Design is One | - Southern California Institute of Architecture

Design is One Los Angeles, USA | Milan, Italy 2010 Southern California Institute of Architecture

DESIGN IS ONE 3
LOS ANGELES | MILAN
Part I
Protagonists

5 Essays
design and modernity
With the predominant use of the
same set of computer skills in different design
fields, architects are quickly gaining access
to a larger spectrum of projects. They
are enabled to design at different scales and
they are often embracing a multi-disciplinary
approach in their profession. Fabrication has
rapidly become a privileged access to a new
kind of craftsmanship that does not depend on
manual skills or local know-how; rather than artisans,
architects now look into robotic capabilities
to transform ideas into reality. And while in
the past 15 years architects have gained new
territories, it is clear that contemporary digital
and manufacturing processes have also raised
some controversial questions. Is this historical
moment a renaissance of design And if we
believe it is, how do we redefine the boundary
of our profession What are the historical and
geographical circumstances that previously
caused similar disciplinary shifts What is the
actual relationship between contemporary and
traditional modes of production Does all of
this produce increasing richness or does it flatten
what we do as architects This book aims
to learn from the recent history of Southern
California and Northern Italy to answer some
of these recurring questions.
The idea that architects would pursue, throughout
their career, a multidisciplinary/multi-scale
production is not a new one: they have always
looked beyond the boundaries of their discipline,
appropriating materials, methods and
processes from other industries as needed.
Often in history they disguised themselves as
artisans, scientists, artists and philosophers all
at the same time. In the 1920’s, the Bauhaus
founder Walter Gropius famously declared
that architects should design everything. His
school cultivated a totalizing concept in which
architecture was only one aspect of design. It
promoted the idea of the architect as someone
who could and would design buildings, cities
and objects all with the same involvement. In
Italy the method ‘Dal cucchiaio alla citta’ (“From
the spoon to the city”, Ernesto Rogers, 1952)
was born precisely from the meeting between
the nascent Prussian industry and the visionary
educational model developed in Dessau. This
utopian sentence defined an attitude that Italian
designers have developed and sustained since
the 1950’s. This philosophy found its ground in
the optimistic belief that a newly-born industrial
production once applied to architecture would
be able to produce a better and more affordable
standard of living for many people. This
social approach was deeply engaged in the political
dialogue with a growing post-war country
in need of progress. A famous example of
this design philosophy was the light switch that
Castiglioni designed in 1968 for VLM, which he
used to call “his little secret”, because this easily
missed piece of inexpensive hardware was
for him the ultimate anonymous design typology
that improved the quality of life in millions
of European apartments.
It is interesting to notice that 1950’s Italian industrial
technology was primarily applied to object
design and not to architecture, while during
the same period many other states understood
buildings as a symbol for modernity. One of
the main reasons is that during the 1920’s and
30’s the fascist regime chose modern architecture
as a language of self-representation, and
after the end of the war the newly born Italian
republic went through a cultural reaction to
the idea of architectural modernity, which was
still associated with negative political implications.
Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s Italians
chose to express modernity not through their
place of living, but through the possession of
highly crafted and technologically sophisticated
objects, thereby fueling mainly industrial
expansion. After the war several small family

6
businesses grew out of their shops and in three
generations they became the famous companies
that still play a leading role in the world
of industrial design. These businesses were
often originated by the vision of a single leader,
who started a small commercial activity revolving
around a specific material craftsmanship or
technical skill. Artisans became mid-size industry
owners, highly specialized not only in terms
of creativity in the design process, but also in
production methodologies, earning the trust of
what “Made in Italy” still means today.
While Italy entered western modernity in the
1950’s, other European countries like Germany,
England, France and United States transitioned
from Arts and Crafts to industrial production
in the mid-19th century. At the end of
the war, American industrialization was already
established and it did not carry the same political
connotations: Southern California viewed
technology derived by the military industry as a
symbol of modernity and an economic propeller
for the other fields, including architecture.
After WWII John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture
magazine sponsored the Case Study Houses
program which, from 1945 until 1966, commissioned
major architects of the day (including
Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames,
Pierre Koenig and Eero Saarinen) to design
and build inexpensive and efficient model
homes for the United States residential housing
boom caused by the end of war and the
return of millions of soldiers. The announcement
of the program clearly indicated that the
technologies to be used for the design of future
dwellings were the ones developed by the military
industry during the war.
“...We of course assume that the shape and
form of post war living is of primary importance
to a great many Americans, and that...the
house[s]... will be conceived within the spirit of
our times, using as far as is practicable, many
war-born techniques and materials best suited
to the expression of man’s life in the modern
world.”
- Case Study House Program
Arts & Architecture, January 1945
It is clear that after the end of the war Southern
California military industry was forced to
adapt its innovative processes to civil uses and
technology was pragmatically transformed into
a source of economical prosperity. Therefore
much of the innovation and change in architecture
during that time stemmed from the adoption
of production processes based on technology
invented for other industries.
Even the multi-scalar design approach present
in Southern California was deeply different from
the utopian meaning of the phrase “from the
spoon to the city” in Northern Italy. One clear
example of this dichotomy is the nine-minute
film called Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray
Eames in 1977. The movie described a design
methodology of viewing ideas from an infinitesimal
to a cosmic perspective. Starting with
a sleeping man at a picnic, the film takes the
viewer on a journey out to the edge of space
and then back into a carbon atom in the hand
of the man at the picnic, all in a single shot.
In this movie sequence, architectural design is
understood through the eyes of a thinker able
to imagine beyond the usual boundaries, more
than a politician in charge of the well-being of
a country. Technology, innovation and experimentation
defined the essential ingredients of
a pragmatic and optimistic way of thinking in a
non-linear fashion. This blue-sky approach towards
projects is typical of an American pioneer
culture that relentlessly focuses on Research
and Development of new territories rather than
craftsmanship and refinement of production.
It is not surprising that a military invention like
the computer started a revolution in the Silicon
Valley and produced the most relevant number
of new typologies in the industrial design field
since Italy in the 1950’s.

