Young Italian Designers

By Virginio Briatore - 8 January 2010

That people like Matali Crasset and Marcel Wanders are enormously talented is undeniable, or that the multicultural charm of projects by the Campana brothers and Satyendra Pakhalé are a joy for the eyes and the mind. It’s good to see a crowd of young (and not so young) foreign designers in Italy, attracted by the know-how of our companies, or regularly being presented by marketing and PR events in the interior design and decoration sector. It’s always been that way. In the sixties and seventies, many foreign designers actually moved to Italy: Makio Hasuike, Andries Van Onck, Isao Hosoe and Richard Sapper, made a lifestyle change as well as a professional leap. In the eighties and early nineties, with the advent of the fax and mobile telephones, a new generation of designers began going to and fro northern Italy. People like Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Ross Lovergrove were all launched to stratospheric heights by products produced and communicated by Italian companies. Up to that moment the system had maintained a good balance between Italian and foreign designers jostling to get their chance with the big Italian names. And nearly always, the best project won. The last ten years though have seen a change: while many in the young designer star system still owe their fortune and visibility to Italian companies, the number of Italian designers who make it are few and far between.
What has happened?
Less self-important countries than ours realised early on that design is a fundamental economic resource. Accordingly they started long-term social projects to foster design. The public and private institutions, embassies, local town councils, museums and universities in Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Japan, Canada, etc. that work to assist the training and promotion of local designers would fill a phone book. Take two emblematic examples. In the early eighties when there was much talk of design, France counted only five well known names, and...