Born in Milan in 1977, Francesco Faccin is considered one of the most promising Italian designers of his generation. His work follows a rigorous set of values that make him an outsider — his aim is to change the world of design and to find a new, perfect balance between ethics, beauty, and sustainability. ARTINFO Italy met with Faccin in Milan during Salone del Mobile, where he’s presenting several projects.
At this year’s Salone del Mobile you brought back the invention of fire. You have presented the Re-fire project, a kit to light up a bonfire with your own hands, at Spazio Rossanda Orlandi. Can you tell us how this project was developed? Do you think that it’s necessary to go back to a sort of “primitiveness” in design?
I was invited at the Stockholm fair in February with a commission for an object that would trigger reflections about the concepts of need and quality. I thought about it a lot and I went back in time to eventually find something really necessary to mankind — I went back to prehistory to find the first project man designed and built to save his life. I would like to bring back a little bit of this absolute and urgent necessity in each new project. I think it’s very important to look forward with great optimism and trust in science and technology, but with awareness and sensitivity to our fragile human nature. A primitive man knew he would have died without fire.
Since the start of your career you were involved with craft and auto-producible design, even before the “makers” phenomenon exploded, and when everybody was still putting all the efforts in “technological” design. Why this choice? What was your professional journey?
When I finished my studies I worked for Enzo Mari for a year and right after that with a luthier for four years, where I used my hands and had time to reflect. Manual work gave me discipline, direction, and a physical approach to projects, never only theoretic.
Has the experience with Enzo Mari contributed to this artisan “radicalness”? You have a lot in common with the Milanese master, including an aversion to computers.
I don’t feel I’m that radical when it comes to craftsmanship. I’m interested in any method or productive process as long as it’s directed to achieve the maximum quality with the least impact and waste of energies. Industries are sometimes more sustainable than certain forms of craftsmanship. I like the computer but I use it mostly to communicate with clients and journalists. The reason of my aversion towards it comes from the fact that you have to be able to use it properly. It’s the same annoying frustration of not speaking a language properly and therefore not being capable of expressing an idea to the person you’re talking to.
You don’t have a very good opinion of design schools either. Tell me about your education and what marked your professional path?
I think school should be a moment of great experimentation to understand which path to follow after the studies. I remember when I was a student and I was about to graduate, the only studio I wanted to work with was Enzo Mari’s. So I wrote him a handwritten letter. Design schools in Italy are often places where students aren’t challenged with ambitious or visionary missions. They don’t even provide specific instruments to be extremely competent in something. Mari always used to always tell me, “You have to aim to be the best at something, even hammering a nail, but you have to be the best nail hammerer in the world.”
Speaking of Enzo Mari, he was talking about you and stated: “I had the chance to verify that kind of determination that matches a certain element of craziness, which is so helpful for a designer.” What does this description mean to you?
I think he was talking about a certain courage to engage things and abandoning a certain middle-class stiffness that often surrounds our world and others. This is changing quite fast and there are very evident signs of fertile contaminations in the design world. Compared to 10 or 15 years ago, a person who wants to be a designer, apart from the obstacles, has the possibility to pick new fields of action, way wider than furniture or interior design.
At the beginning of your career you created a series of assemblages that appear closer to sculpture than design. These objects where included by Beppe Finessi in the current exhibition about Italian design at the Triennale di Milano. Were you surprised by this choice? What do those objects mean to you?
I was honestly very much surprised! I think Beppe Finessi was the only one to know this aspect of my work, which was never published or presented before. I never considered those pieces “artistic,” but more likely as composition studies. For years I collected and accumulated (and I still do) pieces of things found without having a project in mind, in a compulsive way. When I was still a student and I didn’t have an idea of how to create finished projects, these assemblages were useful to develop a sense of material, proportion, color, but I understood all this later. I’m very happy they’re in the exhibition at the Triennale but I’m also a bit embarrassed, because they’re intimate naive objects, from a time when my career was little structured.
The Triennale exhibition talks about Italian design and crisis. How do these elements work together? How do you overcome the crisis?
You overcome it truly only if you want to create a new model of development with no regrets for the unsustainable wealth we’ve lived in for decades. We have to discover a new wealth and build it with ambitious ideas, but this has to do mostly with politics. Design can be an extraordinary vehicle for messages, values, and vision, but it’s definitely not enough by itself.
Design and ethics. How do you see this pair in design today? And in your work?
“Aesthetics is the mother of ethics,” said Brodskij. I’m convinced that quality is the key to “salvation” and we all have to contribute to this improvement — not only designers or architects. I’m interested in anything that is made with care and love for each detail because it represents a form of respect towards the self and towards whoever will use the object.
Design and communication. Do you believe that the idea of the superstar designer is still valid? Your approach seems to suggest the opposite. Are we finally ready for a time of anti-celebrity designers?
Communication is fundamental in every profession and it’s not a negative aspect per se. It’s useful to describe and bring stories and suggestions that can become viral and inspirational for millions of people. But I also think that companies who will keep calling the big names just to have results in terms of media frenzy won’t have great result at medium term. The only thing to invest in is the intelligence of projects.
What is your relationship with design companies? How much should a designer be willing to compromise to deal with them?
I would really love to find a company to work with for the long haul, with a reciprocal exchange. I believe in shared work with an entrepreneur to find solutions and develop projects that, by myself, I wouldn’t even imagine taking on. Unfortunately I feel that many entrepreneurs haven’t understood yet that this is the time for radical choices.
Today you are considered one of the most promising Italian designers, and you were selected for the Compasso d’oro with your “Traverso” table and the “Stratos” chair. What advice would you give to a young designer?
I would suggest to work on quality for anything they want to do and to work with the best master available in that field because there’s no time to lose. Research in depth a topic, a technique, a material. Be obsessive and completely immerse yourself in what you do with no compromises.
Is Italian design still unique?
It still definitely is a reference point but things are changing fast. So there has to be no nostalgia, we have to understand that success is achieved day by day and if we lose that special position it will only be our fault.
