«Tutto ciò che ci circonda, sia naturale che artificiale, è forma. La forma corrisponde al significato di un oggetto, alla ragione per cui un oggetto viene costruito, e rappresenta, se è ben fatta, la sua più alta qualità. Il problema della forma è ricercarne l'essenza.»
Enzo Mari (1932-2020)
Enzo Mari for ARTEK. Homage to Autoprogettazione. The essence of form. YouTube, 6 oct 2010.«Together we want to design a better world for people living with dementia.
We believe that compassion helps us to see the person and not the disease and that moments of positive connection can inspire loving relationships.
We are committed to designing products, places and services that stimulate the senses, bring pleasure and reconnect people living with dementia with carers and loved ones.
We believe that there is no simple solution, no one size fits all, no single answer to the problem of living with the disease but that we can design for positive experiences, moment-by-moment and day-by-day.
Our aim is to design with compassion, share with joy, communicate with sincerity and make a contribution to building a dementia friendly world.»
Cathy Treadaway
Cathy Treadaway, Compassionate Design Manifesto, 2016.«Lo que no puede ser es quedarte con una idea y obsesionarte con ella como diseñador. Eso es un error, hay que saber escuchar, interpretar y ser suficientemente flexible para que una idea se convierta en una de mil.»
Pepe Cortés León (1946-2024)
Pepe Cortés: «Es un error quedarte con una idea como diseñador y obsesionarte con ella», El Correo, 12 marzo 2014.«Cose minimali è molto difficile che ne faccia perché io non ricerco il minimalismo, semmai la semplicità che è una cosa molto differente.»
Gae Aulenti (1927-2012)
Zanotta: 2018/2019, Catalogo Generale, p. 303.«Don’t make something you are not going to be proud of in your lifetime, let alone 100 years from now. Don’t build for the moment… make a classic.»
Michael Graves (1934-2015)
Alessi, Collections, Michael Graves.«Il tempo lineare è un'invenzione dell'Occidente. Il tempo non è lineare, è un meraviglioso groviglio dove, in qualsiasi momento, possiamo scegliere punti e inventare soluzioni, senza inizio e senza fine.»
«Il passato non ritorna. Sono importanti la continuità e la conoscenza perfetta della propria storia.»
Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992)
Citato in Maurizio De Caro, Lina Bo Bardi, “il Brasile è il paese dove voglio vivere”, Listone Giordano ONE, 2021.«Playing is the real way to work. The longer you have to play and to enjoy living and working, the better.»
Patricia Urquiola (Oviedo, España, 1961)
Patricia Urquiola "Eye & Heart Captivator", Cozy Home Design Magazine, Issue 36 - Winter 2020, Published on Dec 15, 2019, p. 67. Contribución de Eneko Fernández Lozano, Taller de Diseño, Universidad de Navarra, 12 abril 2024.«Le design est avant tout social. On a toujours voulu l'en écarter en lui donnant des connotations esthétiques. Le design est aussi critique, par nécessité : il implique une attitude, et, aujourd'hui, ce que l'on doit faire, c'est changer d'attitude, pour entretenir une relation plus sereine entre individus mais aussi avec notre environnement.»
Matali Crasset (Châlons-en-Champagne, France, 1965)
Le design pop et ludique de Matali Crasset, Radio France, Mardi 24 novembre 2020.«What is good design in your eyes?»
«The nearest I have ever come to defining good design is that it is simply 98 per cent common sense. But what makes the subject so interesting is the other two per cent, what you may call aesthetics. Many products are demonstrably good, but those with that extra two per cent have a magic ingredient that places them in another category altogether – it is the difference between something that is perfectly acceptable and something that is so special that everybody wants to own it.»
«When the magic ingredient is present, the whole quality of life is improved. Good design gives you pleasure and improves the quality of all our lives through products that work well, are affordable and look beautiful. As Corbusier said, good design really is simply intelligence made visible.»
Sir Terence Conran (1931-2020)
Interview: Sir Terence Conran on Democratising Good Design, The Design Sheppard, February 1, 2012. Contribución de Cristina Fernández Marcos, Taller de Diseño, Universidad de Navarra, 28 mayo 2024.«If I give someone a horsetail he will have no difficulty making a photographic enlargement of it - anyone can do that. But to observe it, to notice and discover its forms, is something that only a few are capable of.»
Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932)
German photographer and sculptor.
Karl Blossfeldt, Google Arts & Culture.«I don't feel that design by itself can change or save the world – that is always a utopia, and it's unrealistic – but I find that it is a fundamental part of any team effort, and all efforts have to be team efforts at this point to change the status quo.»
Paola Antonelli
MoMA Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and Director, Research and Development.
"Our task is not to live forever" says Paola Antonelli, by Cajsa Carlson, dezeen, 6 December 2023.«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.