This gives me great joy and is the confirmation that what I thought was right.
Regarding the tangency or separation between the fields of design and architecture, the relatively new three-year degree course in Industrial Design at Calenzano allows its first graduates to create a censor with the past. The masses speak about direct competition between faculties and degree courses at the enrollment level and an increasingly marked characterization between the professional figure of the architect (at the construction site) and the designer (in a company). What is your opinion on this?
I am not in favor of specializations, I prefer amateurs, I am in favor of meetings, inter-linking, mixture, and hybrid. The architect must be a master of all trades. Like Le Corbusier, Giņ Ponti, the painter architects and sculptors, designers are the best examples. The most original ideas come from them.
Can you imagine, for example, an architect who thinks only of the shell, who does not know the great figures of art or interior design, who never visits the Milan Furniture Fair and who has never even been to India?
Massimo Mariani
Via Don Minzoni 27 - 51016 Montecatini Terme (PT)
tel. +39 0572 766324 / fax +39 0572 912742
www.massimomariani.net
|
|
edited by:
Umberto Rovelli |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
| TOP |
|
