QUESTION
ISSUE # 1
A MAGALOG* PROUDLY INTRODUCED BY PITTIDESIGN
* FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS IN PURSUIT OF A DEFINITION OF OURSELVES
PITTIDESIGN OFFERS YOU QUESTIONS This is not a closed book. It is unfinished. The pages are not bound together. Others are blank. There is no front cover. It is a beginning, not an ending. It is an indication, not a publication. Download it, print it on card. What happens next is up to you. Tear open the pages. Use your fingers, a blade or a blowtorch. Make up your own question. Write or scrawl on the empty pages. The more you use it, the better it will look. This time we’re going to please you with some fundamental questions about...
QUESTION WHAT IS ESSENTIAL?
What are we standing here for? Are we really standing on the shoulders of giants? And if so, what are we reaching for? What is really essential? We at PittiDesign have an old friend who is capable of big thoughts with small words. His name begins with a
P
PAGE #
“
WHAT IS ESSENTIAL IS INVISIBLE TO THE EYE
”
“If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself, “Somewhere, my flower is there…”
“
But if a sheep eats the flower in one moment all his stars
”
will be darkened!”
“
I know a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelt a flower He has never seen a star He has never loved anyone He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: “I am busy doing important things!” And that makes him swell up with pride But this is not a man.
It is a mushroom!
”
“
S
o the fox gazed at the little prince for several long moments. Please...tame me,
he said.
I want to, very much, the little prince replied but I do not I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand. -. One only understands the things that one tames,
have much time.
said the fox.
Man have no time to understand anything anymore.
They buy ready-made things at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me! What do I need to do, to tame you? asked the little prince. You must be very patient, replied the fox First you will sit down a small distance away from me - like that - in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day...”
The next day the little prince came back. It would have been better to come back at the same hour, said the fox. If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be excited and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.
One must observe the proper rites.
what is a rite?
asked the little prince.
Rites are actions wich are often neglected,
said the fox.
They are what make one day different from other days, one hour
dissimilar
from other hours
”
“
Goodbye said the fox.
Here is my secret. It is very simple
” “
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
“What is essential is invisible to the eye” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
”
QUESTION #1
What is essential?
PITTIDESIGN* STATEMENT What is essential is invisible to the eye
* thanks to A. De Saint-ExuperĂŠry, Le Petit Prince
QUESTION
PAGE #
IF THE ESSENTIAL IS INVISIBLE THEN WHAT IS VISIBILITY?
Something essential from Italo Calvino
* FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS IN PURSUIT OF A DEFINITION OF OURSELVES
“
There is a verse in Dante’s Purgatory wich says: “Then reigned within my lofty fantasy”.
”
“
FANTASY IS A PLACE WHERE IT RAINS WITHIN US
”
* Italo Calvino
“
The real problem is that of
selecting of the various “images” wich have poured into our imagination.
A writer, for example, is not absolutely sure that his mental images wich have given form to his ideas will harmonise in his mind,
and he experiments, expressing his ideas first in one way then in another. Until he is happy with a particular version.
But does he know where all these ideas come from? Only vaguely.
The main part of his source, like an iceberg, is immersed deep underwater, invisible, and he knows this.
”
“ So what will the future of individual imagination in the “image culture” be? will the power to conjure up images
in their absence,
continue developing in a world wich is increasingly flooded by the downpour of preformed images?
If I have included
visibility
in my list of values to be saved it is to warn of the danger wich we face of losing a fundamental human right: the POWER TO FOCUS ON PICTURES WITH OUR EYES CLOSED
”
“ to allow a burst of colours and shape to be generated from black alphabetic characters on a page wich is white.
�
“
to think in images
�
Will imagination still be possible in a rising inflation of preformed images ?
We can see there are two paths open to us:
“
1) 2)
recycle used images in a new context in order to change their meaning or blank everthing out, and start gaing from scratch.
�
QUESTION #2
What is visibility?
PITTIDESIGN* STATEMENT Visibility is our capacity of having clear focused visions when the eyes are shut * thanks to Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane
QUESTION
PAGE #
SO, WHAT’S THE MEANING OF DESIGN?
What are we looking for with all these questions? It’s a way to define ourselves and our emotions by using a visual language, using words that we’ve loved to read, to hear, that we should have spoken and we didn’t when it was time. So hurry up, it’s time for another question.
* TRYING TO SHAPE THE ESSENTIAL OF PITTIDESIGN’S VISION OF DESIGN
WHAT MAKES A HOUSE
“ ” A
HOME
What is its essence?
What is its visibility?
HE THEN WROTE:
“
that was the period in wich I claimed that the home should be not only the image of those who live there, but also a portrait
” And what is all this if not
* VICTOR HORTA ONCE CREATED A HOME TO FULFIL THE NEEDS OF AN ILL BRIDE, TAKING CARE TO FOCUS ON THE NEED FOR PEACEFULNESS AND REST
empathy
Perhaps we are talking about the partecipation of the subject who is contemplating on the object being contemplated. Again THE POWER TO FOCUS ON PICTURES WITH OUR EYES CLOSED
From here the artistic experience of art and design as mimesis, imitation not only in the act of production, but above all in the enjoyment: when a dialogue is estabilished
between picture and observer, wich leads to identification.
It is a design wich evokes and provokes a certain behaviour a design of “mimicry�, it offers an analogical plastic model of a lifestyle and it does not limit itself to modifying it but rather to conditioning it materially.
“ DESIGN AS EMPATHY, DESIGN AS MIMESIS
capable of generating a process of oscillation connecting first the subject with the object (man who invests in things with his feelings) and then the object with the subject (the object being considered provides the man with the model of a psychological process)
Finally the subject, through internal imitation “relives” the object being considered.
and his entiwining of different forms, or drawing up similar forms wich derive from a primary structure as in a polyphony as in a counterpoint, as variations on a musical theme is the of design
music
and its rhythmic movement, influences the vital beat and pulsations of the
heart
”
QUESTION #3
What’s the meaning of Design?
PITTIDESIGN* STATEMENT Design is empathy
* thanks to Victor Horta and the ArtNouveau aim
Design is mimesis
“ to allow a burst of colours and shapes to be generated from black alphabetical characters on a page wich is white.
�
“ to allow a burst of colour and shapes to be generated from black alphabetical characters on a page wich is white.
�
“ to allow a burst of colour and shapes to be generated from black alphabetical characters on a page wich is white.
�
“ to allow a burst of colour and shapes to be generated from black alphabetical characters on a page wich is white.
�
“
think
”
“
in images
”
“
”