In the first part of the talk Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi gave a presentation on their work as Formafantasma. In this second part they answer questions from Dezeen's editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about their identity as Italians who've left to live in the Netherlands, how they design without sketching and the possibility of scaling up their conceptual craft-based work for industrial production.

The talk was filmed by Dezeen at the RIBA in London on 26 April. Watch the first part here or below.

See all our stories about Formafantasma here, including their most recent projects presented in Basel last week that involved working with scraps of leather and Swiss charcoal burners.

See our earlier two-part Peroni Collaborazioni Talk with designer Fabio Novembre here and here, with a transcript here.

Here's the full transcript of the second part of the discussion:

Marcus Fairs:  Could you tell us where you’re both from?  I mentioned at the beginning you’re from opposite ends of Italy.  Simone, where are you from?

Simone Farresin:  Yes, I’m from Vincenza.  So I’m really coming from a design area, where design is produced.  Kind of north-east.

Andrea Trimarchi:  I’m from really down in the south, in Sicily.  Where there is no design at all.

Simone Farresin:  It’s interesting also the way we found ourselves getting to know design.  I got in touch with design quite early when I was in high school.

Andrea Trimarchi:  I started when I went to Florence because I started the first year of architecture and after this I decided to move towards the design field because it was more interesting.  But actually I got in contact when I was in Florence.  In Sicily I think still people don’t know what design is at all.

Marcus Fairs:  And northern Italy is very industrial, one of the most industrialised parts of the world.

Simone Farresin:  There’s a lot of craft too.  But yes, totally, industrial.

Marcus Fairs:  And the south is very agricultural and in fact it’s almost two different countries, isn’t it?  There’ve been attempts to separate.

Simone Farresin:  Yes, they always want to separate the north and south.

Marcus Fairs:  But do you think your work is embedded in Italy?  Every project that you’ve shown so far references Italy.  Do you think you could have made those observations, done that work, if you’d stayed in Italy?  Or did it require that you left to become emigrants in a way?

Simone Farresin:  Totally.

Andrea Trimarchi:  Yes.  I think we had to go away from Italy to understand better what Italy is.  Also the richness, or what stops people producing things there, especially for the younger generation.

Simone Farresin:  I think it’s totally important that we are in Eindhoven.  As we mentioned in the presentation, Eindhoven for us is seriously like a white cube.  Where we have the time to think, while Italy is so much, design is everywhere, in a way.  It’s kind of difficult to relate to it.

Marcus Fairs:  And you mentioned just now Andrea, what is it that stops young people working?  Because Italy does have this situation where there were the great masters, the great maestros and as you mentioned in your talk, you suggested even that it’s possible that they intimidated the younger people. They were so untouchable and so great that nobody was able to follow in their footsteps.  Do you think that’s true?

Andrea Trimarchi:  But actually I think it didn’t intimidate.

Simone Farresin:  They’re shouting too much.

Andrea Trimarchi:  But it’s not because they don’t want to.  I think the younger generation...

Simone Farresin:  ...are more conservative than the older generations.

Marcus Fairs:  Because you also said it’s really easy to get lazy in Italy.  So you left.  You’re like many people that have left Europe, especially Mediterranean countries to look for a better life abroad, so in that sense you’re like every wave of emigrants that went to New York to set up.  But your work isn’t about nostalgia for Italy, it isn’t like, oh, I miss my homeland so much so I want to preserve that memory in the work.

Simone Farresin:  No, well, we still miss a good pizza when we are in Eindhoven, but apart from that we really feel we are European in a way.  We are part of this generation that is really enjoying the ease of travel.  So an exhibition about Dutch design, we talk about Italian design here, but it’s all organic and I don’t even think it makes sense anymore to think about design in terms of national identity. For Italy it still makes a bit of sense because it’s really production-based, so when you deal with Italian companies you’re really talking about it with a specific context.

Marcus Fairs:  But your work still does talk about Italy.  Why for example do you not do a project about Eindhoven or London or Iceland?  Do you think this interest in Italy will see through your whole career?

Andrea Trimarchi:  No.

Simone Farresin:  I don’t know.  It’s difficult to say.

Andrea Trimarchi:  We don’t have any particular obsession.

Simone Farresin:  It’s really coming from an intuition.  It’s not a conscious decision in what we do.  I think it’s a way of dealing with Italy.  Because you are growing up so much when you study design in a situation of constraints, in a way.  So moving out for us, it was impossible not to relate, to digest it almost.  I guess we are digesting Italy.

Marcus Fairs:  You mentioned about how the young generation in Italy are now maybe quite conservative but yet if you’re a young person in Italy there’s so much to make you angry, isn’t there?  I mean the political situation, the economic situation – so why do you think there is this passivity in the young people in Italy?

Simone Farresin:  I think it’s a cultural problem, a general cultural problem.  And it’s a combination of things.   You know like if we talk about design, Italian design has been great for so many years and then you have the postmodern movement and the idea itself of postmodernism, and also almost the impossibility to go beyond it.

So I think nowadays design is interesting in the Netherlands.  It’s almost a natural process, I think, of things that go till the end. We also feel that things are changing.  We changed prime minister and that already is something.  So we hope different people will start work in different ways.  Not thinking only about industrial production, wondering more who they want to be as a designer.