7 Essays
It is clear that today European architects have
little interest in creating the “total environment”
aspired to by Modernist architects of Gropius’
day and that the social agenda promoted by
the utopian phrase “from the spoon to the city”
failed, promoting instead a consumerist approach
to architecture. Lately Italian design
has focused on the refinement and stylization
of objects that have been in use for decades,
and the phrase “Made in Italy” is now associated
with luxury and perfection rather than innovation.
On the other hand California is facing
a moment when the moorings of global capital
are coming undone and with it the certainties
of corporate assumptions, while wars are still
catalyzing the energy of the industry and their
innovative capability.
This multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach
to design that emerged again in architecture
along with the digital revolution needs to be
investigated through a new set of ideas. This
book aims to review these dated propositions
and find new ones that reflect the changes that
have taken place in our profession.
Elena Manferdini
Los Angeles, June 2010

9
Essays
designing and making:
exploring territoriality “from the spoon to the city”
Design is One investigates the process
of making in relationship to its physical
and cultural territories. The development of cities
like Milan and Los Angeles benefited from
their adjacency to manufacturing regions which
supported their creative endeavors, allowing
them to develop into urban hubs of design innovation.
This book analyzes, observes and
presents the following propositions within each
city’s historical and contextual framework:
How does a territory contribute to characterizing
and defining a project and its outcome
How has design helped to shape the cities of
Milan and Los Angeles How has design been
integrated into economic and cultural forces for
new urban developments
Historically, most of the innovation in Los Angeles
has occurred thanks to the film and aerospace
industries. Hollywood flourished due
to the abundance of land and the year round
near-perfect weather conditions. True to the
way movies are made, newer and faster fabrication
technologies such as rapid prototyping,
3D modeling, animation and virtual reality
techniques have emerged within this fertile environment
supported by the availability of capital.
The studios’ need for large spaces have
produced a construction of the most nondescript
warehouse buildings. Housed within this
diffuse banal landscape of oversized windowless
boxes, the innovative jewels of the movie
industry transform and reconfigure reality into
fiction within their interiors thanks to this building
typology.
The industry also has drawn skillful craftsmen
capable of recreating any scenery or building
using the most prosaic materials. The fabrication
techniques applied to economical recreation
of ornamentation found on the movie
sets have migrated to the building industry,
garnishing the most flamboyant of Beverly Hills
mega-mansions. On a micro scale, movie studios
have influenced the smallest of architectural
details on buildings within the city. On a
macro scale the proliferation of movie studios
has shaped the development of the city, from
Hollywood land, out towards the Valley to the
North and to Culver City in the Southwest.
In the virtual realm of influence, the movie industry
has developed sophisticated modeling
and animation techniques to recreate any real
or imaginary world through the use of 3D virtual
reality. Contemporary designers have appropriated
these technologies as generative tools,
transforming the process of design. With its
skillful craftsmen creating temporary, quick and
inventive architectural solutions, the advanced
software of this industry continues to inspire
designers, from the Eames on.
At a larger territorial level, Southern California’s
generously funded military and aerospace industries
have been leaders in engineering
technologies and material science innovation.
The military and aerospace industries and
workforce had to diversify and move into new
industries like sports and construction in the
post-cold war era with the changing demands
and reduced military spending. As a result of
this change, new materials like composites,
have now become mainstream in transportation
and product design and are slowly being
adopted by the building industry. Currently,
designers experimenting heavily with this new
palette of materials, supported by sophisticated
computer modeling software to test their proprieties
and robotics to fabricate complex pieces.
Milan owes its prestige and wealth to its excellence
in fashion and design. Milan’s specialty
industries have been some of the factors that
contribute to the shaping of the ever changing

10
contemporary post-industrial city: showrooms,
fairs, surrounding manufacturing metropolitan
region, the emergence of new neighborhoods
and Milan 2015, the Expo, the city’s latest opportunity
for transformation. Neighborhoods
such as Zona Tortona, Bovisa, Lambrate, and
Isola, have been transformed by the continued
emergence of new activities connected to the
design industry bringing a real change to the
city, beyond its traditional planning and zoning
schemes. The city’s physical renovation happened
over the past fifteen years, via an informal
and un-orchestrated bottom up makeover
where private entrepreneurs appropriated parts
of the dismantled industrial city and reoccupied
it with new activities that now open up to the
public at least once a year during the Salone
del Mobile to, like a peacock, show glimpses
of the city’s hidden beauty. Together with the
fashion industry, this has provided Milan, over
the past few decades, the real fuel for its physical
and economical transformation.
Milan’s leadership in the design world has been
maintained and renewed every year by the occurrence
of the Furniture Fair, the most important
European event which hosts leaders of
design from around the world for the launch of
their new products; during the week the city and
its inhabitants live in a 24-hour cycle of activities,
rotating around all the showrooms of the
Salone and FuoriSalone, displaying to visitors
not only new products but also a slice of Italian
cultural and social customs. The event is rich
in the so-called “Italian Style” choreographing
the city at different scales with a desire for elegance,
attention to detail, scrutiny of materials,
and laborious craftsmanship that is nurtured by
a culture aiming for design perfection.
At a larger scale these same economies have
transformed the Northern Italian territory, nurturing
the widespread presence of small artisan
shops and medium size factories. Today
the Padana plain is punctuated by clusters of
factories, many of which, as seen in the case of
Brianza, a region north of Milan, are dedicated
to the production of furniture. Here, the family
traditions of furniture making, born at the beginning
of the nineteen-century, have both conserved
and transformed the manual crafts. Today
we can visit factories, such as Cassina and
Cappellini, which combine high technologies
with ancient know-how. This century old knowhow,
particularly when using natural materials
such as wood, is critical in order to achieve
beautiful, durable pieces. The newest generation
of this entrepreneurial population, often educated
at the Polytechnic in Milan, is currently
associating this traditional knowledge with the
most advanced machineries. In the past thirty
years Italian leadership in manufacturing has
expanded to the whole production cycle. Italians
are world leaders in CNC, robotic and machinery
manufacturing technologies, providing
360 degrees of innovation in production, from
the 100% hand made to the most complex tooling
technologies. Anything is possible in Italy
guided by experienced masters that support
young designers to the process of making.
“In Italy the design process is not done by designers
only but also by manufacturers. Their
energy and curiosity to say ‘let’s try this’ is in
itself an act of creativity. “
-Gaetano Pesce
By the middle of the twentieth century, the rise
of the chemical industry and the discovery of
the new plastics added a creative alternative
to the furniture design industry already present
in the Brianza region. The Milanese company
Kartell, was the first company to use plastics
in the manufacturing of housewares and, later,
furniture. Since the 1950’s Milan has considered
itself as the hub of design. Architects
have found themselves involved in designing
at all scales, as Ernesto Rogers, echoing the
Bauhaus total design credo, defined it with the
famous “from the spoon to the city” phrase.
This phrase, supported critically and conceptually
by academia and design publications, has
been embraced by most of the Italian architects
leading to a unique multi-scalar design produc-

