This image above is a rendering of one of the exhibits in Alfredo Haeberli's monographic "Surround Things" show, described below. Continuing with our interview....
Q/ The following quote comes from your description of designing children’s product, but it could also describe many of your other designs. Can you describe your design process a bit, especially how you achieve your signature balance of playfulness and practicality?
“For me, it is finding the playful element in each component, subliminally integrating a function, asking a question through the use of relief instead of using a sticker, offering some security with the silhouette or making it simple….”
A/ If I have to reduce the answer, I just ask and search for the soul of an object. I ask myself would I buy it? Is it inspired enough? And for me it has always to work. I could not do something which is uncomfortable or to kid somebody. But knowing the design history well, I always try to make a small step forward, to add something new, to give a surplus which you see when you look twice.
Q/ You are from Argentina but now live in Switzerland. It would seem – stereotypically perhaps – that South American and Switzerland have very different design sensibilities – one hot, the other cool, to over-generalize. How does your dual geographical background affect your design sensibility?
A/ It is a little like that. I combine both; on one side I love human beings very much and look everyday as the last day, it means I enjoy my daily life. On the other side I learn to analyze complex problems, design problems, in a rational way. I work for different countries from Denmark to Italy and from Japan to Mallorca, my dual life is fine with it.
Q/ Your illustrations are lovely and often quite humorous. Do you always draw a project to start? Do you think drawing is important and why, especially in this computerized world that we inhabit?
A/ An ideas starts in my world always with a feeling, a sketch, a though, a mockup, but never in front of the laptop. To draw with the computer, you have to have a clear mind. At the beginning my mind is a cloud of imagines, of vague silhouettes. I have to work first for a time.
Q/ Two things are very noticeable in your work: love of line and subtlety of pattern. How did these elements come to play such an important role in your work?
A/ The lines where always important, I just loved to draw and I like very much to do as less as possible lines to express a thought, so this is the reason for my love to lines. Pattern, I don't know, I am not sure how much I need pattern, I like colours and abstract pattern, less the figurative. I think about.
Q/ Can you discuss your “Take a Line on a Walk” approach to design?
A/ Sure. For Moroso’s 40th anniversary, fashion designers, architects and designers where invited to make a model in scale 1:10 in rapid- prototyping. So I decided to do something which goes to the edge of the technique. Meanwhile I was reading a book about Paul Klee and his pencil drawings and he said that when he draws, it is for him like to go for a walk with the pencil. I just was working on the same, but it was not so clear for me. So I found my way out of my cloud.