Andrea Trimarchi:  Yes, this is a problem actually.  The problem is the education because when you do education in Italy they have really great educators but they never tell you to find yourself as a designer.  It’s only about to become a tool for the industry.

Marcus Fairs:  To follow a methodology?  To fit into a system?  Not to change the system but to become part of it.

Simone Farresin:  Exactly, but it’s strange because the history of Italian design is certainly not about that.  So it seems something went wrong in translation.

Marcus Fairs:  Exactly, because your tutors at your college were Archizoom who were radical, crazy, proposing impossible cities.

Andrea Trimarchi:  I remember the lessons from our teacher were amazing but after it we had, like, seven hours of Rhinoceros or programming. So yes, I think something probably went wrong.

Simone Farresin:  Now that we’ve moved abroad and we talk again with them it seems we can better understand what they meant.

Andrea Trimarchi:  But they were always telling us, why don’t you do something else? Why don’t you move?

Simone Farresin:  But then somehow you have so many other layers that tell you that you shouldn’t do, you shouldn’t be too wild, somehow.

Marcus Fairs:  But one thing I find particularly interesting about your work is that there’s this critical element to it.  There’s a braveness to it.  You’re talking about immigration.  You’re talking about colonialism.  You’re talking about the possible end of the plastic age.  And these are quite big political subjects and yet the objects you produce are really beautiful, and strangely beautiful.  They are forms that aren’t familiar.  It would be maybe easier to tackle those issues with a really ugly thing that shocks you and makes you feel a bit sick.

Simone Farresin:  Yes, I know.  This is something that a lot of people mention about our work.  It looks beautiful and seductive and then in the second moment you get the other layer beneath it.  I think it’s just an attitude we have, and I think it’s also where our work is different from the older radical generation where they were much more brutal in their approach.  I think it’s also part of our intimate way of working.

Marcus Fairs:  So in other words you’re not looking at these subjects with anger or with frustration, it’s almost like curiosity.

Andrea Trimarchi:  It’s a sort of record.

Simone Farresin:  We are reflecting about it.  We don’t have answers.  When you have answers you can also pretend, you can be much more brutal.  We think we are raising questions and you can raise questions also being gentle.

Marcus Fairs:  And how do the forms emerge?  You mentioned that in Botanica that the form came from the materials you were working with but what is the process you use?  Do you sketch or do you first get the materials?

Andrea Trimarchi:  No, we never sketch.

Marcus Fairs:  Put them on the cooker and wait for the explosion?

Simone Farresin:  With Botanica it was kind of like that.

Marcus Fairs:  So tell me the process.  Obviously you have the brief for Botanica and you decide that you want the work to explore plastics before plastics, pre-Bakelite you described it as.  So tell me the process you go through.  Is it research for months and months and months and then experimentation and then... ?

Andrea Trimarchi:  The first things we do usually is to write a text.

Simone Farresin:  We need to communicate between each other so we use like maps of images of existing things.  We write and then we have long discussions because we’re only two.  It’s really an intense process.  And then it’s almost a process of condensing elements.  And it goes through images, texts and the material research.  And it’s nervous frustration because especially when you have projects like Moulding Tradition and Colony where the concept is really precise so it doesn’t grow by making, as for instance Botanica.

But then you have a precise idea and then you need to deal with a specific element that you need also to use.  So the design process is almost more a process of restraint.  It’s not about creativity or sketching or going wild.  But it’s more a process of refining ideas and wondering which is the right decision, which element to keep, which element to skip.  So it’s a kind of slow process.  When it’s a material study it’s much more about intuition I think.

Andrea Trimarchi:  Also it is quite scary because for instance when we were working with Botanica most of the materials they were really ugly so we were not able, at least at the beginning we were not able even to think about objects with it.

Simone Farresin:  We thought they were ugly.  We were looking at them and we were thinking, God, this looks like a cookie, but we kind of liked that.  And the other one was looking at kind of amber-like, Tiffany, art deco, so we were kind of really sceptical about finding a way to use them.  But when you have all this frustration then there is a moment where you just embrace it.  And you go for it.  But that’s always the last moment.  There is always a moment of frustration and then things go the right way.

Marcus Fairs:  So it sounds like an editorial process as much as a design process.  It is interesting because nearly all the Italian designers I’ve spoken to, or the non-Italian ones that work in Italy, they don’t do the northern European design thing which is to sit down and draw.

They almost design in their head and then they go to the artisan or the craftsman or the metal worker or the carpenter and they sort of describe what they want, in the Italian way – waving their hands around a bit.  And often they then go away and then the craftsman interprets and they come back and they say “Is this what you want?” and they go “Yes” or maybe “A bit wider, a bit shorter”.

Simone Farresin:  I think it is a bit like this.  Of course we also work a lot within the studio so when you engage with materials you have a lot of hands-on kind of processes.  But otherwise it’s exactly how it works.  For instance we have interns now.  When you have to speak with them it’s really sometimes confusing because we manage to understand each other but then when we have to explain what we have in mind to them it’s much more complicated.

Andrea Trimarchi:  It gets more complicated when you also have a client because we are not able to explain what we are doing.

Simone Farresin:  We hate that.  We hate to explain to clients what we are doing.  We are most of the time trying to convince them they have to trust us.

Marcus Fairs:  Because otherwise they come back to the studio after two months to see how you’re getting on and there’s just a big mess of melted lava.