11
Essays
tion. However, the real pivotal moment for Italian
international fame in design was defined by
the 1972 MoMA exhibition curated by Emilio
Ambasz, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape.
The exhibition he masterminded left a longlasting
impression within the American design
community, portraying a new and fresh way of
designing, a way that was not only functional
and rigorous, but allowed a shift from the Bauhaus
lesson to design in the “Italian way”. In
Ambasz’s own words, “Visitors were to realize
that design in general, and Italian design
in particular, meant more than simply creating
objects to satisfy functional and emotional
needs: the processes and products of design
could themselves be used to offer critical commentary
upon our society.” On another level,
the exhibition sent shock waves through the
community of American designers. Here, they
found themselves confronting another breed of
designers, one unafraid of curves and taking
unabashed delight in the sensual attributes of
the materials and textures he or she used.” The
exhibition’s ripple effects reached well beyond
MoMA’s walls bringing the rise of the internationally
recognized “Italian Style”. Since then
the phrase “Made in Italy” has been defined by
the union of both design creativity and manufacturing
abilities brimming with social and cultural
implications.
Today Los Angeles and Milan share and face
the same challenges of both how to retain their
best creative people, often attracted by the
eastern emerging dynamic markets, and simultaneously
how to retain their production capacity
locally, not only as a factor of providing jobs,
but also, as a means to provide an immense
source of inspiration to the many generations
of designers to come. The retention of such industries
is critical to the success of these cities.
The twenty-first century brought a set of new
challenges related to the rapid decline of economic
and environmental resources. How will
design address these changes How will the
new set of tools, software and hardware available
counterbalance the moving of the most
significant productions abroad Is this moment
at once the moment of renaissance for multiscalar
design, or yet a moment of sunset for the
possibility of creative and supportive innovation
due to the disappearance of production in our
territories How can we learn from our legacies
and be prepared to keep our minds fresh and
in contact with all phases of design, from cradle
to cradle
Perhaps little can be done about the current
outsourcing movement, but one can look for
new opportunities. Trends such as the growing
world population benefit us with new immigration
waves. As one of the fortunes of Los Angeles
is its great population diversity, Milan may
find in these new waves of multiculturalism and
pluralism new pools of intellectual resources.
Both Milan and Los Angeles share a fragmented
and diverse set of specialty clusters that will
allow the cities not only to thrive but to continue
evolving using creativity as their basic fuel for
innovation and transformation. This will require
the understanding that a territory needs to redefine
its boundaries in order to accommodate
new social changes, be inclusive, and accept
diversity, which in turn will provide the most significant
stimulus for creative thinking. The Expo
2015, “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”,
has the rich potential to redefine and expand
the boundaries for Milan. Conceived as an exploration
of cultural diversity through food, the
Expo is seen as the most promising and holistic
engine for the transformation of Milan and to a
lesser extent Northern Italy. As for Los Angeles,
city sprawl and densification is the next challenge
to address along with the city’s population
growth. Intervention must be strategic with
funding to create an intense and efficient public
transportation system capable of sustaining
large masses using and connecting disparate
neighborhoods.
Another major regional transformation is happening
at an infrastructural level. With the
creation of a high speed train connecting the

12
major cities, the Padana plain has become one
continuous space, where people and goods
are moved and exchanged in a much more
fluid manner. Similarly, Southern and Northern
California will also soon be connected by high
speed rail, providing a higher linkage between
the two different economies. These infrastructural
changes together with the continued advancement
of high-tech products and services
will allow us to communicate and therefore
evolve in novel ways whereby challenging the
current concept of boundaries.
This book, through the testimony of several
contemporary protagonists of both Italian and
American design and manufacturing, answers
these questions with the ultimate proposition
that design evolves within its cultural and social
setting and, consequently, acquires new values
and meaning while maintaining its fundamentals.
Design is an act of creative freedom: in
Los Angeles and Milan we find societies open
to removing physical and social boundaries in
order to create innovative design not only at
the scale of products but also at an urban and
cultural level.
Ilaria Mazzoleni
Los Angeles, June 2010

Part I: Protagonists
Preface
15
Itinerary
17
Maps
20
Don Chadwick
Chadwick Studio
Craig Hodgetts
Hodgetts + Fung
Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn FORM
Gaetano Pesce
Gaetano Pesce the future is a very beautiful creature
by Kyd Kitchaiya
77
Alessandro Mendini
Atelier Mendini
design of the soul
by Natalie Goldfinger
91
Raffaella Mangiarotti
Deep Design
beyond styling:
designing from the inside out
by Jordan Su
29
Peter Jon Pearce
Peter Jon Pearce Design
high performance design
by Heyu Lu
39
play at a human scale
by Elizabeth DeTeresi
51
why be antiquated
by Donovan Ballantyne
65
it’s only natural
by Rina Lim
101

