Per qualcuno può essere semplicemente fare luce
Foscarini
Cap. 1 — 1983 /2003: Un nuovo design della luce
47
Foscarini
of ideas that offers a context for more
formal discussion: the magazine Inventario,
whose name with its apparent bureaucratic
understatement (we should remember that
the inventory is a methodical process of
self-analysis) implies not just phonetic but
also semantic contiguity with the creative
process of invention, under the aegis of a
shared root: invenio.
The lengthy emphasis in these notes on
the density of Foscarini’s thinking might
lead to a misunderstanding: the deeper
identity of the brand might seem to be
frigidly rational, but this reduction to
reason alone is abundantly disproven. First
of all in the results of the lighting project
Foscarini has developed with its
production, in which emotion often plays a
decisive role, but also in the dialectic that
lies at the root of the dynamic of
exploration, in which among the positive
and negative poles that generate creative
sparks there is above all the dichotomy of
reason and passion, overturning the
famous phrase of Pascal: the heart has its
reasons which reason knows quite well. The
emotion of the design of light, in fact, is not
autistically concluded in the formal
outcome of the object; the aesthetic
experience happens instead in its
relationship with people. Human beings are
the decisive factor in Foscarini’s creative
equation, taken to the extreme consequence
that the light is made and exists only in
relation to the human presence. This is
vividly borne out in the two chapters of the
innovative project Vite (2020-2023) through
the images by Gianluca Vassallo, which
capture the warmth and colour of light
variations with great refi nement, in every
part of the world and every context. The
central focus is on the lives of people and
their truly lived-in homes, which in the fi rst
volume are also narrated by writer Flavio
Soriga. Without invading the setting, the
lamps remain discreet allies of those lives.
Among the many other proofs that support
this conclusive observation, there is one
that is more recent and impressive: the
acquisition of the brand Ingo Maurer, left
without its founder and namesake. Ingo
Maurer lamps are pure poetry, moving at
times, disorienting in other cases, and each
one has its own story, generated by the
mysterious short circuits of the great
designer. Unfortunately, Maurer passed
away in 2019, and it was easy to imagine
that continuing with a brand that was so
deeply connected with one person would
become a thorny challenge. Nevertheless,
Carlo Urbinati had been amazed by Ingo
Maurer for many years, and has ventured
into those brambles with curiosity, in spite
of the risks, and above all with the
prompting of the heart, facing the challenge
of a brand that overthrows all clichés.
The result intertwines the destinies of a
highly organized Italian intellectual
structure and a case of unpredictable
German creativity. A scenario, we might
say, awaiting total exploration.
Aurelio Magistà is director of Design of la
Repubblica and teaches at the Fashion and
creative industries course of IULM University
in Milan.
About shedding light
Aurelio Magistà — Foscarini, identikit of a character
47
asserted and defended, especially today, as
we watch the application of strategies of
aggregation, and the infl ux of investors
driven by fi nancial logic rather than
entrepreneurial vocations.
The exploration of new paths, also in this
sense, is foundational. From the outset,
when the identity of the production was
linked to a single material, glass, and a
specifi c type of know-how, that of the
glassworks of Murano, Foscarini has been
free to think because its hands were free of
tasks: the company does not own a
glassworks, but for every project seeks
different kinds of expertise, those that are
best suited to the specifi c idea. The
exploration is clearly evident in the design of
light: a direction whose coherent evolution
brings confi rmation of Leibniz’s natura non
facit saltus. Each new stop along the itinerary
does not mark a simple change of
destination, nor an abrupt adaptation to
fashions and trends. On the contrary – we
can clearly observe a progression in the
sequence: the blown glass of the early days
fi nds new interpretations with Plana, 1984,
and Folio, 1990, and in 1992 it becomes
industrial glass with the Orbital by Ferruccio
Laviani. Then along came the polymers,
with the polyethylene of Havana in 1993, the
opening towards new materials (fi breglass
and carbon fi bre) and new technologies
(new for the world of lighting, at least), with
Mite in 2000, fl anked by experimental
choices that were sometimes abandoned,
while others were incorporated to widen the
spectrum of production methods, as ulterior
signals of a very precise project: here, for
example, I am thinking about the
contaminations with art, as in the Wassily
off the Wall series, a collection based on
drawings by Wassily Kandinsky for the
costumes of a ballet produced by the Bauhaus
at Dessau in the period in which the painter
lived and taught there.
While the stimulus along this path is
constant questioning, the route is
determined by the project. This means that
there are no fi xed traveling companions,
although some of them, like Rodolfo Dordoni,
have accompanied the fi rm along longer
portions of the way, and others, like Marc
Sadler or Ferruccio Laviani (two names will
suffi ce) are recurring presences. This is
because the creators, like the materials,
technologies and methods, are chosen on the
basis of the objective Foscarini has decided to
achieve. The project asserts its primacy after
having gone through a process of almost
obsessive refi nement. Therefore the arrival
point of the designer, the delivery of a new
creation, becomes a second beginning for
Foscarini. Another path begins, marked by
the dialectic between the creator and the
company: this interplay distils and instils the
Foscarini DNA in the fi nal result, making its
origins fully recognizable.
Also for this reason, in the history of the
relationships with so many creative talents a
recurring factor emerges, which is constancy,
keeping faith with a network of counterparts
that becomes a symposium where ideas can
be developed, even for years, before they see
the light. In the multiplicity of outcomes the
intellectual density has been able to manifest,
for some time there has also been a laboratory
Chap. 1 — A new design for light