But you did also say towards the end of your talk that you’re starting to talk to manufacturers, to brands and that’s really fascinating because your work up to now has followed the traditional Dutch designer’s path.  You do this kind of work, the autonomous work, the self-developing work because you have no client.  You have no factory.  Now what happens to you with this highly politicised, highly craft-based, highly personal Italy-based series of objects when say Magis or Cappellini or someone like that comes to you – what happens?

Simone Farresin:  Good question.  We don’t have a specific answer.

Marcus Fairs:  What I mean is, you’re not against the idea that these thought processes could end up in a mass-produced object.

Andrea Trimarchi:  I think when you work with a company it will be different.  We need to find out in which way we need to work with them but I think we’ll be not about copy and paste as a way of working.  I don’t think you can.  Of course it would be nice, you know, the research we did for instance with the plastic material, it would be nice if a company would embrace this way of thinking like Kartell – it would be a perfect project for Kartell.  I think it would be a really different kind of behaviour or approach.

Simone Farresin:  I think we need to find our approach towards that and also, talking with these few companies we got in touch with, we understand how this is really traditional Italian design.  It’s never about you as a designer going there,  sketching something and giving it to them.  It’s really about a collaboration.  Our work is often context-based, so what we are interested in is really collaborating.  Otherwise, if it is about for us seeing our studio, forming an idea and going to them, well then we do what we are doing now.  So we are really interested not to apply a system but to collaborate with these companies.

Andrea Trimarchi:  And challenge them.

Simone Farresin:  And it’s a challenge for us too.

Marcus Fairs:  So you could imagine just as the way you visited a village in Sicily and discovered these crazy pastry ornaments that you could go to a factory and discover - with your fresh eyes - discover something that is happening in that company that maybe they didn’t utilise before.

Simone Farresin:  That would be perfect actually.  But that’s not often happening.  Because companies don’t really understand this.  At least so far we saw these difficulties to understand how much you need a playground when you are a designer.  They often want you to give a proposal and for us that is a bit boring.

We like it much more when there is a challenge and when they even give you restraints.  Because then you can start a discussion.  Then you can say like “No” instead of when they are like “Give me a proposal” then for us it’s kind of, we get bored.  Because we go back to Eindhoven and then we are again in our studio and that’s not what we like in collaboration.  We like a discussion.  So we need to manage to get this kind of approach or these kind of discussions.

Andrea Trimarchi:  Also now is our really perfect moment for work with industry.  Because for the lighting industry for instance, I really think this is changing with OLED and LED.  With a normal manufacturer there are new materials, we need to find alternatives for plastic.  It’s an exciting moment.

Marcus Fairs:  And as you say, you were talking about the change in lighting technologies but also manufacturing technologies, some of the most popular and talked about exhibitions in Milan during Design Week last week involved little desktop rapid prototyping machines, involved robots that manufacture but at a much lower price than ever before.  It was about designers, like people are talking about open design where designers have access to technologies directly without having to work with a big factory in China or a brand.  But does industry interest you?  I mean you’re interested in Sicily and Mount Etna and straw and bread, but what about robots?

Simone Farresin:  You saw we have a personal fascination but you know we are also really curious in general, so what we are trying to build up is an attitude and not a style or an obsession for certain specific things.  Then also, when you are working with companies, there is a specific context that you also need to respect.  So Italian companies have a huge heritage that you need again to face and to understand how to fit.  Especially at the beginning.

I think we understood how much it’s important to start first maybe with a product.  Then from that moment on you can start to trust each other because the relationship you can build with Italian companies is really a personal kind of relationship.  You know Italians, it’s really about family and getting to know each other.  So when you work with companies you can push certain boundaries but I think it’s also a process of knowing each other personally first.

Andrea Trimarchi:  And we are also really interested in technology.  Actually I think we are quite flexible.

Marcus Fairs:  And when you exhibit in Italy ... or when you talk to these Italian companies or even when you just go to Italy and talk to journalists what is the impression the Italians have of you as two Italian boys who left the country and are almost holding a mirror up in some ways to their society.  What is their reaction?

Simone Farresin:  They complain about Italy of course.  They say, “Oh, you did so well you went abroad”.  You know, those kind of random kind of discussions, but they are also really happy I think to see young designers, Italians, approaching design in a way that is different.

Andrea Trimarchi:  In any case I think they are also really used to having us international people.  Most Italian companies work with international designers.  So of course it’s an issue but I think it’s not a big issue.

Simone Farresin:  But for sure we notice how much you’re interested in our work because it’s so much not reflecting what is happening nowadays in Italian design.  So that’s for sure it’s an advantage for us.

Marcus Fairs: Well, it’s an amazing story.  Tell me how old you are?

Simone Farresin:  32.

Andrea Trimarchi:  29.

Marcus Fairs:  And they graduated from a Design Academy in Eindhoven less than three years ago.  So it’s really quite an extraordinary story already.  What are your ambitions?  What do you hope to achieve maybe next week or next month or next year or in your lifetimes?  Do you have a sort of idea of what success is or where you want to go?

Simone Farresin: Well, first we want to finish the projects for Basel.  To go back to the studio and make sure that the people we are working with they will be happy with what we are doing.  To keep on working and be interested in our work.  You know, it’s so easy with design to get kind of stuck in certain system.