Matteo Ragni
Matteo Ragni Studio intentional design
by Arthur Danielyan
113
Diego Grandi
DGO beneath surfaces
by Joe Carlos
123
Alberto Meda
Alberto Meda
Davide Angeli for
aMDL Michele De Lucchi
design is an evolution
by Richard Molina
151
Andreas Kipar
Studio LAND
a simple man
by Matthew Au
137
Diego Terna for
Studio Italo Rota
fashioning architecture
by Genevieve Lum
167
land ho!
by Chiahwa Lu
177
Giovanni La Varra
Studio Barreca & La Varra one city... two city...
old city... new city...
by Matthew Noe
187

15 Preface
The journey started in Los Angeles, where
students met five protagonists of the So-Cal
design scene. The first interview was held at
Designwork-USA, where the creative director
of the product department, Holger Hampf, introduced
the class to a company whose philosthe
protagonists of design

ophy merges the corporate American structure
with a rigorous German approach to design.
Students visited the office of Greg Lynn, one
of the most avant-garde and innovative protagonists
of the design scene in So-Cal, who
embraced the “far west” frontier attitude of Los
Angeles adopting new tooling and fabrication
techniques as ways of expanding the boundaries
of architecture. Don Chadwick and Peter
Jon Pearce shared with the students their personal
and unique perspectives on what really
matters in the design field and helped them to
understand the historical reasons that made
Los Angeles one of the prime centers for design,
while Craig Hodgetts reminded us how
“the new Italian domestic landscape” brought
the Italian design influence to the attention of
the American public.
While in Milan Alessandro Mendini outlined the
evolution of the idea of “Industrial Design” in
Italy starting after World War II until the past
few decades. Michele De Lucchi office discussed
their practice, which literally translates
the concept “from the spoon to the city”
as their offices operate scalarly in this way.
Gaetano Pesce and Italo Rota’s work fluctuates
between art and architecture, where materiality
and craftsmanship are at the center of
their exploration. Alberto Meda and Raffaella
Mangiarotti embraced the culture of industrial
design in the most traditional Milanese sense
with a prolific production that focuses on one
scale but opens their practice to collaborations
with international manufacturing scene. Matteo
Ragni and Diego Grandi, the youngest Italian
voices interviewed, introduced the students to
a discussion about new materials and languages
often in dialogue with history. Giovanni La
Varra, Andreas Kipar and Luca Molinari helped
us to historically frame the city of Milan, while
providing a vision for the city that in 2015 will
host the Expo.
discourse, together with some specific institutions,
such as La Triennale and the Politecnico
of Milan; designers influence culture not only
through their design work, but also through
the animated discussions which take place in
these venues that are open to a larger public.
The two weeks in Milan ended with a symposium
hosted by NABA, where students had the
opportunity to further discuss all they had experienced
and observed and to draw parallels
with the professional practice as they know it in
the United States. One of the main questions
that emerged from the symposium was how to
define the new territories (physical and virtual)
the contemporary digital and manufacturing
processes have opened up to our field.
The different approaches to the definition of
architectural education and its historical tendency
to cross fields with other disciplines constitutes
the core for this book, the aim of which
is to re-contextualize these issues and to find
a historical perspective bridging the Italian tradition
of design is one with the contemporary
American design macro-trends.
Elena Manferdini & Ilaria Mazzoleni
Los Angeles, July 2010
During the trip students visited the headquarters
of magazines like Domus and Abitare,
that historically played a key role in the design

65
Greg Lynn
1817 Lincoln Boulevard,
Venice, CA 90291
GREG LYNN FORM

Images of Greg Lynn’s Venice
studio
66

67
Biography
why be antiquated
Avant-garde represents a violent
fight against the things that pollute our cities,
our culture, and our lives; against everything
that is static and unchanging, the norm and
the status quo. Interestingly enough, avantgarde
was originally a French term used
to describe the foremost part of an army
advancing into battle, the “advance guard.”
In the fight for Architecture there is no
one more significant for inducing avantgarde
change in the profession than Greg
Lynn. Lynn was born in Ohio in 1964. He
attended Miami University of Ohio where
he graduated cum laude with two degrees
in 1986, one in environmental design and
the other in philosophy. In the traditional
architecture sense, these two phenomena
coincide quite regularly, but Lynn applies his
learnt knowledge in a very non-traditional
way. After his success at Miami University of
Ohio, Lynn was accepted into the Masters
of Architecture program at the prestigious
Princeton University where he studied under
Michael Graves, among other influential
architects and designers. Lynn graduated in
1988 before he went on to work for Peter
Eisenman.
of architectural ontologies. Ontologies in
which he believes and argues to be calculus
based.
While Greg’s office is relatively small, it is
impossible to not be amazed by all of the
interesting models and installation pieces
that completely fill the space. During our
visit, Greg gave us a tour around his office,
which is comprised of a small meeting
space, work stations, and model shop
where he uses his CNC milling machine for
prototyping and laser cutters, as well as 3D
printers for study and final models. While
Greg is an architect, he is also a designer
that takes on projects ranging in scale
from silverware to boats to buildings. As an
architect, a teacher, and a writer, he has had
an extremely strong impact on the current
trends in architecture. Greg began to crosspollinate
some of the design techniques used
by the automotive and animation industries
in the nineties to influence the integration
of digital technologies and manufacturing
used by these industries within the practice
of architecture, which currently uses these
same tools.
It was in 1992 that Lynn established his own
firm, FORM, and moved his headquarters
to Venice, California in order to be near
Hollywood and the new animation software
programs used by film animators. His firm
works on everything from architecture and
urban design, exhibit design and curation,
and branding and advancing digital design
tools. Time Magazine recently named Greg
Lynn one of the 100 innovators of the next
century. Greg is fascinated by mathematics,
order, and form. He believes architecture
is not a practice, but a discipline through
which the development and process are an
integral force in the continuous evolution

68
TOP
Alessi Flatware
Middle Top
Catamaran Design
for client in Abu Dhabi
Middle Bottom
Wilshire Pavillion Los Angeles
Bottom
Blob Wall

