area 109+ | around food

thoughts and suggestions by Massimo Iosa Ghini

Born in 1959. Since 1985, he has been part of the avant-garde design movements in Italy, like Bolidismo which he founded, and also part of the Memphis Group of Ettore Sottsass. During this period, he opened Iosa Ghini Associates in Milan and Bologna. Since then, Massimo Iosa Ghini designs products and develops art directions for leading Italian and foreign firms. Among them Ferrari Stores in Europe, USA and Asia, several hotels in Europe as well as Alitalia airport areas.

Key West, Edizione Limitata Iosa Ghini Limited Edition 2008
Key West, Iosa Ghini Limited Edition, 2008

area: What prevails when you design an object for the kitchen, the pursuit of functionality or do you, on the contrary, focus on the aesthetic character?
Massimo Iosa Ghini:
When designing a kitchen I seek the harmony, the relationship between the person and the use of the environment as a whole.
area:
Is the creative act of the designer more aimed at meeting functional requirements, or the sensorial suggestions of pleasure and taste?
M. I. G.:
In the case of the kitchen, I provoke with ideas which I owe to the fact of being transversal. I think of the designer as a factor that “pollinates” – the technology of the “flower” – the way to create the “flower”, a know-how possessed by our marvellous companies. Certainly, after many years of work, I have also acquired a know-how on the production methods, but sometimes I must “switch off” this knowledge, it can be a serious limit.
area:
Do you think it is possible to undermine the association, consolidated in time, between products for the kitchen and the materials they are made of (as the glass in glass, the plate in porcelain, the cutlery in metal...)? And how much do they influence design production?
M. I. G.:
I believe it is possible to change the relationship between products for the kitchen and the materials they are made from, as long as it makes sense. Every material has specific traits, I am not only speaking of chemistry but of the way we perceive things. Consider for instance the ceramic coffee cup, with its thickness and solidity, it keeps the warmth and aroma of its contents, I couldn’t imagine a better material! Over the years I have designed objects in many materials, from plastic I to fibres, to glass, metals, ceramics and stone. I am most interested in wood just now, because it is attuned to the way I feel today. Not all wood types are good, but many can be used and they help not to dissipate CO2. Then I design objects which “steal” ideas from artistic ones, but which are very conditioned by the requirements of industrial production and the market, where it may be important to save even a gram of material; in that case it is a matter of teamwork with experts who condition you and guide you, and you must hold the rudder, making the right choices..
area:
What companies are most appreciative with regard to research, and most willing to invest in design?
M. I. G.:
Italian companies have a natural predilection for design, then there are German ones which have refined the Italian method with an eye to a more large-scale production.
area:
What objects have inspired you? What designers have set an  example on the subject of food? And what are the emblematic pieces?
M. I. G.:
The Coca Cola bottles by Lowy. The cutlery of Alessi by Sottsass and Castiglioni. The infinite furniture by Mendini and Alchimia. The shaker by Massoni and Mazzeri. The works of Giorgio Morandi.
area:
What are your latest productions in the field of kitchen design?
M. I. G.:
At the forthcoming Furniture Salon I will present the E-Wood kitchen for Snaidero, the company which has produced all my kitchens. Its design is based on a rationalized and simplified structure which bears witness to a natural style, it has an authentic air, without any superfluous elements, and wood is the unchallenged protagonist. A sustainable response to home living. I begin with a material: wood and the desire to make it truly ecological, with natural structure and volumes. The theme of the environmental compatibility of a product must always be kept in mind (even if it is a bit too glamorous today), associating it with a patient research of the objective qualities that are immediately and instinctively perceived. In 2000 I designed the Gioconda kitchen whose success is due to the idea that it represents the “Platonic” kitchen, it is actually the physical representation of what one images a kitchen to be, or how most people imagine it, it is so popular because people recognize it as a kind of ideal, Platonic, precisely, but real kitchen.
area:
What are the characteristics of a kitchen designed by you in terms of space planning?
M. I. G.:
The kitchens I design always have an open furniture system, to make it possible to share both the preparation and the consumption of the food, and it is therefore necessary to give the kitchen innovative contents, in line with the evolution of everyday rhythms and give it solutions that are never banal, always surprising. It takes an idea, at the very least, to give new objects a meaning.
area:
What kind of relationship do you form with those who live in the environments designed by you?
M. I. G.:
Once in a while I meet someone who tells me: “you know I have a sofa, an armchair of yours”, he knows that I have designed it and knows about me, sometimes on the contrary I see places lit by my lamps, maybe a garage, and nobody looks at them and nobody knows who designed them, they provide light and that’s all. Or I enter a shop and I see people looking at clothes, trying them on, they are surrounded by my colours, my graphic design, they walk on floors chosen by me, but fortunately they have other things on their minds. What kind of relationship do I have?I am satisfied that I have created objects and places, but above all that all these people can enjoy my work. I don’t care so much for the expressed appreciation as I do for the concrete one.