Marcello Ziliani is a designer from Brescia. In fact, to say of him that he is a designer is perhaps to relegate him to just one dimension, whereas Marcello is accustomed, from the beginning of his career, to ranging between art, set design, visual communication. In fact, we cannot even say that he is 'used to', because for him habit is a narrow concept, how much better it is to land and cross ever new territories to experiment, enrich himself, rethink himself.
Recently awarded two Good Design Awardthe Chicago Athenaeum, the Archiproducts Design Award ADA 2018 and the Iconic Award 2019 from the German Design CouncilMarcello Ziliani is a lecturer in the product design laboratory in the third year of the industrial design degree course at the University of San Marino and has designed many projects for important brands (Alf Dafrè, Allibert, BBB, Bertocci, Calligaris, Casprini, Ciacci, Ciatti, Crassevig, Domitalia, Donati, Ethimo, Flex, Flou, Flos, Frascio, Geuther, Inglesina, Infiniti, ISA, Krios, Krover, Lanzini, Magis, Modo and Modo, Norda, Olympia, OMP, Opinion Ciatti, Pali, Parri, Pedrali, Pinti Inox, Progetti, Rapsel, Roche Bobois, Scab Design, Schönhuber Franchi, Sintesi, Techimpex, Vanini, Views International, Visentin, Wever & Ducrè, Zago).
But if we really want to tell about him, we would say that 'he does not like absolutisms and unshakable certainties, that he likes to speak softly and above all to listen, firmly convinced that any project is, at bottom, a desire, a hope for flight'.
This extraordinary ability of his to listen and his ability to change his skin without changing his soul, to interpret change without undergoing it, immediately intrigued us and here is our 'chat'.
You have worked for different sectors, from furniture to accessories, from lighting to office, giftware, early childhood, and then fittings, theatre sets and much more... what is the dimension in which you are most comfortable and which excites you the most?
It is very difficult to give an answer. Generally the dimension in which one feels most comfortable is the one one one is used to regularly, the comfort zone in which one finds habits and certainties. But for a designer this is obviously something very dangerous because it can lead to the loss of stimuli and the repetition of oneself... It is therefore that which one has not yet done (or has not done for some time) that constitutes the dimension I prefer, discovering new domains and new territories, feeling the thrill of the unknown, of "but will I be able to? Then it is clear that you also continue to make little chairs or lamps, and with those you eat and fortunately you also have fun. A sort of Indiana Jones hunting for lost treasures... in the backyard. Jokes aside, I believe that the situation we are experiencing will force us all to enter unexplored territories, we will have to deal with a reality that will probably be very different from the one we are used to, even professionally, and therefore having developed flexible tools and the ability to adapt will be an excellent tool to positively face the near future.
Your focus is on the aspects of sustainability, 'human-centred design' and 'agile manufacturability'. Where do they come from and what reflections have they led you to over the years?
The position of the designer, if experienced consciously, is certainly a privileged position to perceive and then delve into significant aspects of our contemporaneity. And even more so if one has the good fortune and privilege of being able to do so by attending an accelerator of research and experimentation such as a design university can be today. The three months a year that I set aside in my professional life to meet with the third-year students at the Faculty of Design of San Marino are certainly very tiring in terms of commitment, travel, and time dedicated, but irreplaceable in terms of the opportunity to address and explore issues such as sustainability, human centre design, agile manufacturability, behavioural design, design thinking, systemic design, etc. The thing that has struck me most in recent years is how heavy a flywheel we need to start turning for things to really start to change (and improve, hopefully). I have been teaching, trying to apply when I design, and practising the principles of sustainability in my daily life for a very long time indeed, but I realise how long it has taken for these concepts to begin to move from being considered intellectual talk to cues for behaviour that can at least begin to be evaluated. The responsibility of us designers in this sense is fundamental.
What is Design for you and what role should it play today?
The above applies: design for me is, and always has been, a project, that is, a tool for solving problems, for giving concrete answers to correctly formulated questions, whatever they may be. And I believe we are going through a time when this open and 'multidisciplinary' approach is more necessary and unavoidable than ever. We are faced with challenges that we never imagined we would have to face, the Coronavirus and the post-Coronavirus are certainly the most urgent ones, but they are not unrelated to that of climate change, the depletion of resources, and the evolution of working methods just to give a few examples. To be active and aware protagonists in all this, without necessarily having the presumption of being able to solve the various problems alone, but tackling them with humility and therefore with inevitably partial, 'homeopathic' answers, piece by piece, this, I believe, is the role that design should play today and more than ever tomorrow.
How do you think this historical moment will affect the way spaces are conceived?
I believe that living will inevitably, after the passage of this global tsunami, be the subject of a profound revision of the fundamentals that have characterised it so far. I have just read in Dezeen a very interesting article by Sergey Makhno that addresses precisely these issues, identifying a number of significant changes that could be induced in post-Covid-19 life. For example, many of us are coming to terms with the experience of working from home, our children are 'attending' school via streaming. And spaces inevitably prove to be inadequate for these new situations, which in some cases may become permanent or semi-permanent. But the needs for concentration and privacy collide with environments designed for other uses; the kitchen chair and table are certainly not the ideal tools for working for long periods of time...
At the same time, life within large housing complexes has on the one hand revealed profound limitations due to the inevitable contacts and opportunities for contamination, e.g. lifts and common spaces, but at the same time, at least in Italy, unexpected values in terms of a tool to combat loneliness and isolation, as well as to foster mutual support.
Never before have we considered ourselves lucky if we have a garden, a terrace or at least a balcony where we can take a breath of fresh air, but there are those who are already hypothesising about equipping future spaces with efficient air filtration and purification systems, as well as energy generation and water purification, up to the creation of domestic systems for growing vegetables, or even breeding farmyard animals, sort of self-sufficient bunkers protected from a hostile exterior. They bring to mind the cyberpunk novels of Gibson, Sterling, Stephenson and their dystopian worlds not so far from the reality we are living.
The project he is most attached to and the one he is about to work on...
Don't ask a mother which son she's closest to, "Every gift is nice to mum soja", and I've made quite a few gifts... I'm starting to work, and I hope that when the interview is published it will already be up and running, on an idea that came to us in the studio (virtual, via streaming of course) asking ourselves what we could do in our own small way to help, in addition to obviously adopting correct and rigorous behaviour to avoid the spread of the virus. And we imagined trying to come up with answers that would help solve the everyday problems, small and frequent, that we face in this new and unexpected situation of life in the time of the Coronavirus. Not complicated things or things that are out of our reach, of course we cannot solve the shortage of masks or respirators (but see what the Isinnova guys have done in this regard). I am talking about small everyday problems such as shopping and being afraid of contagion by touching the trolley, which is potentially a great receptacle for viruses, being touched by everyone. Just take two or three cardboard tubes of those used for toilet paper, join them together with tape (paper tape so we remain sustainable), cut them lengthwise and wrap the trolley handle with this tube, which is thus insulated for the entire shopping time. Then we throw everything in the paper recycling. So, we are organising ourselves to set up a system that invites people to report these small daily inconveniences and then try to provide answers like the one above, which can be implemented by anyone without difficulty, perhaps even managing to defeat boredom, which seems to be a major problem at the moment. We'll see if we can do it in the hope that it will be useful.