69
Interview
This interview took place at Greg Lynn’s office
in Venice, California. His office is located where
most Southern California architects would like
to work; next to the beach. It is in a small
building camouflaged along the Los Angeles
urban streetscape. The only element that
suggests that this is an architectural office is a
very small sign that states, “Greg Lynn FORM”
on the top right location on the front door. This
was very interesting, because through this door
our class entered another world that was filled
with exciting avant-garde design that was the
complete opposite experience from the banal
streetscape that existed outside.
Donovan Ballantyne : Having worked on
multi-disciplinary projects differing in scale
from silverware to boats, to architecture,
how does the design process change for
you when approaching the different design
problems associated with these different
project types
Greg Lynn: By starting with the typology, with
some kind of precedent or problem that could
be clearly stated. I usually look to historic
examples and try to see what problems were
trying to be solved, and then try to re-define
what the problem would be or re-think what
happens. I am not a person that likes to refine
things on a project. For me it is more interesting
re-defining the problem for every new project,
but to do that I have to look historically and see
what it once was. The way naval architects
think about the design from the deck down in
terms of how things move through the water
and how much volume there is for function.
Then everything above the deck is like a little
house, which is why they call it the cabin. It is
literally like a little hut that they put on top of
it. This is how it has always been thought of:
the deck is the ground, and the hut is the cabin
top. For all of these boat projects, I have been
trying to find a way to treat the cabin not as a
little house, but as a part of the surfacing of the
hulls and the deck. It is actually the same thing
Philippe Starck did when he designed boats for
Beneteau. It is the same approach to design
for the flatware or even the restaurant pavilion;
it’s about how to make a trellis and how to turn
the building into the columns that support the
trellis.
DB : Can you discuss the benefits you
have found within your practice having
approached architecture from multiple
directions from writing, building, and
teaching Do you feel that this is the best
path for the next generation of architects as
well
GL: It is hard to find a time when architects were
not writing; making manifestoes, relationships
to history or even explanations based on
engineering. What you always find is that not
all, but most architects write. Also, most are
involved in some form of industrial design. The
architects that I was taught by as well as my
mentors did it all in parallel. Especially when
I went to school in the 80s, that was when
Swid-Powell, Alessi, Knoll and Vitra were all
using architects to redefine their industrial
design language, and likewise, people like
that also helped architects re-think their design
language and how the communicated with the
design public. In the 80s with post-modernism,
there were connections between industrial
design and architecture and all kinds of forms
of design. That was the norm, more the rule
than the exception. However, It was a little bit
different in the 90s. Architecture was looking
more at design rather than design looking at
architecture.
DB: Having been influenced by a variety
of disciplines from animation to the
automotive industry, can you discuss
your views on why collaboration between
disciplines is so important to architecture
GL: Looking to the entertainment industry
was a way to get tools that would be useful for
design. But what happened while I was doing
that is I found out that the entertainment industry

70
thinks about the audience, or thinks about how
somebody is going to be experiencing their
design before they even start designing. With
the Korean church we had an idea about how it
would be like a church, but we did not have an
idea about how it would relate to the Korean-
American population at that point in time, and
how they would interpret the architecture.
We were really just thinking in the kind of big
history, we weren’t thinking of our audience
at the contemporary moment, whereas film
and television were thinking about the history
of their field, they mostly thought about how
it was going to be received and experienced.
It has really changed the way I have thought
about design, because that kind of impact on
somebody is more interesting than the whole
historical discussion. That is why the work I am
doing at UCLA with Disney right now is really
fun, because Disney thinks of their parks and
resorts and cruise ships, etc. really in terms of
guests and audience.
The part of your question pertaining to
collaboration is really important. Everybody is
using the exact same software now. Ten years
ago, everybody had their own boutique jewels,
now there are really only three major platforms,
if that. Most people use the Autodesk toolset.
In the movie Avatar they tried using Revit for
managing some of those scenes, so they were
really deep into the same toolset that architects
are using. So, you could have a discussion
with them. Everybody is producing different
things, but they are all using the same media
to a certain extent. By collaborating you learn
about the media differently by working with
other disciplines.
DB: Do you believe your career would have
been as successful if you did not make the
decision to move Greg Lynn FORM from
New Jersey to Los Angeles and why
GL: It is all hypothetical. The culture of making
stuff out of aerospace grade to disposable
Hollywood set grade is really interesting here.
There’s a much more precious attitude towards
construction in most places around the world.
Here materials and construction methods are
less precious. I do not think I would be using
materials like the Swarovski Crystal sails, but
all that stuff is really more West Coast based
from the aerospace industry, and a little bit from
the car industry. So that is different, I would
have less focus on materials and method of
construction if I were someplace else. The
whole entertainment culture here is totally
unique. I would not have got involved with
projects like the New City and Divide projects
if I was not out here. For quite awhile LA has
been the epicenter for American architecture.
From Frank Gehry to Thom Mayne, there
are a number of people here practicing at
an international level that you do not find
anywhere else in the states. In New York, I
felt that the key figures were Steve Holl and a
few others who were much more idiosyncratic
in their approach. New York and New Jersey -
that whole area – such as Princeton, Yale, have
a deep connection to international architecture
culture that does not exist in LA. Also, there are
great institutions there but the architects are
probably much stronger here than other places.
DB: Having paved the way for the profession
of architecture for almost 20 years, if you
were to look back at a younger Greg Lynn,
is the current state of architecture what you
would have envisioned And if not, what
would you have changed
GL: 20 years ago, a lot of things that are now
standard, I would never have thought would
be standard. 20 years ago I was drafting with
ink on mylar and cutting models by hand. You
would do a set of drawings and it was 25% as
many as you would do now, and you would
completely rely on somebody else to build stuff.
20 years ago the engineering firms were very
small like architecture firms, usually around
10 person firms. ARUP, Thorton Tomasetti
and Happold were big international firms, but
they didn’t have as much control. It’s funny