For instance we realised how much it is important to say no when you get a proposal. To be kind of focused all the time on what you are interested in is so difficult. Because you have so many, you know, different ways of working, you have so many different requests. So in this moment for instance for us what is more important is to stay focused. And Eindhoven is perfect for that because we don’t speak Dutch, so we don’t understand what people say around us. We don’t have the buzz of Milan around.

Andrea Trimarchi:  Yes, we live in this bubble where there is no crisis of course.

Marcus Fairs:  You can’t read the newspaper or understand the TV.

Simone Farresin:  It’s a tiny little bubble, our design studio. And we like to keep it that way.  That’s our goal anyway.

Marcus Fairs:  Well, it’s a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Movie: Peroni Collaborazioni Talk with Formafantasma part 1
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Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi met as design students in Florence before moving to the Netherlands to study at the Design Academy Eindhoven. After graduating they stayed in Eindhoven and set up their own studio, Formafantasma.

Despite being removed from their home country, they often look back to Italy and particularly Sicily for inspiration, and many of their collections have made use of artisanal and pre-industrial techniques and materials.

See all our stories about their work here, including their most recent projects presented in Basel last week that involved working with scraps of leather and Swiss charcoal burners.

The talk was filmed by Dezeen at the RIBA in London on 26 April. A transcript of the talk is also included below. Watch out for the second part of the talk coming up soon.

See our earlier two-part Peroni Collaborazioni Talk with designer Fabio Novembre here and here, with a transcript here.

Here's the full transcript:

Marcus Fairs: The Peroni Collaborazioni Talks are about discussing Italian design, discussing Italy’s gift to the world in terms of creativity in art, design, fashion, engineering – across all the creative spheres. The reason we’ve got these very, very young babies here is because, I think, there are lots of legends of Italian design and fashion, lots of icons, lots of highly successful people.

I think these guys represent a new generation. A new way of thinking. A new way of designing. They don’t even live in Italy, they live in the Netherlands, but I think we’ll see through their work that their work is embedded in the country of their origin and can only have come from Italy. So the boys are going to talk to us. Sorry, I’m going to call you boys, if that’s okay. They’re going to give us a talk of about 20 minutes to talk us through their work, then their influences and their background and then we’re going to have a discussion together and then we’ll invite the audience to ask any questions.

Simone Farresin: Thank you for the introduction.

Andrea Trimarchi: Yes, thanks Marcus. Thanks Peroni also for inviting us. I’m Andrea.

Simone Farresin: I’m Simone.

Andrea Trimarchi: We are Formafantasma. We are an Italian studio based in Eindhoven. So we are Italian but actually we are living there. Me and Simone met in Florence while we were studying at ISIA [University of Industrial and Communication Design], that was the first education in Italy that was born after the economic boom during the ‘60s. And after it we decided to leave Italy and to go the Design Academy in Eindhoven to do the IM Masters. We graduated from there in 2009. So two and a half years ago, more or less.

Simone Farresin: So Florence is a specific and beautiful place to study. The school was also interesting because between the people who founded it, or at least our teachers, were the founders of the Archizoom radical movement, so Paolo Deganello and Gilberto Corretti. It was interesting that between the teachers we had were so involved in the radical movement, because in our work there are some critical and political elements that we can somehow connect with those origins. But on the other side, Florence, as you know it’s a beautiful place, Renaissance, it’s really easy to get lazy physically.

So when we graduated from the Bachelor we thought we needed to move abroad. We needed to experience also the collaboration between the two of us in a different environment. And going to Milan of course it was really easy to get in touch with Droog Design and the exhibition and Design Academy in Eindhoven. So we felt this necessity to engage with a different kind of design that wasn’t happening in Italy. And we moved to Eindhoven.

So we passed by leaving the place that is looking like this, to a place that is looking like this. So a really small town, south east of Holland. Quite ugly, uninteresting, in a way. For us this is a wide space. It’s kind of an environment where we had for the first time no visual noises, not a heritage, as you mention.

Andrea Trimarchi: And actually helping us a lot to reconsider our roots and to look back to our origins in a way.

Simone Farresin: Yes, I think as you mentioned it’s happening in art too, but in design it’s even more the way that you have this great generation of masters. Then when you are studying there, you have all these people that are teaching you the right way of doing design, because you have these great examples. In Holland instead it’s completely different because of course the design scene, the most recent one, is not so much linked to the past as the Italian one is instead.

And Eindhoven gave us the possibility to have our own studio in a mental hospital that we managed to turn into a more welcoming and nice environment to work and live in. We can always say that in our work, as we mentioned before, there are some critical and political elements that we can somehow think are an evolution of what happened in the ‘70s in Italy, but also it’s the fruit of the conceptual design scene that grows in the Netherlands since the ‘90s.

Andrea Trimarchi: So the first project we are going to present to you is called Autarchy. It is a project from 2010 that has been presented by Spazio Rossana Orlandi during the Salone del Mobile. And everything started when we visited this small town in Sicily called Salemi. It’s a beautiful town that once a year is producing an enormous quantity of bread. They do this quite kitsch and a bit naïve but really intricate and sometimes nice decoration. And they attach it to quite big architectural structures as you can see here.

