I travel through the Treviso countryside toward Mogliano Veneto to reach the home studio of Tobia Scarpa: a building that one had a rural air, surrounded by the particularly lush summer greenery, which the current owner has restored and expanded with his own particular elegance. I cross a small farmyard overlooked by both the entrance to the house and the building that houses the studio and enter a world different from the countryside that surrounds it.
The conversation takes place in a very intimate space inside the original building, a small living room where, although discreet, the signs of transformation are clearly legible: from the flooring to the highlighting of the bulge in the wall that houses the fireplace.

Let’s start the conversation by talking about Dino Gavina, who was the architect of the meeting between Tobia Scarpa and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.

Gavina was a very interesting character in Italian art culture, particularly in design culture. He was an entrepreneur but had the character of an ideas promoter rather than a company director. He was not selfish enough to always and constantly demand profitability from the objects, and he let himself get carried away by ideas that excited him. And so the objects, even if extraordinarily promising, struggled to make a profit, and so he had to sell his business to others more than once.
With Flos, things went a little like this, although the reality is actually much more complex and multifaceted.
Like so many things, Flos was born somewhat by chance: Biliotti, (representative at the time of Eisenkeil in Merano, and later manager of the future Flos, Ed.), had come to Gavina to pitch his products including those made with cocoon resin. Gavina, who was enamoured of two people, namely the Castiglionis, in particular Pier Giacomo, and Carlo Scarpa, directed him to the Castiglionis and to my father so that they could evaluate what he was proposing. My father was busy with other things, so he suggested I make a start, and I jumped at the chance. The first Castiglioni design using this material, which was new to us and was referred to as ‘cocoon’, were lamps built on a different metal structure from the one previously used by Noguchi. The Castiglionis designed three pieces with this material: a bedside lamp, Gatto, then Viscontea and then Taraxacum. Then I came and designed a product that used the potential of cocoon resin: Fantasmi, which used a different principle from the lamps designed by Noguchi and the Castiglionis. I was interested, and remain interested, in the emergence of the personality of this material linked to my imagination. After being sprayed, cocoon resin shrinks as it dries, and the shape that emerges depends on what you put inside the fabric. Inside Fantasmi, I placed two fishing lines that curved according to the tension of the material.
Gavina took our new products to his shop in San Babila, Milan, almost directly opposite where the Flos headquarters are today. Later, some Brescians joined as partners. They were headed by Gandini, who had a furniture shop in Brescia. The Castiglionis were worried about the change and did not want to stay on as designers with Flos, and I remember being the one who persuaded them otherwise.
Gandini brought the company from Merano to Brescia, and that moment really gave rise to Flos as a properly managed company from a business point of view. The partners at the time were Cassina, Eisenkeil, Gandini and Gavina. Then at some point there was a further reorganization and Gavina, Simoncini, Eisenkeil and Biliotti all left. Bilotti went to work at Venini in Murano and in turn launched VeArt. All people who did good things for design.

Since you were in close contact with the Castiglioni brothers in terms of work, did you never think of taking on a project together?

We felt we had to respond to different poetics. We were in two different worlds, two different cultures. In Venice we have the mist that modifies the light and makes everything much softer. In Milan, you have the roar of engines. So the Castiglioni brothers and I lived in very different situations. The Milan of the 1960s and 1970s was seen as and positioned itself as the centre of the world of design, while I am convinced that design is the result of a common adventure rather than a particular place. I lived in Venice and did not participate in Milanese life, so our interactions were linked to the occasions we had from time to time. In fact, Livio Castiglioni only appeared on the scene from my perspective some time later, when I was a well-established designer. We met in the Triennale or at the Biennale.
Instead, I saw the two other Castiglioni brothers always working as a pair: one started a sentence and the other finished it. When I met them, it was exactly like that: Popo started and Achille finished the sentence.

How did it work at Flos? Did the client suggest the design, or did the designer?

The reason the Castiglionis had considered leaving Flos at the time of the restructuring was a lack of clarity regarding their roles. I proposed a formula that was accepted and lasted for a long time, which consisted essentially in allowing the Castiglionis and me the right to review the company’s product policy, in other words to grant us the shared role of art director. So we were able to make the products that we thought were right, right for us and right for the company, in complete freedom without the marketing man interfering, which would have unavoidably degraded our freedom of expression, as he would be too conditioned by the market. An object was proposed by us autonomously, then accepted or not, but as regards the initial process of creating it, we were entirely free to define that ourselves. And Flos made substantial profits, as Cesare Cassina always pointed out.
One way of explaining how we worked at Flos that comes to mind is to take the example of the Parentesi lamp (Achille Castiglioni, Flos, 1971, Ed.) which was born out of a strange combination of events: the son of the sculptor Manzù was involved in Flos but unfortunately died in an accident, leaving behind the idea of a lamp that could be moved vertically along a tube. Achille Castiglioni became passionate about the idea of the flexible wire passing through the tube. He bent the tube containing the wire to create friction that would hold the lamp at different heights. Magical!

Which object by Pier Giacomo, by the Castiglioni brothers, are you most attached to?

