Studio Angeletti Ruzza presents the work of the two designers, Silvana Angeletti e Daniele Ruzza - companions and partners in life and work - for My Home Collection.
Studio Angeletti Ruzza for My Home Collection
The two designers, members of ADI, who give their name to the design studio based in Rieti, teach Industrial Design and have numerous participations and awards in international design competitions to their credit, including a recommendation for the Compasso d'Oro, 3 ADI Design Index awards, 1 Red Dot Award Communication, 2 Designpreis Nominee, 2 prizes Design Plus and 3 prizes Good Design.
They collaborate with some of Italy's most important industrial companies in the fields of bathroom fittings, lighting, furniture and furnishing accessories, as well as tableware. They have realised interior design projects for hotels and accommodation facilities. Some of their products are part of the permanent collection of the Chicago Athenaeum Museum.
Interview with Silvana Angeletti and Daniele Ruzza
The theme of the November issue of Design Lifestyle Magazine is space and matter: what is your understanding of these basic design concepts?
Imagine a blank sheet of paper. Pencil marks are drawn on the sheet: these marks are never perceived on their own, but always in relation to the white sheet that contains them. As a whole, they are connected.
Space void around is part of the composition, they are inseparable.
This observation applies to everything, to every form of art and expression, from photography to architecture, from interior design to industrial design. Seeking a balance or imbalance between full and empty, between the object and the space that contains it, is at the heart of a designer's work.
Much of his sensitivity is expressed in this report.
But it is precisely where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel lies. You mould clay to make a vessel. But it is precisely where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel lies. One opens doors and windows to make a room. But it is where there is nothing that the usefulness of the room lies. So the 'there is' presents opportunities, which the 'there is not' turns into usefulness.
Lao Zi
Matter is the soul and skin of the object that inhabits the space.
To return to the example of the blank sheet of paper, if the stroke I draw on the paper is made with a 'greasy' lead, it will have a very different character from that of a watercolour. So for the designer, matter is the fundamental tool to express his story. Matter speaks to people's senses, it involves them 360°, it is made to be touched, smelled, listened to, tasted if it is food... not just looked at.
As designers today we find ourselves working more and more with the 'long senses' such as smell or touch rather than with sight, which is the fastest sense. We are far from the approach of 'let's build an image' that has to work to be looked at. Therefore, working on the expressive qualities of the material becomes the main area to investigate.
Could you tell us more in detail about MY Home Collection?
MY Home Collection addresses a cosmopolitan audience that chooses Italian design because they recognise its quality of thought and production.
For the realisation of the new collection we presented at the Furniture Fair we involved some of the most promising young figures on the Italian scene. We were interested in having some fresh and diverse voices capable of bringing to the MY Home Collection catalogue a personal point of view, projected into contemporaneity. The products realised are all 'leading actors' around which to build an ambience and atmosphere charged with identity.
How does your creative process take place and when is a project perfect for you and ready to be realised?
The creative process always starts with research in several directions: we first try to understand the company that asks us to collaborate or that we ask to collaborate with and then we explore the target market.
Into this research work, which everyone carries out independently, enter all the images, sensations and stimuli that we store while living. Then, out of this seething cauldron come thoughts and project ideas that we begin to share.
This is a difficult time, because it happens very often that we have different visions. And so clashes arise, even quite 'violent' ones, where each one tries to defend its own feelings. Every time, however, it happens that right at the ugliest, even fierce clash, a word spoken by the other creeps in and settles, leading to a meeting pointto an understanding that was previously rejected. At that point, the project takes shape, is unravelled, enriched by the experience and knowledge of the other, fixing itself in an image drawn always on a 1:1 scale.
Thus begins the study of proportions, which are a salient phase of the design. Only when the full-scale freehand drawing convinces both move on to the computer drawing stage and the rendering.
Very often we also make scale models, which allow us to verify the validity of the design. When there is a possibility, let's hold the project still for a few days without thinking about it anymore and then come back and look at it with renewed eyes.
If it passes this test and still convinces both of us, then, almost always, it is a winning thought. We present it to the company and the second phase begins, that of the extended sharingwhere the design is again examined from all points of view (aesthetics, functionality, production, commercial, marketing). If it passes this stage too, it is prototyped.
The step of prototyping is very important because it can give rise to the acceptance of the project that will become productto its fine-tuning and then to the development of another prototype, or its death.
Tradition and Design: two concepts that marry and often contrast: how is this relationship characterised for Studio Angeletti Ruzza?
Our work moves between tradition and design, memory and originality, remembrance and change. There is no past, present or future, there is only what we make of it.
The designer is like a cook who creates new flavours by mixing ingredients that already exist in an original way and personal.
We always tell our students that design is not the 'weird thing', forcedly different.
Our design does not leave you open-mouthed, it is not emotional, it is rather cosy, friendly, relaxing, with as few things as possible, expressive in its search for a synthesis full of meaning, but always connectable to something that people know, can feel close to, can understand.
Study and research are the basis of every designer's work, and with them experimentation: is this still the case today? Is there still room for experimentation? Is Italian design still synonymous with excellence in the world?
The designer works with and for companies, is a choral work. Our experience teaches us that companies today find it extremely difficult to make investments in research and experimentation. There is a lot of uncertainty and little courage, marketing now dictates the rules and it is always actions that are based on a 'certainty of numbers'. It is undeniable that in recent years more than ever before we are witnessing a flattening of design proposalsThere is an alignment on the strongest trends, on the one hand, and on institutional and respectable design, on the other. The economic crisis we have been experiencing for too many years now is also inevitably reflected in design and demonstrates the limits of the system.
We believe that we are facing an epochal change. Design is linked to society and society is transforming, companies and designers who know how to interpreting these changes substantial ones will continue to exist, while the others will disappear.
If Italian design is still synonymous with excellence in the world: yes, it still is, thanks to the high quality of creative, technical and production skills. Furthermore, there are Italian companies that are still able to promote experimentation and research, they are few in number but very well positioned on the international scene.
What does it mean to be a designer today?
It is very difficult to answer this question, because everything is changing and the word design encompasses an enormous number of meanings. In any case, today, a designer has to deal with complex issues, which include technological, economic and social... above all ethical aspects.
Being a designer for us means being aware of societal changes, the new needs, knowing how to intercept them and bring them to the attention of companies so that they become the subject of design and evolution.
It is clear that our approach is traditional in the sense that it is essential for us to have an interlocutor with whom and for whom we can develop a new project that will in any case be the fruit of the joint effort of many people with different specific skills.
For us, being a designer means winning the trust of the people we deal with within the company. Being credible, empathetic, sensitive and courageous, as well as humble and true, is our recipe for tackling this job that we love so much, because it gives us the opportunity to express ourselves creatively.
Find out more about the Studio Angeletti Ruzza by visiting the official website angelettiruzza.it.