Simone Farresin: So for us, what we thought was interesting there, and as you see it will happen a lot in our work, our references are not coming from industrial Italy but more from rural cultures. So that’s also a characteristic of our work. We were not really interested in the results of what they were doing but more the idea of this community, that they just use what they know. And they meet once a year to produce, to engage, we imagine they are re-engaging with production in a way.

So we wanted to translate these ideas in a different way, and we did this installation called Autarchy where we are questioning the way we are engaged with production. Autarchy is both in the first place a material research but it’s also the portrait of a utopian scenario. In fact the vases that you see here are composed essentially with 70% flour, agriculture waste and 10% of limestone.

Andrea Trimarchi: And all the colour that you see here is obtained by filtering and boiling different kinds of spices and vegetables.

Simone Farresin: So we wanted as a result a biodegradable material that was natural, but most of all that the materials involved were kind of easy to be found and used. But a characteristic of our work is that we are never really interested in the technical side of it, but more in the ability that objects and materials have to either evoke memories or to incorporate narrative elements in it.

Andrea Trimarchi: Yes, here you can see a bit of the making of the pieces.

And now we are presenting another project we presented the last year in Milan called Botanica, and we consider it as a sort of second chapter of Autarchy. In fact, after we finished Milan, we got in contact with this really nice lady from a foundation called Plart in Italy.

Plart is interesting because it’s the first and a unique foundation in Europe that is meant for the restoration and recovery of artwork in plastic. When we received this phone call from her we were quite surprised because we had done Autarchy, that was a project that was not about plastic and was almost the opposite about plastic materials. Because of course we were also victims of our own prejudice about the plastic materials. We had in mind, you know, plastic bottles or the enormous patch in the middle of the ocean.

Simone Farresin: So when she asked, “Can you do collections of pieces for us in plastic?” we were thinking, “Okay, why are you calling us?” – coming from the experience of Autarchy. She didn’t really explain it well but she said, “Okay I’m really interested in what you did. And I think you can do something for us”. So we said, “Okay, let’s do whatever we think is relevant for them” – and for us too of course.

And then we researched a specific moment in time that we call the pre-Bakelite period, so before oil was involved in the production of plastics. In that period between the 18th and 19th centuries there were a lot of researchers and scientists who were looking to the natural world in search of plasticity. So we found amazing materials like bois durci that is a mixture of animal blood and sawdust. And DNA is a polymer, so with high pressures and vapour DNA binds the fibres of wood together. And then natural shellac is used in restoration and it is the material excrement of insects, the colonised trees, mixed with wood fibres.

So what we thought was interesting was to use this project to raise questions in the way we deal with evolution and how old production methods can have a relevance in contemporary time. The research was really long because we started in August and it ended in March. So basically we had only one month to produce the pieces.

Because each one of these raises a different melting point, we had to understand how to work with that and of course the foundation really helped us. But still, when you face this kind of materials experimentation you never know what you’re adding. And at the end we managed to turn it into a quite coherent body of work where our main interest was imagining almost a fictional moment in time and wondering what would have happened to these materials if plastic, oil-based plastic, was not invented. So also the shapes and the design really evolved by the making.

Andrea Trimarchi: Yes, I think here you can see a bit better. For instance, the one you see on the left side is the first object we designed and it’s a really archetypical kind of vase shape, but working with the material we were also starting to look at how it was reacting, how the material was speaking to us. So we decided to leave all this kind of tongue or leaf that was coming from the material itself. And that was quite interesting because they are really the result of the process of the making.

A different kind of project instead is Moulding Tradition and Colony, that was presented in the Gallery Libby Sellers before in Basel, and after in London during London Design Week in 2011. Let’s say that Moulding Tradition and Colony are two different kinds of projects. Moulding Tradition is our graduation project, and Colony is the second chapter.

Simone Farresin: Of Moulding Tradition.

Andrea Trimarchi: And we got back again in Sicily and we went to this nice city in the middle of Sicily called Caltagirone. It’s a quite special place because more than 300 artisans are still working in the ceramic field, so there are really a lot if you consider that it is a really small city.

Simone Farresin: So as you see there are some constants in our work. The interest and almost the obsession towards Sicily, and I think it’s also, well Andrea is Sicilian but I think it’s interesting because it’s an island and there is not such an industrial component there. Craft is still really relevant.

And while we were there we got almost obsessed with a specific artefact, this strange and weird vase, because it’s a vase with a face of an African. In Sicily it’s really common to see these kinds of pieces, you walk on the streets and you see on balconies vases with a face of an African. Then you start wondering, why is this traditional? Why is this piece somehow symbolising Italian and Sicilian culture?

Then researching it we find out that this is referring to the 10th century, medieval time, when African Arabs conquered Sicily and the southern region of Mediterranean area and imported maiolica ceramics. So this is somehow a homage to this specific invasion to the origins of these materials. But then for us to be living in the contemporary time, this piece is reminding us of what is happening now in contemporary time.

So we thought it was grotesque, because in Sicily specifically, almost daily 500 illegal immigrants are trying to enter the European Union from the north regions of Africa. So we find ourselves really debating a lot and wondering, “What shall we do? Shall we just ignore this part of the story?” We thought it was already embedded in the first piece. Or shall we embrace it and produce the new design somehow incorporating all these different notions and all the different ideas?

