GIORGIO BISCARO ― TRANSCRIPT
I think that Italian culture is not about visual. The recent year, in my opinion, showed us that there's no more Italian design. There's no more Castiglioni. There's no more, very specifically local designers. We need to throw back that kind of approach of 90s, when we completely forgot about commercial need of something and we launched into something really crazy.
I'm Giorgio Biscaro and I'm a designer. I started to work as a designer, as a freelance designer so in a way I could freely experiment what I wanted to experiment about without being involved in any commercial logic.
The difference is that in 50s, in 60s, in 70s, in 80s, again, in 90s again, companies were willing to put themselves at the service of designers that came up with the idea, with the shape, and then the company followed them in this vision.
Probably the only thing that survives and is really present today is irony. The only thing that I would really say is a heritage is our, you know, a detached way to see things and represent it in a very... I won't say funny, because irony is not about funny things. It's a clever interpretation of our reality.
This is one of the project that i find craziest one because, of course, they have really difficult way of being produced. The most important feature of this material is that if you soak it water it just soften completely. It seems like leather and you can bend it, you can sew it, you can do whatever you want. but when it dries out, it completely becomes stiff and very resistant.
I think that this object is much more a performance of the material. I don't feel that this is the best example of light design. It was a way to prove that kind of material that were not used into lighting can also be referred to as a, you know, a different approach to light design.
But i feel that the experimentation is not over. There's so much to, to achieve still i think. unfortunately nowadays companies cannot afford experimentation anymore, or they can, but in a commercial point of view is not that convenient.
As long as we experiment. If we don't lose our umm will to experiment into our product and our design, I think we are ok. In the end i think that this was our winning card for our italian heritage in design. so why, i, i hope that it won't be lost.