71
that things have really changed a lot; very
few people are trying to take control of how
to build things and how to talk through the
engineers and through the builders, but now
the architects are much weaker in terms of their
control and influence than they were 20 years
ago. If you want to do something, you have to
take more risks and do more work. I would not
have foreseen the whole field diminishing the
way it has in 20 years, in very general terms.
I also would have seen a lot of the things that
I am interested in become so normal for so
few people. I wouldn’t have imagined 20 years
ago that Frank Gehry would have a software
company. But he takes a lot of risks and is
very entrepreneurial that way. I think in general
the normal architect has much less control on
a building site, less reach into design culture
outside of the building industry and therefore
is less of a cultural figure. Of course there are
important exceptions but the field is smaller
and less ambitious and entrepreneurial.
DB: Where do you see architecture going
within the next twenty years, and how are
your latest projects, like your New City
project, a part of that
GL: In terms of the long-term, things are going
back more to the way they once were. The
giant service firms have been hit worse than
anybody right now, which is good. The kind
of instant city phenomenon has really cooled
off. So instead of needing to provide a really
economical service so you can build a series of
towers really fast in a place with low skill level,
now we are seeing a return to high quality,
thoughtful design, and good quality products;
things that both last literally and culturally.
There is not a lot that has been done in the
last ten years that you would call landmark.
Architects will go back to thinking about those
kinds of issues, which I think, in general, they
have not thought about so much. Universities
and publications, etc. are becoming more
important again. However, I don’t think there
are any really good publications out there right
now, and I do not think there are any really great
conferences out there anymore. 20 years ago,
that stuff was really driving the field, but right
now it is just more a way for people to publicize
their work. So hopefully 20 years from now you
will see more international conferences, strong
schools, and a better quality of design within
the field. Probably less quantity though.
DB: Maybe it’s more like your wishes in 20
years , maybe this question is more about
what you would see…
GL: For the field, what I really miss are
conferences; I miss the AA as a real kind of
public, cultural place in Europe. There are
all kinds of things I really miss in terms of
architecture as a cultural practice, like the
connections to the art and design world; I really
miss that stuff a lot and hope that it comes
back, but right now I do not know where it
went. I guess there is not money for that stuff.
Also the whole publishing industry is trying to
figure out the Internet. I know you guys are
all students and maybe you are different, but
I know my students at Yale and UCLA, they
really do not know stuff they should know just
because it does not exist on the Internet. They
do not see Bramante, Bernini or Palladio, there
are all sorts of architects and building that have
come up that I have asked my students about,
and they are not aware of them because if you
want to go find the Heidi Weber Pavilion online,
there are just not that many drawings of it, or
not that many photographs of it, whereas, for
me, I had Corbusier’s Ouvre Complete, like 12
volumes in my library that I could always go to.
I did not know it all, but if I wanted to find it, I
could go find the sketch for it. If you wanted
to find a sketch for the Heidi Weber Pavilion
online, I am guessing you would have a hard
time finding it. The accrediting team just came
to UCLA and talked about how great the library
was, and I asked my students if they had ever
been to the library and literally none of them
had ever set foot in the architecture library.

72
Top
Greg Lynn
Middle
Ravioli Chairs for Vitra
Bottom
UCLA’s Hammer Museum Fountain

73
DB: So do you feel like the internet is
strengthening or weakening the field of
architecture
GL: One thing that is good, is that over the last
5 or 10 years more architects’ websites are
available online. But nobody has digitized the
collection you see in the library. All the drawings
and photographs of models that you get out
of the monograph just do not exist online. My
students at UCLA are studying Ledoux right
now, and some of them did not really even
know who Ledoux was because you can’t find
his drawings online. Your generation will have
to figure out within the internet how to re-learn
that stuff.
DB: This class is about Milan, Southern
California and Italy’s design culture. Is
there any influence or any relevance in your
work that comes from Italy
GL: Italy is definitely a design hub, It is still
hosting design in a way that other places are
not. Both publishing and design fairs are still
very important in Italy. People like, Patrizia
Moroso are finding out where the design talent
is and experimenting with where it is going. In
addition, Italy is still hosting design in a way
that other places are not, Italian design fairs
manage to strike a good balance between
a commercial fair, being provocative, and
connecting with the art community.
Interview by Donovan Ballantyne
April 27, 2009

74
Interview by Lorka Birn
May 14, 2009
Top
ICA Numinous Lights
Middle
World Trade Center
Design Competition New York
Bottom
Toy Robot installtion for Vitra

75 Conclusion
Greg Lynn is a fascinating
character that is quite particular from the
rest of the designers we interviewed within
this publication. A major difference is Lynn’s
Los Angeles location, where the automotive,
animation, and aerospace industries have
had a strong impact on his work. The digital
fabrication methods deployed in Los Angeles
are a lot more advanced than those in Milan,
which is evident in Lynn’s work.
Lynn uses digital fabrication methods as a
means of justifying craftsmanship within his
work. Craftsmanship is traditionally defined
as pertaining to things that are handmade;
however this definition does not suffice for
the new era of design. The new definition of
craftsmanship pertains to the art of making,
and whether that process is handmade or
through digital fabrication tools is irrelevant.
Italy is a country known for its handcraft, as
illustrated for our class when we visited a
master handcrafter who worked for the furniture
company Cappellini. During our visit, we
witnessed an old man weave yarn through the
structure of one of the company’s chairs. It was
both beautiful and inspirational knowing that he
has been doing this since he was twelve years
old, and that there is nothing he loves more
than spending his time doing what he does.
However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to
find people with his level of hand craftsmanship
within the industry, and in the next twenty years
there will not be anyone left that can perform at
his handcraft skill level. The use of technology
as a means of craftsmanship grants designers
an endless palate of design techniques that
handcraft techniques just cannot compete
with. Lynn takes advantage of CNC milling
and 3D printing to create complex prototypes
to develop differentiation and transformations
within his work.
to as a “plane of consistency” upon which
differential transformations occur.” (Folds,
Bodies, & Blobs, p.38) For Lynn, geometry is
about force, motion and flow; motion becomes
the primary mode of organization, construction,
composition, and stability. In the case of his
Korean Presbyterian Church in New York,
Greg composes this project with a series of
folded and shredded surface strips that run
though both the exterior and the interior, and
offer a sense of movement through differential
transformations. Each element in the structure
has a unique scalar distance, as well as a unique
angle. This creates a visual differentiation
while also demonstrating repetition.
One of Lynn’s significant traits is that he
approaches design by starting with the typology,
with some kind of precedent or problem for
every design regardless of scale. It is Lynn’s
ability to shift within a range of multidisciplinary
projects from his Korean Presbyterian Church,
and then design silverware for Alessi, and
boats for Abu Dhabi as well as his avant-garde
craftsmanship that makes him a reputable
“Design is One” architect.
“Geometry is no longer a static measure of
invariant and unitary characteristics, but what
Gillies Deleuze and Felix Guattari have referred

