«Pininfarina ha sempre avuto la passione per le nuove tecnologie. Il design è lo strumento per umanizzare l’innovazione.»
Paolo Pininfarina (1958-2024)
Mostra New Buildings 2022, Le nouve icone dell'architettura urbana, Matrix4Design, 14 Ottobre 2022.«Quello che vogliamo trasmettere noi è ricco di significato, non solo la forma segue la funzione, ma ha un terzo elemento molto importante, ossia il significato, che può far riflettere a livello politico, socio-economico, religioso, filosofico, comportamentale e personale.»
Gaetano Pesce (1939-2024)
L’ultima intervista di Gaetano Pesce (1939-2024), Maria Cristina Didero, Domus, 04 aprile 2024.«Mauern sollen es werden, weiß und glänzend, heilig und keusch. Ernste Würde sollte alles umweben. Reine Würde, wie sie mich beschlich und erschauerte, als ich einsam in Segesta vor dem unvollendeten Heiligthume stand… nur meine eigene Empfindung wollte ich im Klang hören, mein warmes Fühlen in kalte Mauern erstarret sehen.»
«Las paredes deben ser blancas y relucientes, santas y castas. Una seria dignidad debería rodearlo todo. Pura dignidad, como me invadió y me hizo estremecer cuando me quedé solo en Segesta frente al santuario inacabado... Sólo quería oír mis propios sentimientos en el sonido, ver mis cálidos sentimientos congelados en frías paredes.»
Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908)
Wiener Secessionsgebäude (1897-1898)
Gabriele Fahr-Becker: Jugendstil. Zitiert Egon Friedell: Jubiläumsband zum 25-jährigen Bestehen. WW Wien 1928.«We advocate an idealistic agenda in design, as we deplore the obsession with the New for the sake of the New, and regretfully see how the discipline lacks an intimate interweaving of the values that once inspired designers, as well as the producers of their ideas.»
Hella Jongerius & Louise Schouwenberg
Beyond the New: A Search for Ideals in Design
Manifesto.
Hella Jongerius (NL) is an industrial designer and art director.«Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit.»
«A cada tiempo, su arte. A cada arte, su libertad.»
Ludwig Hevesi (1843-1910)
Lema de la Secesión de Viena.
Pabellón de exposiciones de la Secesión vienesa, diseñado por Joseph Maria Olbrich, 1897-1898.«I’m a remarkable woman – always was, though none of you seemed to think so.»
May Morris (1862-1938)
May Morris, letter to George Bernard Shaw, 1936, as quoted in Mason, Anna et al. (2022), May Morris, Arts & Crafts Designer, Thames & Hudson, published in association with the V&A.«Ho costruito la mia identità di designer, in particolare per ciò che riguarda l’ambito delle supercar che ho creato per Lamborghini, su un concetto unico: ogni nuovo modello doveva essere completamente diverso rispetto al precedente. Il coraggio, la capacità di creare rottura senza attaccarsi al successo dell’auto precedente, la sicurezza nel non voler cedere all’abitudine sono stati l’essenza stessa del mio lavoro. È chiaro che mercati e marketing sono cambiati molto da allora, ma per quanto mi riguarda, ripetere un modello del passato rappresenta la negazione dei principi fondanti del mio DNA di car designer.»
Marcello Gandini (Torino, 1938)
La nuova Lamborghini Countach fa infuriare Marcello Gandini, di Giosuè Boetto Cohen, Corriere, 25 ottobre 2021.«One of my design signatures has always been commenting on the past as a means of introducing it to its future. To me, design always has the inherent idea of being a bridge from the past, with an eye towards the future.»
Virgil Abloh (1980-2021)
Virgil Abloh hacks the Vitra archive to create a vision of a home in 2035, by Amy Frearson, Dezeen, 12 June 2019.«There is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist.»
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928)
William Buchanan, Mackintosh's Masterwork: The Glasgow School of Art, Rutgers University Press, 2004, p. 20.«To harvest the power of design thinking, individuals, teams, and whole organizations have to cultivate optimism.»
Tim Brown (Preston, UK, 1962)
Tim Brown, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2009.«I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.»
Yohji Yamamoto (Tokio, 1943)
Yohji Yamamoto, Talking to Myself. Yohji Yamamoto, Kiyokazu Washida. Carla Sozzani Editore, 2002.«En el mundo actual, buscamos tendencias y señales de posibles futuros factibles; exageramos y extrapolamos cosas que ya están aquí.»
Liam Young (Brisbane, 1979)
Los mundos imaginarios de Liam Young llegan a Bilbao, COPE Bilbao, 18 dic 2023.«Change is definitely coming, change is inevitable because you can't continue to consume more than the planet can replenish every year. You just physically can't. So the question is not if we are gonna change as a society, but how we are gonna change. 'Cause, we're either gonna change by design or by disaster.»
Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA.
The Minimalists: Less is Now, Netflix Original film, directed by Matt D’Avella, 2021.«We proclaim: For us, space and time are born today. Space and time: the only forms where life is built, the only forms, therefore, where art should be erected.
States, political and economic systems, die under the push of the centuries: ideas crumble, but life is robust; it grows and cannot be ripped up, and time is continuous in life's true duration. Who will show us more efficient forms? Which great human will give us more solid foundations? Which genius will conceive for us a legend more elating than the prosaic story that is called life?»
Realistic Manifesto, Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, 1920.
The Realistic Manifesto was first published on August 5, 1920, in poster form, on the occasion of an exhibition with Gustav Klucis in Moscow.«Modern industrialization in the West has given priority to function and efficiency, and has destroyed beautiful nature. That’s why my design works are full of motifs of animals, plants and nature.»
