How would you define yourself as a designer?
I started out with the imprinting of Roger Tallon (the one who designed the TGV), I used to spend a lot of time designing engines or liquid containers for big chemical multinationals. I had already worked with him when I was a student, we had designed very particular televisions. Over time, I then learnt to use this background to get to drawing art pieces: two opposite worlds that I liked to bring closer together, even today I still do a freehand sketch as if I were painting and then start from the opposite side with the same subject in my head but with a reasoned approach, then slowly I try to bring them closer together.
You were one of the first graduates in Industrial Aesthetics, why that choice and how does it translate into your work?
I chose Industrial Aesthetics because the Faculty of Architecture (I was in my fourth year) had opened this course, I was intrigued, I went to find out and realised that no one had enrolled, so I decided to give it a try, in the end there were five of us, we had our own workshop with brand new equipment: it was a kind of fantastic cocooning that opened my eyes to the world of industry and art. We worked by reasoning, without the conditioning of money, they also transferred to us notions of marketing (which I detested at first sight): all knowledge that put together created a culture.
What is ‘good design’ today?
If I knew what design was, I would gladly answer with certainty. Instead I still cannot define it. A short time ago I attended a meeting where someone at one point said ‘but you have to put a bit of design here’: I imagined a jar that you might buy in the supermarket with a brush that is used to smear ‘a bit of design’ on some object. You need ‘grandma’s common sense’, you need to understand the cultural context you are dealing with and be serious, you need a willing entrepreneur to talk to, you need trained technicians, you need a sustainable economic idea: if you stay within these stakes you are playing with your cards open, if you go out you can make art but it doesn’t necessarily work and then maybe no one will call you anymore.
From the ski-boot to the lamps (like Mite for Foscarini, designed in 2000, which was awarded the Compasso d’Oro)… how did it happen and why?
There are many years between the ski boot (many ski boots, actually) and the lamp. In the ‘70s I invented the thermoplastic boot, which also revolutionised the way of skiing, I was practically “on the feet” of thousands of people: well, to come back to the question about design, I didn’t know that designing a boot was design, I was just trying to do my job well.
How do you come to design Trafic? Is it decoration?
No, or at least, maybe it becomes one so we can satisfy lovers of aesthetics alone, but it was designed to be a very versatile and super resistant floor (a truck can drive over it).
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Was it your idea or did you receive a brief from the company?
Actually neither: I had already done a floor for Listone Giordano, I wanted to do a terrazzo floor but it was too complicated, along the way came the idea of a laminate cut from the wrong direction and turned around, the result is a surface that feels like velvet to the touch, it’s having quite a success despite being a poor wood but with a performance like fine wood, even economically it’s very interesting. Sometimes it takes very little (and a little luck too) to turn a poor material into a product that works, despite the fact that aesthetically one has worked with the handbrake pulled in order to give sustainable and attractive cost options. Here too, the ‘grandmotherly common sense’ mentioned earlier prevailed. We got it, it worked. It’s good for the company and it’s good for me too.
Andrea Margaritelli
We intercept Andrea Margaritelli – brand manager of Listone Giordano – and ask him: “Why Marc Sadler”?
Marc is a bearer of fascination of the past brought up to date, his mitteleuropean culture (born in Austria, raised in France, now in Italy) has had a great influence on his way of designing, an effective design also because he understands difficulties, he has chewed industrial cycles, of Marc Sadler I have always been amazed by his attitude not to stop in front of the aesthetic dimension, he is a designer who goes down into the depths.
To the question “what is good design” Sadler could not answer
I’ll answer for him. Marc is naturally curious, he wants to know and understand everything. Design comes later: the secret lies in curiosity.
