A private conversation with Marco Campardo

I identify myself with a certain simplicity, avoiding recognizability. Everything I do is guided by the process. It doesn’t have that shape because I designed it, but because I developed a process that generates it, as happened with the Jello and Sugar Shapes collections. A method that sometimes makes me feel powerless.

I’m paralyzed by the idea of arbitrarily making an aesthetic decision with a pencil. I hardly draw anything from scratch, and I’m increasingly asked to think of a material and do what I want with it: an almost instinctive thing that is refined later. I love finding solutions to problems of work through intuitive intelligence, something not easily described. Richard Sennett (Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics) attempted to explain it in his book Craftsman.  I would like to experiment with self-generating objects, without any kind of control over form.

I get excited when what I’m observing communicates and reflects intelligence. To me this is the height of expressiveness. Everything decorative fails to move me in the least.

I use design as a speculative medium to test my materials and processes. I have an attitude towards matter that leads to aesthetic concepts of beauty lying outside the canons, in other dimensions.

It’s a matter of affinity in a path of encounters. People help you grow and give you confidence because they understand you and grasp what you’re doing. 

After graduating in Industrial Design from the IUAV in Venice I went into graphic design in a satisfactory way with collaborations and successful projects, like the ones for the MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, or the Venice Biennale. After that I couldn’t restrain my curiosity in the third dimension, so in 2019 I left Italy for London, to give a shape to my interests.

Graphic design is a service, while in product design you have to make the product, make it attractive to the public and be able to sell it. I feel it’s great to move into different fields, this typically Italian multidisciplinarity still exists. When you teach in England you realize there’s a specialization in the field. The humanistic approach at Italian design universities, on the other hand, provides you with a broader culture to draw on, with a mental preparation so great that you can decide how  to express yourself. I studied under Michele De Lucchi and Tobia Scarpa. I remember I followed the courses held by Francesco Messina, Franco Battiato’s graphic designer.  I see him as a mentor who straightened me out because I was still a prankster, but perhaps he decided to help me because he saw some glimmer in me. He had an all-round design culture that I still carry in my heart.

I like the small dimension of design, what I call a slow burn, without exposing or distorting myself too much, which I feel is my own way. The beauty of doing things consistently, with having something to say to someone who listens, without compromising. I want to see how much intuitive intelligence I’ll be able to express in my objects.

Companies in Italy, and elsewhere, are conservative, disinclined to take risks and conduct research. We live in a historical phase when it’s not necessary to create new products. So it will be increasingly difficult for the industry to give a designer the opportunity to produce an object, which is why there will increasingly be those who will make, sell and distribute independently.

The young people I teach (Product and Furniture design at the Istituto Marangoni in London, ed.) belong to a generation not far from mine, but I feel they’re experiencing difficulty in tracing a path planned over the long term. This worries me a lot, so I always try to trigger something in their brains. I also think that we should always have the courage to pursue our dreams: you have to believe in them till the end.

The attitude to life has changed. I don’t know how far social media have contributed to this, but young people are no longer able to appreciate the present. They constantly burn it as if it were a goal to be reached in an ephemeral way, without construction, hope and foresight. Trying it as an experience is an incomprehensible concept, the meaning of the avant-garde completely ignored. I’m also very concerned about this widespread attitude to individuality.

First of all, we have to avoid promoting false myths, such as ecological solutions that are unfeasible. For instance, I’m interested in working with plastic by addressing its limits, including the problem of downcycling, of the non-recyclable recycled. The theme of sustainability is obviously present in my thoughts.

I’ll be doing a semi-personal exhibition devoted to colored resin seats in the AMO, Ambra Medda and Veronica Sommaruga’s new platform, celebrating the handmade in a kaleidoscope of objects from different ages and cultures, united through the exploration of colors, forms and materials.

Absolute. It makes me realize the direction I’ve taken is the right one, giving feedback that certainly does not feel like confirmation.

A carpet. It would be a challenge to me to raise the bar of my limits, to continue to be curious about the subject.

I have very changeable ideas.