Via Sannio, 24
20135 Milano

TOP
A sample of material to be used
cabinets
MIDDLE TOP
Design tools and materials
MIDDLE BOTTOM
Francesco in the studio
BOTTOM
The entrance to the studio, a
latent indication of the work
inside
86

from the infinitesimal to
the infinite
Alessandro Mendini, born in Milan
in 1931, has been the chief editor of the
magazines Casabella, Modo and Domus.
He designs objects, furniture, environments,
paintings, installations and architecture. He
works with international companies like Alessi,
Philips, Cartier, Bisazza, Swatch, Hermes and
Venini and also acts as a consultant curator
for various industries helping them to solve
problems related to image and design.
His work can be found in various museums and
private collections as well as on the wrists and
in the homes of the tens of thousands of people
who have purchased products from Swatch or
Alessi over the past decades. His work as
a theoretician, critic and designer is always
developed at the crossroads between art,
design and architecture. Put best by Beatrice
body of work, “If the slogan of modern design
was ‘from the spoon to the city,’ with Mendini it
1 .
Armed with his Stileme, a body of symbols that
have come to be the visual alphabet through
which Mendini has spoken for decades, he
shifts through many different worlds while
him to communicate across many mediums.
It is a visual language dynamic enough to apply
to multiple dimensions and scales yet simple
enough to exist wholly in a singular template,
seen in his Mendini-graph, a multidimensional
multiscalar tool. His ability to shift his eye
from the design of a factory to the design of a
watch to the curation of an entire transportation
system to a one-of-a-kind sculpture is certainly
the envy of most designers.
In the 1970s, Alessandro was a main
personality for the radical design movement in
Italy. In a time when very little was being built or
produced in his part of the world, Mendini took
to designing a way of thinking which would lay
the ground for all of his work to come. During
this time Alessandro joined Studio Alchimia
avant- garde including Ettore Sottsass, Andrea
Branzi and Michele DeLucchi. The group’s
exhibitions payed special attention to everyday
objects and products whose inherent banality
was accentuated by the addition of dramatic
decorative features. It is with this group that
Alessandro was free to operate outside the
constraints of mass production and to develop
his approach as a critic and editor. It was with
Studio Alchimia where he initially began to
balance this multiplicity as both architect and
critic, editor and curator, which would come to
From there he was able to further develop
his ways of thinking with the Memphis Group,
founded by fellow member of Studio Alchimia
E. Sottsass. The group’s work debuted at the
1981 Milan Salone del Mobile. Deriving its
name from the Bob Dylan song Stuck Inside
of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again, the
1980s and found assurance in considering itself
a fashion rather than academic movement.
balance between opposing elements.
This balance can clearly be seen in the work
that the studio has produced since 1989 when
Alessandro began Atelier Mendini with his
brother Francesco. The studio is currently
working on a number of products for Alessi,
developing curatorial and design work for the
Naples subway system, creating art pieces
for Cartier in addition to other projects and
Alessandro’s work as a writer and a critic. His
objects, his environments and his ideas seem
to have permeated the entire world of design
from design for mass production to design as a
singular art form.
87

TOP
Alessi factory with color
schemes and interiors by Atelier
Mendini
MIDDLE TOP
The Proust Chair in production
at the Cassina factory
MIDDLE BOTTOM
An application of 2D shapes in
3D form
BOTTOM
A reinvention of the Proust Chair
as seen in the most recent Fiore
Salone
88

Located in an unassuming neighborhood on
the perimeter of a city that he has called home
for many dini
seems small in comparison to the massive
body of work he has produced over the past
decades. At Atelier Mendini we were fortunate
enough to speak with both Alessandro and
Francesco, as well as essential members of
their design team, about their design philoso-
of which proved to be the group of signs and
symbols they have developed as a visual language.
stileme
Alessandro Mendini: In the beginning I started
studying cubism and futurism. My studies are
very strongly connected to futurism. Not only
with the signs but with the colors as well. The
signs are very emotional and strong. It’s a
kind of novel on the objects. It is an emotional
communication, a poetry. For me, my work
is based on those alphabets so I use the
alphabets for all of my work.
Francesco Mendini: The signs are a continuous
play of changing scale and decoration. They
can move between 2D and 3D, from the small
scale to the large scale. Sometimes the objects
are the signs and sometimes the signs are on
the objects. They are applicable to multiple
levels of project.
AM: Of course, there are many ways to understand
an object or a space. There are different
possibilities of interpretation. The alphabets
change a lot over time as well as the colors, so
everything changes. For example, designing
a watch with all of its particular mechanics and
designing an art object without precise function
provide two very different situations in which to
utilize the stileme.
FM: The choice of symbols depends on many
things although they are rarely tied to the
location of a work. But scale, for example,
gives you multiple ways to understand an
object and offers a means of shifting the use of
the stileme. A change in scale can change the
reading of an object completely. It’s a question
of the relationship between you and the object.
AM: As an example, a piece of jewelry might
have the same shape as a tower. But here our
methods can adjust through materiality. So a
ring can be like a tower in gold or it can be like
as the material value is always a means of introducing
another level of scale. There is then
a difference in scale not simply based on size
but also a difference in the scales of value.
AM: Yes, since a design is always tied to its
function. If you have to design an instrument
in mass production it’s very different than designing,
for example, a series of vases. Here
are prototypes of a set of vases, made in Korea,
utilizing a very old and traditional color and
method used for more than 1000 years called
‘celadon.’ They are to be part of an exhibit at
is designing the piazza in front of the museum.
We are renewing this building, and here is the
oldest factory of celadon in all the world where
89

