Fabrique,
dettaglio tecnico /
Fabrique,
technical detail /
Studio per la stampa
della superficie
in legno /
Study for printing
the wooden
surface /
Fabrique,
costruzione tecnica /
Fabrique,
technical construction /
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— Fabrique
Marc Sadler
04
05
“Now don’t ask me too many questions, engineer: especially those
I can’t answer.”
“Can’t you? At least tell me if you have redone the experiment.”
“Too curious, engineer. No, I can’t tell you: but you are a creative, you
have imagination. Try to imagine. Reality is made up above all of imag-
ination. Indeed, according to certain theories, or philosophies, reality
does not exist at all: but I am not a philosopher, I am a designer. I make
real objects, or rather I think and I design them. Then people like you
make them.”
Aureliano heard Sadler speak, he tried to follow him in his reasoning
but he already felt somewhere else after the word “fantasy”.
He was still in Milan, but not on the same day he had got off the 5:13
FrecciaRossa. It was still late autumn, almost evening, but he was no
longer in the study room: he was walking outside, in a fog which has
never been so thick in recent years. Not that he was sorry about that
pungent smell, the sensation of tiny droplets on his face: it literally
refreshed his ideas, while he was walking with long strides to the sta-
tion. In the fog, people and buildings appeared confused, different from
how he was used to seeing them. The silhouettes of women with curi-
ously abundant skirts, men all with old-fashioned hats.
Sadler was forgotten - who however continued to talk about his meet-
ing with Capozziello - and Aureliano began to think that they were
shooting street scenes for a film in costume, when he found himself in
Largo Treves: which he barely recognized. A plate read in faded letters
“Largo Notari, past P.za Statuto” and at the corner of Via Palermo the
horrid office building of the City of Milan was no longer there, a
coloured Fleischkäse: a kind of German parallelepiped mortadella
and without lard, from hence the disparaging word used in Zurich for
the modern extension of the Opernhaus (the Opera theater) derives.
The neo-Renaissance building of the first Luigi Bocconi University was
in place of the huge municipal Fleischkäse: it was simple but not aus-
tere, with only three floors.
To better see it, Aureliano moved to the corner of Via Solferino towards
Via Brera and he was narrowly hit by the tram that came up behind
him. His head began to spin, he swayed for a moment, he had to lean
against the only tree in the square and it seemed to him that even
the fog had entered his eyes to confuse his sight.
A young blonde passer-by, who was very elegant in a slightly eccentric
black dress that recalled him Enrichetta Allegri’s portrayed by Giovanni
Boldini, stopped and asked him if he needed any help.
“Madam, it is really very kind of you but don’t worry, I’m fine.”
Aureliano answered, moving away from the tree with his usual calm
and only a slight embarrassment for his so strange behaviour.
“But sir, you are dressed very lightly, you don’t even wear a hat! With
this fog and cold... I insist, warm up for a while, “the beautiful lady
added in an Italian with no Milanese inflection, but with a very slight
Parisian accent. “We live right in front,” he said, pointing to a beautiful
bourgeois building on the opposite side of the square, between
Via Statuto and Via Solferino in the Corriere della Sera section.
More by education’s sake than anything else, Aureliano convinced
himself. They crossed cautiously, dodging the trams that kept rattling
back and forth (there were no traffic lights) and entered the vast en-
trance of the palace: there were two large marble staircases on the right
and left to access the floors, and the coach-house remittances were in
the courtyard, on the bottom, closed by wooden doors. There were also
radiators on the walls, hidden behind perforated brass grilles, and
Aureliano felt better, almost at home because of the déjà vu sensation
which he had warming himself up at the new, comfortable tempera-
ture.
Even in the late hour, with fog outside the building that continued to
thicken and reached the court, the reflection of the moon that was
Natural Genius
A DESIGN STORY - Marc Sadler