And then we decided on this second option and we designed these collections of pieces that are pretty archetypical, because we went to the museum of the city in Caltagirone and we sampled original pieces from there and really layered all these different meanings into the ceramic. But we substituted the element of grotesque that’s there in the original piece with a portrait of an existing refugee. And we added also textual information that is either describing the first immigration flows, so the first conquerers of Sicily, or the new immigration flows.

For us this is a way to debate how we deal with tradition. You know how important tradition is in Italy. In Italy everything is about tradition. But we have a complex relationship with this idea, because as much as we work with craft, as much as we think it’s important to relate with tradition, on the other side we also see the downside of it.

So we’re not really romantic with it, and both Colony and Moulding Tradition for us are a way to question the relationship we have with tradition because the original piece for us is reminding how much immigration flows are important in the formation of Italian culture. And on the other side we use craft as a way to justify and to protect traditions. So we have this double relationship or complex relationship with this idea of cultural heritage.

Andrea Trimarchi: Yes, in fact Colony, which is the second series of objects we did for Libby Sellers, was really the opposite. While with Moulding Tradition we wanted to trace what African people left in Italy, with Colony we wanted to do the opposite, so we wanted to see what Italians left as a colonists in the north of Africa.

Simone Farresin: We collected a lot of designed materials, for instance the architecture – this is a beautiful example of the futurist architecture that has been built in Asmara in Eritrea by Italians – city plans and stamps.

And we collected all these materials, and then we used fabric because we thought it was the right medium to be used in this case, because textiles are really a perfect medium to incorporate narrative elements in it. And we designed these huge textiles that are set up as gigantic postcards from Tripoli in Libya, Asmara and Addis Ababa. And each of these three blankets incorporates both historical elements and contemporary information on the complex relationship that Italy now has with the northern region of Africa and with immigration flows.

For us these are quite important works because they are somehow telling a lot about how much we are from abroad, and how we are dealing with Italian culture. So the development of the project happened in the Netherlands but still it is a project that deals with Italian culture of heritage.

We added a few slides at the end, because we didn’t want to keep on just talking about our work, on what we are working on right now. So this is a research project we started quite some months ago, and again it’s about Sicily. But this time it is a material of research on Mount Etna.

In Sicily it is one of the few active volcanoes. And it’s quite impressive if you go there because it’s really overwhelming, because it’s not looking like Sicily at all, it’s really an alien or moon-like kind of an environment. But what we like about this space is to think about it as a sort of a natural mine, where nature is mining the mountain, and throwing out material. It’s not like humans that are looking for material, but it is nature that is throwing it out. So you can go there one day and you find, you know, you’re travelling into a street and the day after the street is completely covered with material. And we are really experimenting with it.

This is us experimenting in Eindhoven, re-melting lava, it is turning into a kind of weird glass that is still really brittle, so we can’t really still work with it. And something else that we wanted to experiment with is to mould lava directly in place. It’s something they still do in Sicily.

Andrea Trimarchi: Yes, they do only small souvenirs actually.

Simone Farresin: So we are really interested in incorporating what the companies are already doing there, or the craftsmen are already doing there, and experimenting personally with it.

Andrea Trimarchi: In a month and a half we are going to present two new works for the Vitra Design Museum and for Fendi, for Design Basel. And with Vitra we had a really strange commission, and actually we’ve been chosen for Vitra Design Museum as a Dutch designer, not as an Italian designer, so that is also quite funny. And they pair us with five manufacturers or resources, and we have been paired with a charcoal burner, and we are going to do a nice project there, it will be more performative and there will also be some objects.

Simone Farresin: But it’s again a research project about charcoal as a material.

Andrea Trimarchi: And with Fendi of course it will be about leather.

Simone Farresin: The project for Fendi will be more an investigation on the relationship we have with nature, and somehow we think leather is more symbolic of the complex relationship we have with animals and nature. And of course, because we are Italian we also want to start work with companies.

Because we have been trained as industrial designers, and then we had a chance to investigate a more independent way of working in the Netherlands. So nowadays we are discussing with a few Italian companies and that will be our biggest challenge, because nowadays we experiment more as an independent design studio. But we really want to also understand in which ways we can apply our attitudes within the industry.

Thank you.

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Pieces of wood were left to char inside a smoldering mound in the Swiss forest, then sculpted into a paddle, ladle, funnel and lid.

The series also includes a lump of charcoal that rises like a mountain from a shallow dish and a bottle blown inside a charred hollow log.

Formafantasma worked with illustrator and designer Francesco Zorzi to produce charcoal drawings that juxtapose these purifying properties with the pollution of charcoal burning on a huge scale.

The project will be shown at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery in Weil Am Rhein, Germany.

Called Confrontations, the show pairs designers working in the Netherlands with practitioners of traditional crafts in Switzerland, in this case Mrs. Wicki the charcoal burner.

The exhibition opens tomorrow to coincide with the nearby Design Miami/Basel fair and runs until 1 September.

Formafantasma also present a series of objects made from scraps of discarded leather at Design Miami/Basel this week - see our earlier story here.

See all our stories about Formafantasma »

Movie and photos are by by Luisa Zanzani.

Here's some more information from Formafantasma:

‘Confrontations’, an exhibition curated by Amelie Znidaric, Vitra Design Museum Gallery

In conjunction with a major retrospective on Gerrit Rietveld, Vitra Design Museum has invited five of the most innovative designers working in the Netherlands to join a partner from the region in developing a design proposal.