Masanori Umeda (b. 1941)
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Getsuen (Lily) Chair, Masanori Umeda, c. 1990.«Art has poisoned our life. Aesthetics has infected everyone... If one chooses a typewriter or a sewing machine in the living room, the housewife say: 'Please take it away; it destroys the harmony of the room'. Post-cards, stamps, pouches, railway-tickets, pots umbrellas, towels, pyamas, chairs, blankets, handkerchiefs and ties – everything is 'arty'. How much more refreshing are those articles which are not called art: bathrooms, bath-tubs, bicycles, automobiles, engine-rooms and flat-irons. There are still people who can make beautiful things without art. They are the progressives.»
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)
Quote of Van Doesburg in his article: 'The end of art'; in 'De Stijl' series XII, 1924-5, pp. 135–136.«Ne rien dessiner, qu'on ne puisse construire.»
Jean Prouvé (1901-1984)
Jean Prouvé, Cours du CNAM, 1957-1970. Essai de reconstitution du cours à partir des archives Jean Prouvé, Jean-Pierre Levasseur, Jean-François Archieri, éd. Mardaga, 1995 (ISBN 2-87009-434-5), p. 7.«We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a surface.»
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)
Quoted in 'Abstract Art', Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 107.Più dell'arte
mi interessa la vita da cui parte
il brodo di cottura
della cultura.
Segatura della vita
l'opera finita
non è che la traccia
di una lunga marcia
di sapienti mandarini
o geniali bambini.
Andrea Branzi (1938-2023)
Andrea Branzi, Nel Regno dei Viventi, Dietro la Poesia, Corraini Edizioni, 2022.«Curves are so emotional...»
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
Piet Mondrian: Biography, Paintings, & Quotes.«If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration. (Some people who say they are talking about a future are only talking about their own self-imposed limits.)»
Frank Herbert (1920-1986)
"Doll Factory, Gun Factory" in "The Maker of Dune: Insights of a Master of Science Fiction" edited by Tim O'Reilly, Berkley Books, New York, 1987. p. 193-194.«Noi futuristi, Balla e Depero, vogliamo realizzare questa fusione totale per ricostruire l’universo rallegrandolo, cioè ricreandolo integralmente. Daremo scheletro e carne all’invisibile, all’impalpabile, all’imponderabile, all’impercettibile. Troveremo degli equivalenti astratti di tutte le forme e di tutti gli elementi dell’universo, poi li combineremo insieme, secondo i capricci della nostra ispirazione, per formare dei complessi plastici che metteremo in moto.»
Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) e Fortunato Depero (1892-1960)
Giacomo Balla e Fortunato Depero, Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo, 1915.«Non v'è più bellezza, se non nella lotta. Nessuna opera che non abbia un carattere aggressivo può essere un capolavoro. La poesia deve essere concepita come un violento assalto contro le forze ignote, per ridurle a prostrarsi davanti all'uomo.»
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944)
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Manifesto del Futurismo, 1909.«El papúa se hace tatuajes en la piel, en el bote que emplea, en los remos, en fin, en todo lo que tiene a su alcance. No es un delincuente. El hombre moderno que se tatúa es un delincuente o un degenerado. Hay cárceles donde un 80% de los detenidos presentan tatuajes. Los tatuados que no están detenidos son criminales latentes o aristócratas degenerados. Si un tatuado muere en libertad, esto quiere decir que ha muerto antes de cometer un asesinato.
El impulso de ornamentarse el rostro y cuanto se halle al alcance es el primer origen de las artes plásticas. Es el primer balbuceo de la pintura. Todo arte es erótico.»
Adolf Loos (1870-1933)
Adolf Loos, Ornamento y Delito, y otros escritos. Traducción de Lourdes Cirlot y Pau Pérez, Editorial Gustavo Gili, S.A., Barcelona, 1972. p.43.«I have discovered the following truth and present it to the world: cultural evolution is equivalent to the removal of Ornament from articles in daily use.»
Adolf Loos (1870-1933)
Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1910.«If you can paint one leaf, you can paint the world.»
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
John Ruskin (1843–1860), Modern Painters, Volume V, Part VI. Of Leaf Beauty, Project Gutemberg.«What is impractical can never be beautiful.»
Otto Wagner (1841-1918)
Otto Wagner (1902). “Modern Architecture: A Guidebook for His Students to This Field of Art”, Getty Publications, 1988, p.82.«Al menos desde la Revolución Industrial, el mundo del diseño ha estado dominado por los rigores de la fabricación y la producción en masa. Las líneas de montaje han dictado un mundo hecho de piezas, enmarcando la imaginación de diseñadores y arquitectos que han sido entrenados para pensar en sus objetos como conjuntos de piezas discretas con funciones distintas.»
Neri Oxman
Neri Oxman, Design at the intersection of technology and biology. TED2015. March 2015.«Humanity has opened the gates of hell.»
António Guterres
UN Secretary-General António Guterres during the Climate Ambition Summit at the United Nations Headquarters, Sept. 20, 2023, in New York.«Realismo mágico, definitivamente no, porque en mis obras nada es mágico. Yo pinto cosas improbables, pero no imposibles. En mis cuadros nadie vuela y no suceden cosas inverosímiles. El arte es siempre una exageración en algún sentido, en el color, en la forma, aún en el tema, pero siempre fue así.»
Fernando Botero (1932-2023)
Fernando Botero: "En mis cuadros nadie vuela", Raúl Rivero, El Mundo, 20/08/2016.