I would say that more than a specific object I am intrigued by their way of grasping a truth in objects that is not so obvious: the bicycle seat mounted on an iron hemisphere providing a kind of self-balancing effect given the very low weight compared to the rather precarious seat; an iron tractor seat with a piece of moulded metal as a support, and they had made a chair.
It’s important to me, that kind of Dada spirit that can grasp the extraordinary nature of things: their ability to grasp something that we don’t usually see because we are too used to seeing the object according to the way it is used. The new system, the new proposal that the Castiglionis were offering, was an act of suspension on which to reflect and find a greater truth. In my opinion, this falls very close to poetry. Poetry is the ability, the intuition, to grasp, through the language of the material being used, whether it be painting, poetry or design, the magical combination of things.
There is no poetry if there is no vibration between two elements that are placed close to each other, so the poetic act is precisely the one capable of vibrating the potential of objects between them. In the context of written poetry, that is, words, a word has in itself infinite meanings, and only some of them can be summoned by the poet to stir emotion in the reader. Emotion emerges from the most hidden and deepest elements of our being. The Castiglionis were born and raised in an environment of great tradition. They are the children of an artist, from whom they have drawn the basic elements of feeling, sensitivity and subtlety of judgement.

So, what you appreciate most in the work of the Castiglionis is its ability to inspire emotion?

Certainly their ability was magical in this regard, even if it was diminished at the same time, as they were also considering the effect they would achieve, but surely that was the right approach and perhaps that is what Gavina believed in most.

Which object by Pier Giacomo, by the Castiglioni brothers, who would like to regenerate?

Every one of those objects has its own history, so I think it’s impossible to change them, let alone improve them. I can’t imagine why someone like me would want to improve them. If I were one of the Castiglionis, I would be very unhappy if someone improved my object in the way we have seen others do.
I also think that the idea of continuing a path that’s already been started by someone else is rather unlikely, because poetics are an individual matter, even if in their case, they expressed it as a pair. At the moment, when these two people have made a journey, I don’t think it’s correct to say that you can continue it: there comes a moment when you end the poem, long or short, good or bad, it doesn’t matter. There is a point at which that poem comes to an end. It can become a reference point for others, but it cannot be changed.

Bearing in mind the theme of regeneration, how do you see this theme in your work as an architect?

Re-generation means reviving life, reviving vitality, restoring movement, etc. In my professional life, I’ve had the opportunity to regenerate things I’ve done, but not in design, because the design product clearly has a different life and also a different intrinsic value: a chair has the value of a chair, however luxurious it is, and so once the cycle of its intended use is over, you move on.
Architecture is a different matter. If I build a factory, the factory building remains even after twenty or thirty years. With Benetton, I was part of a team working to build their first factory, and when the company grew and that building became too small to house production, it was logical to use it for something else.
By regenerating parts and completing elements that were left undone at the time because they were too expensive, it was a breeze to turn the old structure into office space.
As I said, with design objects it is more difficult, although I would like to take the Perpetua lamp that I designed for Flos and remake it using a different technology that significantly increases the length of time between charges, which was three or four hours back then. It seems right to offer this possibility. Back then, Perpetua didn’t do very well because the technology was lacking. Today, with LEDs, it could stay on for three or four days.
Recognizing the inadequacy of the technology is also partly what led to the Toio lamp. The Castiglionis wanted high output for their lamp, but couldn’t use the bulbs that were commercially available. So they took what was available and adapted it to domestic use: a car headlight. By leaving the transformer in view and using parts from a fishing rod, they created a wholly new kind of lamp, with a fun and visually impactful result.

What advice would you have for young people starting out in the field of designing objects or spaces?

If we look back to the culture that the Castiglionis or my father lived in, that of the immediate post-war period, it is clear that we are facing a different reality now.
Back then, we had the academy, which was still very much a product of 18th-century rigour, derived from the philosophy of the Lumières, and endowed students with in-depth knowledge of techniques used in the past. Students had to go and see how a capital was built, how a column was made, why that particular column, what the symbolism was etc. And so students of the academies generally had a firm and systematic understanding of the relationships. This is no longer the case. The present day is a cacophony of problems, of enticements, of illusions, accentuated by television and the internet. All these elements that punctuate our daily lives involve such a waste of time and energy that people no longer have the capacity to educate themselves.
To do a job that revolves around the poetic act, the subtlety necessary for poetry, we need solid foundations, and that is something that today’s society is struggling to offer. If a young person wants to be an architect of poetry and not of building, it is essential that they learn to be attentive and, when they identify a problem, are able to consider it from the right point of view, offering solutions that spark joy.
Despite being about 80 years old, I try to increase my own sensitivity to things. I see that I be amazed by new things because I still want to be amazed!
When you look at a painting, when you look to see, when you look to recognize a great artist, you look for details, you look at it in the most delicate parts, in the most hidden parts, in the exchange between colours, in the finish of the surfaces. Mediocre artists do not reach certain sublime refinements, either because they are not capable of them or because they have not understood or believed them to be necessary. It is the spirit that seeks finesse that always drives us to improve. And young people have to struggle to learn how to look to see.

Tobia Scarpa was born in Venice on January 11, 1935 and began his professional career together with Afra Bianchin in 1957 by realizing his first works at the Venini glass factories in Murano. In 1960 he began collaborating with Dino Gavina and Luciano Benetton, for whom he designed the first factory, the house and the chain of shops curating the image of the company. By the time he graduated in architecture in Venice 1969, he already had an established career. In addition to Benetton, he designed the shop fit-outs for well-known Italian companies, including C&B, Geox and Unifor, as well as the offices of some related establishments.
Winner of the Compasso d’Oro award for the Soriana armchair (1970), he has designed numerous successful products including the Bastiano sofa (1961) and the Vanessa bed (1962) for Gavina, the Fantasma lamp (1962) and Biagio lamp (1968) for Flos; and the Modell 917 armchair (1963) and the Soriana chair (1969) for Cassina.
From 2001 to 2010, he taught at the Faculty of Industrial Design in Venice.
In 2008 he received the Compasso d’Oro award for his career.