“My dream is not to have a style that is recognizable. I want to have an idea process that is recognizable. ” — Raffaella Mangiarotti, Industrial Designer
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Jon Miller
One of the goals of the WORKING project is to remind ourselves of the human effort buried in so much of what's around us. A loaf of bread contains the labor of thousands of people. Someone drove the tractor that planted the wheat; someone mined the ore from which the tractor was made. Someone milled the flour; someone pressed the oil; someone mined the salt. Someone ground the peanuts for the truck driver's sandwich. Someone tapped the rubber for the wheels of the supermarket's shopping cart.
Of course not all the labor is physical. Look deep into that loaf of bread and you'll find bankers, accountants, scientists, secretaries, architects, and graphic artists. You'll find politicians and tax collectors, health inspectors and extension workers. Some of these people are your neighbors; others live on the far side of the planet. The point is that people all over the world are getting up every morning, marching off to work, putting their time, energy, passion, and skill into making you a slice of toast.
Imagine the number of people embedded in the toaster!
That was the thinking that led me to Raffaella Mangiarotti, an industrial designer in Milan, Italy. Industrial designers, it seemed to me, are the ultimate "embeds." They're the anonymous people who decide how the things around us look and feel. Their invisible fingerprints are everywhere.
I discovered Mangiarotti on the Internet. I was looking for someone who designed everyday objects—cell phones, vacuum cleaners, digital cameras. The web is full of sites about designer furniture and jewelry and lighting, but finding the names behind more mundane things is difficult. Then I stumbled on a note on a design blog about a hair dryer Mangiarotti had invented with her partner, Matteo Bazzicalupo. The writer marveled that they'd gone ahead and built a working model without support from a manufacturer.
I tracked down their website, deepdesign.it. The hair dryer was there; so was a list of technical patents (among them a "toothbrush structure" and a cell phone SIM card system). There were photos of ordinary objects (toilet brush, tape dispenser, electric broom) along with some wildly creative stuff (floating lounge chair, zip-up dog bed, portable sound-and-light show). I was especially drawn to a strangely voluptuous centripetal-force washing machine and its equally voluptuous accessories (including pudgy little clothespins that would look at home in a Pixar film).
There was also a statement of philosophy, including this: "The functional geometry of an orange section or that of a peapod... help[s] us understand the degree to which an industrial product can evolve towards a pure economy of form, without compromised styling..."
If anyone could teach me about industrial design, I thought, Raffaella Mangiarotti was the person.
