Durability and complexity of simple objects

With Giulio Cappellini, the journalist Andrea Calatroni bring us inside the light world, between products designed to last over time.

In this period it is not possible to travel and we are also less involved in an often extremely hectic everyday life. We therefore have perhaps more time to entail reflection.

The social live series Icone Talks was born for this reason, to keep thinking and not lose focus on the world of light and design, in moment without eents in presence where you can share, network and exchange ideas.

The guest of the new Icone Talks episode is the journalist Andrea Calatroni, an architect who has chosen to talk about lighting instead of “drawing lines all day in a studio”, as he says, first from the pages of the magazine “Luce” and then from the online ones of his magazine MakingofLight.it.
Andrea spoken with Giulio Cappellini, the art director of Icone Luce, on the world of lighting as seen by those who tell it, speaking with companies in the sector every day.

Lamps that tell stories

Giulio Cappellini. Andrea your site not only shows beautiful products but there is also a very strong insight. I think that it has never been more important to talk about the sweat behind a project than in this moment.

Andrea Calatroni. That’s what I like to do, hence the name “making-of”, that is, making, building with your head or hands a product, a project, a lamp, any square or the design of a building.I try to choose things that have stories to tell: I listen, I transcribe and I try to do it as best I can. This method has worked for now even if it is very empirical and personal, but it has given me a lot of satisfaction in these ten years.

Giulio Cappellini. On the other hand, it is right to give personal evaluations because a good design critic must also act as a possible user of an object.

Andrea Calatroni. As a lamp collector in the end I try to choose beautiful and functional together, as well as paying the eye must also make a good light. I always try to mix the two.

Products that look to the future

Andrea Calatroni. In addition to this, durability is one of the biggest challenges of this period. Apart from the classic icons, I choose to treat beautiful contemporary products, which have a possible duration in their DNA; there are, fortunately. I try to choose and promote especially those that will make sense even ten years from now.

Giulio Cappellini. Also because the iconic products of the fifties, sixties, seventies are now something consolidated. Trying to explore the products of today, the ones that will become the icons of tomorrow, is certainly not easy.

Andrea Calatroni. It is also very difficult because technology, especially LED technology, has somewhat uniformed the search for form. Those three or four aesthetics always look good or bad: flat, round, linear, essential shape.
The other thing I see a lot is the finishes, there is a great job and Icons is an example of this research and application.

My favourite? Diadema and Hola Hoop

Giulio Cappellini. What struck you about Icons, is there any product you prefer that struck you?
Andrea Calatroni. As I anticipated, I see a great deal of research in the finishes. In times of crisis like this, warm textures, such as copper, gold, bronze are essential because they reassure, make people feel good.

Icone, I met her a couple of years ago during the last edition of Euroluce, when things could be touched. I was with the blogger of Design Outfit, with whom I collaborate from time to time, and I marked two products that I liked for their apparent simplicity: one is Diadema and the other is Hula Hoop.

They are two apparently simple lamps but with a thought behind them, an interesting idea of the multiplication of the circle and not a banal suspended ring.

Simplicity is working by subtraction

Giulio Cappellini. You find me fully in agreement. We often say “this object is simple”, I am of the idea that working by subtraction is much more complex than working by addition.

A simple object that has strong contents is truly the result of a very particular and not always easy mental process. I must say that this is precisely in the DNA of Marco Pagnoncelli, the main designer of Icons, who works on objects of great simplicity in which the correct use of the material and attention to detail become absolutely fundamental.

Simple objects, beautiful today and beautiful tomorrow because I think this is the fundamental element, that is to be able to make products, as you rightly said before, that last over time, objects that become part of our domestic universe.

Follow Icone Talks on IGTV of Instagram account @icone.luce

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