The activity, deeply rooted in Swiss tradition, was economically important when charcoal was produced as a metallurgical fuel, but was banned in the 20th century due to deforestation and CO2 emissions. Despite the negative connotations, a few charcoal burners are still operating today.

The passing of time has, in fact, morphed this elaborate production process into a nostalgic ‘happening’, often relegated to festive folk events. In other parts of the world charcoal burning is still a reality.

In the Congo, for example, charcoal burning threatens the Virunga National Park, one of the nation's biggest natural reserves.

Studio Formafantasma, whose previous work comments on the notion of tradition and nostalgia, draw inspiration from the tension between the dystopian connotation of charcoal, causing pollution and destruction, while also being employed in healthcare and water purification.

Historians have found evidence that carbon filtration was used by the ancient Egyptians while in Japan it is still common today to use a few, simple charcoal branches to purify tap water. In collaboration with a glass blower and wood carver, the designers produced a series of jars and wooden ‘filters’.

Over the course of a few days spent with Mrs. Wicki and photographer Luisa Zanzani in a forest in the surrounding areas of Zurich, the customized wooden pieces were left burning and deteriorating while the process was documented.

The charred remains were further sculpted into a series of elements to be added to the jars. In addition a small glass bottle was blown into a hollow carbonized log: the resulting glass becoming opaque and textured where it came into contact with the charcoal, yet maintaining clarity in the rest of the body.

During the opening of the exhibition at ‘Vitra Campus’ the designers and Mrs. Wicki will build a small oven.

In the gallery, alongside the design pieces, black charcoal bread (baked following a traditional recipe to aid digestion) and purified water will be served.

Participants will be invited to ‘raise their glasses’ to this tradition and experience what this meant in the past: twelve hand made charcoal drawings portraying trees burning, polluted cities, fumes and black rain, will be featured in the exhibition to highlight the misuse of charcoal through the ages.

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at the Vitra Design Museum appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian designers Formafantasma have completed a series of objects using various types of discarded leather, including the skin of pigs, fish and cork trees.

Pieces in the collection include fish-skin hot water bottles, boar-fur brushes and water containers made of cow bladders. Above: Salmon stool: Fendi discarded leather, vegetal tanned salmon skin, wood, sea sponge.

The skins have been combined with unprocessed natural materials such as marble, wood, bones, shells, bladder and sponge to recall a pre-industrial era when artificial materials were not available. Above: Water containers: Cow bladders, glass, brass, cork

The collection, called Craftica, was commissioned by fashion house Fendi and will be presented at the Design Miami/Basel fair in Switzerland from 12-17 June. Above: Scallop spoons: Vegetal tanned trout and salmon skin, scallop shells, metal, discarded Fendi leather

Drawings showing the development of the project are presented on parchment, which is derived from goat skin. Above: Perch stool: Vegetal tanned perch skin, lime wood, brass label

See all our stories about Formafantasma here, including a range of objects made of natural plastics and tableware made of food. Above: Wolffish-pig stool: Vegetal tanned pig leather, vegetal tanned wolffish skin, wood, brass label

Here's more info from Formafantasma:

STUDIO FORMAFANTASMA / FENDI

About the commission

For the first time, FENDI is bringing its Design Performance program to Design Miami/ Basel, expanding on the program’s successful ventures in Miami and Milan. Since 2009, the FENDI Design Performances have offered audiences a rare view into designers’ workshops through the use of FENDI discarded materials and live demonstrations of the processes by which exceptional craft-based design work is made.

FENDI’s ongoing program emphasizes approaches to production that blend the traditional and the experimental while establishing a new, interactive format for design exhibitions that celebrates the creative process and the key role it plays in shaping the value of finished products. Above: Room divider: Discarded Fendi leather, oxidized brass, marble weights, leather-coverd hooks

In line with their previous presentations ‘Craft-Punk’ and ‘Craft Alchemy’, for this year’s project, FENDI has invited Italian design studio Formafantasma to develop ‘CRAFTICA’, a new body of work exploring leathercraft in conversation with other hand-worked, natural materials.

Designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma were selected for this project because the young studio has already displayed an exceptional gift for inventive material investigations, as well as a highly refined and seductive aesthetic sensibility.

About CRAFTICA

Craftica is a visual and tactile investigation into leather. The design is driven by the symbolic connotations of leather, a material that, more than any other, represents the complex relationship between humans and nature. Above: Protective masks: Discarded Fendi leather, scallop-shells

Leather as a material has the ability to evoke almost ancestral memories of when nature was hunted to produce food, tools and protection for the body.

Searching underneath and above the sea, from the vegetal to the animal world, the installation offers a holistic view on leather as a material.

For the project Formafantasma utilized discarded leather,
 left over from the FENDI manufacturing processes at the foundation of the collection and drawing on the talent of FENDI’s in-house craftsmen for certain phases of production. Above: Perch fish hot water bag: Vegetal tanned perch skin, glass, brass

In addition to this, the designers selected a range of leathers obtained form fish skins discarded by the food industry, vegetal processed leather using natural substances from tree bark, cork leather extracted from cork trees leaving them unharmed and a series of animal bladders investigated for their abilities to hold liquids. Above: Bells-lights: Discarded Fendi leather, glass, leather-covered hooks, leather-covered electric wire

Despite the pieces appearing exotic in texture and material combinations, the majority of the leather and material used belongs to the daily. Above: Wolffish hot water bag: Vegetal tanned wolffish skin, glass, brass.

