Odoardo Fioravanti @design library (2)

As promised, here is a brief summary of the talk with Odoardo Fioravanti held at the Design Library.

He sat behind a desk with the lights pointing staight at him. I address the same 3 topics that Odo divided his presentation into: the journey, the projects, the processes.

The journey, or in other words, who he is: life, death, miracles, ambitions, dreams, education, choices. Just 10 years ago Odo was a PR agent for clubs and who once in a while shows up for an exam or two in engineering (which he signed up for in order to satisfy his proneness for manual modelling) then by pure coincidence he discovers the faculty of design (a little more appropriate for the proneness mentioned above). After he graduates, he encounters a few misadventures and then ends up at the studio of Giulio Iacchetti. Conclusion: Odo lead the life of a normal italian rascal, a clever one of course, to which he added quite alot of talent, some luck and occasional genius.

The projects, or in other words, Odo's work. Well here the objects speak for themselves, there wouldn't be much sense in commenting them all. He showed them all, or almost, but I chose 3 to talk about. The first one: cloned in China. A little masterpiece of threedimensional graphics, a reference to the habit of copying, it can easily be classified as a sculpture, with a wink at Cattelan included in the package. The second one: The Snow chair. Perhaps the object nearest to Odoardo's thought process. Composition composure, technological rigour, neat formalism, never too ponderous or pretentions like some of our old maestros. He maintains a certain delicacy in his seriousness. Last but not least, technology, color and materials. The third one: Light Style. The mini abat-jour table lamp. This little desk jewel, this miniature of a classic confirms Odo's italianity. This goes to show that there are things that we simply cannot be separated from, our mothers being one of these things.

The processes. Things become a little more complex here. The truth is that Odo belongs to that category of real designers, the orthodox type that blindly believes in this discipline, in designing the world, he believes in the idea of design, and, maybe, even in the idea of usefullness. His approach follows a logic that belongs to a modus operandi of "positivism". It is constructive, it is about bettering. He is one of those that looks to Sambonet and the Werkbund for answers, if you know what mean. There is no desire of self-expression and no attempt in representing anything other than what it already is, only a glance taken from the profession and from the object. A professional code of conduct that makes him the odd man out.

postilla: click on "research" on Odo's site and enjoy the beautiful twin sets.