Riccardo Blumer - La leggerezza

It was funny because there was still the fax and on April 1st I got a fax with written "You won the gold bag" and I... it's a fish, guaranteed. Then I look at it well, I read it well, I read it well, etc. We find out that it wasn't a fish, it was like dying, because for hours in the office we laughed at this thing. What can this fish have done to us on April 1st? Anecdotes, emotions, shots of lightning and shots of genius, a lot of mess and even some mess. The design is this, it's much more still. I am Federica Capozzi and this is the podcast of Alias that goes back to the journey of the brand through the voices and stories of its protagonists. [Music] The light is an old story now because we were in the 90s, it's been more than 30 years now. Alias, Renato Stauffacher and Rino Fratus, an Alias that came from the management of Gismondi Forcolini and now has a new owner. They obviously wanted to give a sign. I wanted to give a sign of my adventure that also started after six years of work by Mario Botta. It was also a period when I started teaching in Mendrisio, I was teaching in five schools at that time, I had a studio of architecture with a lot of people and I jumped out of my hands in this light that I built in the evening. And then it was incredible how it exploded. I remember there were still phones on the wall and I called Stauffacher and he told me that we won, I won the Logeweis Design Prize. And there I remember a great emotion because when I arrived in this wonderful city, all of these reproductions of the light, on the street, like the Stendards, were waiting for us. And then they take me to a theater to get the prize and I have to throw it up and take it back to show that it was light. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life because you are a public, I don't know, of a thousand people who watch you, they throw it in the air and say "Oh my God, this is a disaster!" This is Ricardo Blumer, architect, designer and teacher, not a very nice man. And what you just heard is one of the many anecdotes related to the light, its most famous project. The chair made in 1996 for Alias, who made him win various awards, including the gold compass, and then also entered the permanent collection of the New York Moma. Even if it was a compass, it is not the only piece of Blumer present. There is also another chair on the Moma, but this is another story. Going back to the light, Blumer speaks to us, and I would say coherently, with a lot of lightness, in the way that the more you confess to an object that is a true featherweight. But behind this lightness of structure and spirit, there is a projectual effort, a punctual study, that search for originality that you would have now understood by listening to this podcast, in common with all the adventures of Alias. You don't look for the difference to make the difference, you look for the originality of the gesture. You look to give body to something that does not exist. It is not my design of the form, of the redesign of things that are already there, I am not interested, I am not even able to say. I am more intrigued, perhaps for my form of architecture, to the idea of the construction of the object. So how do I build it and what do I put on stage in the construction, the static point of the weights, of the materials, etc. I make a chair, I make it with the spirit that I feel that that is what every piece of the object must be part of the static of the object itself. I was not interested in the idea of ​​design a existing typology, that is a structure that is basically a shell, which is the daughter of the Imps, of Robin Day and of these great designers of the 50s and 60s. There is this typology of the wearable shell, basically. I wanted to do something that was not distinguished from the shell and the accommodating part and the wearable part. And so I started working with a structure that then became light, which is the structure I understood later. It is a shell structure that is essentially what you use to make an airplane. I am in love with this idea of ​​the insect, the insect with the skeleton out and we have it reading the skeleton inside, we have a mass that protects it, everything that you see of the insect is also its structure. The aesthetic part is also the structural part. And the chair is like this, the chair is an empty structure, I arrived here a little bit at a time. And then we put ourselves inside the shell, I put myself inside the expansion shell, because I had this problem that since I use a 1 mm wood, because I wanted to use as little material as possible, I hit it and it disappeared with the hit. And therefore the polyurethane has only one, it only has the function of resisting the incident charges. Incident and incident. In fact, a chair was born that few people may know how to do it, but it is a bit like the mother's chair, that here it does not look like wood, then the rise is very light, but the shape is absolutely the one that is born from the construction process. It was possible to correct the thickness, the shapes a little, how to say, to make it more attractive, but it is a chair that you cannot give a different design to, because it is built like this, there is no alternative. Now I do something a little different than usual, I tell you an anecdote, the same thing I told Blumer when we recorded this interview. It is something that happened when I was in Grumello del Monte, in the Alias offices, to discuss the first time this podcast. The productive establishment is located there in the same place, so before going to the office they made me take a tour, they accompanied me to see where the products were born, the chairs, the tables, and of course she too, the light one. So I met Luigi, one of the specialized operators that every day, for years, they cut, fold, glue, in substance, they give shape and life to the chair designed by Blumer. It was an enlightening encounter. I'm not really exaggerating, but the productive processes fascinate me from the very beginning. Seeing how objects are born from nothing is always wonderful to me, but the devotion and care for Luigi, for the light one, made me almost moved, because even if it was not him who invented it in the first place, he adopted it, and every light one that comes out of his hands is the fruit of the same love that the craftsman has for his works, and craftsmanship is not the case. Blumer also tells me about it. It's a semi-artisanal chair, in reality. Then, produced in quantity, it becomes an industrial design, even if, in fact, it's a chair made by human hands and by some machine that does some work. All the design, in general, that I do, is a design that I build in the first place. Almost all of my things are built with simple methods, because they must be digestible by me. If I build a light chair with a little chair, black and decker, of the ones you make, it's really ridiculous. I mean, it's difficult for me to make a piece that needs, for example, prints, plastics, because it would not allow me to control what I have to do. I don't know you, but I will no longer look at the light one, without looking at the young Blumer who deals with a chair, after work, or Luigi, Agrumello, all concentrated because, in his work, the difference between doing well and doing badly is played on the edge of the millimetre. The light one will never be just a chair. In fact, perhaps it has never been, because then, in the end, no chair is really just a chair. For me, the chair is a great gesture, it is a great body, and it is the face of man. This has always been clearer to me. I believe that it is a symbolic object, even if it should not be a symbol of anything, but it is, without a doubt, our object, which is also a sense of man, must tell you how man is in the world, right? And I do what I think is beautiful, of how man should be in the world. You do this work to make you happy, and you are the protagonist of the act. You are the one who, at a certain point, between an intuition, a drawing, an image that is guided to you, pedaling, etc., slowly, this thing takes shape and becomes an object that is reversible. This is the strength of creativity, of creation itself. But the most beautiful thing is really to make these things resist. You cannot make them resist. It is a disease. If you cannot make them resist, you will not stay in your life, for me, for my experience. I am known for lightness, in reality. As Mudugno, who was known for... No, it is not true. I would like to be known for other things you have done. But it does not matter. It does not matter. Lightness is a kind of art in reality that is part of me, but with you we produce other things. With you, you work with me to produce other things, in everything you have inside the lightness. Because I was the lightness. It takes the body, it takes the life, it takes space, and then it exists. It accompanies you as a mother, as a mother, as a mother. It accompanies you with a presence and you must be grateful. There is something special, lightness, almost magic. Not only does it weigh so little that just a touch makes it fly. No, it is also a key that opens all the doors, a creature that becomes a creator, a daughter that becomes a mother. And without further ado, well, there is also a lot, a lot more still. You have listened to and a lot more still, the podcast produced by Alias to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the brand. Lessie and voice are by Federica Capozzi. Montage and soundproofing to the care of Domini Colivieri. We thank Ricardo Blumer for the interview.