The skins are tanned to maintain their original colors and textures and in most cases obtained from common, ‘unsophisticated’ animals like salmons, trout and pigs. Above: Leather table: Discarded Fendi leather, brass structure, marble weights

The leathers have been paired with marble, oxidized metal, glass, wood and other unprocessed natural materials such as bones, shells and a sponge cultivated in a sea-farm as a substitute for industrial foam.

The installation displays a large variety of objects ranging from tools to furniture: a collection of glass lights hung via belts and hooks; a table and room divider produced from vegetal tanned rawhide stretched over brass structures with marble weights; a series of four stools characterized by organic forms and fin-like legs upholstered in fish leather (salmon, perch, trout, wolffish); spoons and protective masks made with scallop-shells; and, jar-like containers in glass and cow bladders.

As homage to leather, 28 handmade drawings are displayed on parchment (a strong paper obtained by a complex processing of hairless goat skin) portraying the many uses of leather throughout history.

During the fair in Basel, the designers in collaboration with in-house FENDI craftsmen, will produce and add new pieces to the installation. Above: Drawings on parchment (hairless goat skin). Drawings in collaboration with Francesco Zorzi

Credits:

Drawings developed in collaboration with designer and illustrator, Francesco Zorzi. Photos by Luisa Zanzani.

Above: Jar: Mouth blown glass on a cow bone, cow leather

Above: Brush: Vegetal tanned boar fur, boar bristles. Knife: Vegetal tanned cow leather, cow bone

Baked by Formafantasma is featured in our book, Dezeen Book of Ideas. Buy it now for just £12.

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The talk will focus on their work and trends in Italian design, leading to a discussion with the audience. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance – email peroni@77pr.co.uk to request tickets.

Watch an earlier Peroni Collaborazioni Talk with Fabio Novembre on Dezeen Screen and read the entire transcript here.

See all our stories about Formafantasma here.

Here are some more details from Peroni:

PERONI NASTRO AZZURRO CELEBRATES THE VALUES AND FUTURE OF ITALIAN DESIGN THROUGH ITS “PERONI COLLABORAZIONI TALKS”

Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s Collaborazioni Talk brings together two of Italy’s most influential product designers to celebrate Italy’s unique values whilst discussing the future of Italian design

What: The Peroni Collaborazioni Talks: with FormaFantasma
When: 26th April 2012, 7-9pm
Where: RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD

Italy is globally renowned for its ability to consistently create some of the most iconic pieces of design. Indeed, the country boasts a long list of well known designers who have become global names in their own right including Fabio Novembre, Alessi, Mendini and Piano. Their success has been built from a unique set of values and traditions that result in beautiful, stylish yet ultimately practical products.

The Peroni Collaborazioni Talks celebrate these values and traditions of craftsmanship, passion and attention to detail so often found in Italian culture and trends by bringing together the collaborative design duo Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin. They will share their view on what lies ahead for the future for Italian design and its role in product design.

The evening will offer a unique insight into the personal reflections and anecdotes from FormaFantasma focusing on their combined interest in Italian craftsmanship, whilst creating and encouraging an audience discussion and debate around the importance of Italian design, its values and heritage.

The two met during their BA in
communication design and their interest in product design developed during their Masters degree at the design Academy Eindhoven. Their combined love for classic craftsmanship has lead them to analyze and re-evaluate the relationship between “local cultures and global contexts” - translating those crafts into industrial processes and pushing the boundaries by working with unique and unusual materials, including bread. More recently the duo has embarked on a project with Fendi, working specifically with leather and looking at the complex relationship between humans and nature as part of Design Miami.

Jason Maling, Marketing Director at Miller Brands UK commented:

“Peroni Nastro Azzurro has always exemplified the traditions of Italian craftsmanship, passion and flair. It naturally reflects the unique style that permeates Italian culture, where these values are reinforced with sublime attention to detail. With last year marking such importance for Italians, Peroni Nastro Azzurro wanted to honour Italy’s creative futures so we’re delighted to be working with FormaFantasma to close our successful series of talks. We’re looking forward to an enlightening evening of debate and discussion celebrating Italian design values whilst also recognising Italy’s contribution to design and asking provocative questions about its future.”

Peroni Collaborazioni will be hosted by renowned design journalist and critic Marcus Fairs and is the last in a series of talks which examine the past and future of Italian style and design. Previous speakers include Fabio Novembre, Angela Missoni and Anna Dello Russo.

Viewers can watch previous talks by visiting www.facebook.com/peroniuk. For those unable to attend the talk can post questions by using the twitter hash tag #PeroniTalks.

About Peroni Nastro Azzurro

Peroni Nastro Azzurro has been brewed in Italy to an original recipe since its creation in 1963. Peroni Nastro Azzurro is brewed with the same Italian passion that goes into the country's iconic exports to create a clear pale lager made from the finest spring-planted barley and Italian maize combined with malts and hops to create the highest standard of premium beer. Visit www.PeroniItaly.com for more information.

Peroni on Facebook

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