I produced those examples. These examples
were produced in the oldest celadon factory
in the world located in Korea. So far we have
prepared ten shapes while also working closely
with the craftsmen who produce the products.
AM: Well, for example, this vase is a sculptural
object, so all the attention is on the shape and
the quality of the material. If you design a watch
for mass production there are a lot of engineering
and economic issues as well as marketing
concerns, so different issues are driving the
project. These are two very different problems:
design as art and design as mass production.
You have to change your attitude — using of
course, in my case, my stileme.
AM: One of our current interesting projects is
a display design for a collection of precious
stones owned by the jeweler Cartier. Basically
since the early 19th century Cartier had accrued
a large number of precious stones which for
various reasons could not otherwise be used in
jewelry work. The company asked us to create
a means of displaying these stones and invited
us to the Cartier laboratory in Paris to produce
the work. I decided to do a column. It is made
out of 18 kilos of gold. There are modules in
the column nested against each other so there
is a joint made out of gold that holds a crystal
container and within the crystal container are
the gems. Each of the pieces slide together to
create the overall form. There are over 17,000
carats of gems in the project. It will be shown in
June in Art Basel in Switzerland.
AM: Yes, again this would demonstrate our
commitment to working with craftsman at
multiple stages of a project. The jewelers at
Cartier were extremely helpful in developing
the design towards production. Everytime I
work with new materials I rely on craftsmen to
help me specialize my knowledge that I can
then apply to our design decisions.
FM: We were consultants for Swatch for many
years. Alessandro served as art director. At
that time there was a team of about 30 people
working on designing Swatch watches. And
in the period of one or two years, we had designed
2000 watches. At the same time we
started to design retail stores for the company.
We were consultants for a certain period and
by the end we had designed nearly 300 stores
for Swatch. For Alessi, it’s different. We have
continued to work for them for many years. We
are still doing architecture and interiors and
exhibitions in addition to product design. We
are in some ways their main consultants. Our
designs for them range from the architectural
scale to the object scale. And in relation to the
creation of a brand, our corkscrew for Alessi,
for example, has become one of their most recognizable
products.
90

AM: Every project that we do we has a number
of new discoveries and advancements. For example,
in the Alessi factory everything changes
very quickly. Sometimes new materials and
new productions become available from China
here in Italy. Currently all of the Alessi facilities
are here in Italy and those factories are willing
to try new methods of production. But it has to
remain simple because, if not, it would have to
go to China where the work is cheaper.
AM: This is a very important question and a
rather dramatic problem that we face between
using production here in Italy or working outside
in China. But it is not always cheaper
to produce a product in China. The Gong is
a product we are working on for Alessi that is
the redevelopment of a product the company
produced at the turn of the century. The kinds
of patterns etched into the stainless steel are
designed to precisely integrate the methods of
etching in which Italy specializes. There is a
very precise tradition of craftsmanship here,
and to produce the same etching in China
would in fact cost three times as much.
Interview by Jeff Morrical
May 6, 2009
TOP
A portion of the Stileme
MIDDLE TOP
An etching pattern for the Gong
project for Alessi
BOTTOM
The ‘Mendini-graph,’ a kind of
french curve containing the
shapes of the Stileme
MIDDLE BOTTOM
Alessandro with the original
turn of the century ‘Gong’ tray,
currently being redeveloped by
Atelier Mendini
91

TOP
‘100% Makeup’ at the Alessi
Museum, a demonstration of
Mendini in multiples as curator.
Each vase is painted by a
different designer, all chosen by
Mendini.
BOTTOM
Mendini’s particular process of
object creation
92

TOP
Corkscrews for Alessi which
have become some of their
most iconic pieces
MIDDLE
Interior of the Alessi factory in
Omegna
BOTTOM
Art objects with Mendini’s
signature faciality at the
entrance to the Alessi Museum
93

M
an entire generation of artists and designers
through both direct and indirect means. His
iconic designs for Swatch and Alessi are familiar
long before one comes to understand the sheer
omnipresence of Mendini’s hand throughout
the design world. Through more latent means,
his critical essays and curatorial eye.
Certainly the loyal and steady use of his
stileme has been one of the guiding aesthetic
principles of his work over the years, but in a
time when symbols are thought of as fallout
from a postmodern past, can we consider the
universal use of particular shapes a relevant
method of designing For Mendini, I believe
the stileme transcend use as simple symbolic
representations. Placing emphasis on the
emotional reading of his visual language, it
seems, for Mendini, that design is something to
be felt and contemplated more than something
to be seen clearly understood. The truly familylike
atmosphere that existed in the studio of
Atelier Mendini seems to lend credence to
design as a creative collaboration between the
designer, the user and the craftsman.
This universality of application and multitude
of interpretation has aided Mendini through a
huge range of projects, perhaps demonstrated
most clearly in the project 100% Makeup. Here
we see Mendini’s role as both designer and
curator. One object, designed by Mendini,
embodies a multitude of readings when set
to individual human experience. Each vase
was decorated by a different creative cultural
synthesis but is a result of relationships. Rather
than individually, every element acquires value
in its relation to each other like the characters
in a comedy or tragic-comedy.”
For Alessandro Mendini, then, surface becomes
the ultimate form of expression. When twodimensional
shapes, the stileme, are applied to
begin to emerge — perhaps to be understood
as a pidgin language to his original alphabet, a
language of invention and evolution rather than
a static set of visual elements.
own world, also seems to exist in a world all its
own. Mendini seems to view his own work not
but as the frames, in continual development
and nourishment, of an emotional state — a
way of thinking, decades in the making.
Thus design must have its own level of
openness and integrity whilst maintaining
enough mystery to invite a multitude of
readings. Every object is an embodiment of
the dialogue and relationships that we form
each day with one another. This, for Mendini,
is how our design can transcend a multitude of
95