Humanities Information

By Richard Bann

The few brave souls who have penetrated the vast territory of Achille Castiglioni's work have encountered serious obstacles to understanding the secret of his unique design approach.

When you read about his objects you usually come across phrases like "industrial poetics", objet trouvé, "glorification of standardisation" and the like, but never any satisfactory explanation of how his designs always manage to be so good.

And yet, what might seem impossible to explain is in fact - as the decalogue of the "Fucsia" lamp published here makes clear - the outcome of a genuine method: the ability to rationalise before, during and after design each and every mental operation involved in finding a technical and formal remedy for ailments in the world of objects, which Castiglioni's designs quickly diagnose and dispel like aspirin tablets.

Castiglioni is a sort of Cartesian Houdini: there is no place for trickery in his conjuror's method. Faced with the task of inventing a new lamp, which essentially meant rethinking the ceiling lamp (something that he had already had on his mind a few years back, and had shown signs of tackling in the "Taraxacum" lamp, also for Flos), he carefully screened all the possible solutions to the problem and eventually came up with the logical (a posteriori) answer: once assembled, the lamp would generate many different lamp typologies, ceiling lamp included.

For those of you interested in the philology of design, the Flos "Fucsia" lamp is especially interesting because it capitalises on all Castiglioni's previous lighting designs. In fact, it contains all the lamps he has already designed, which turns it into a sort of spot-the-difference game: if you look hard enough, you realise that it incorporates features from his other objects.

One hint only: the silicon elastomer ring at the base of the conical glass diffuser is like the ones on his crystal glasses for Danese.

In the end this is more than philology, of course: the well-known déjà-vu effect that has made the fortune of so many objects that somehow seem familiar even though they are totally new, comes from skilful re-use of existing forms, signs and archetypal surfaces.

A magician like Castiglioni, who bases his art on collective recollection of modern material culture, could hardly have failed to achieve impressive results with this effect. As always, what he mysteriously succeeds in conveying is the sheer pleasure of invention. S.C.

To a professional architectural community like Italy's, condemned to sterile abstinence in its own country, the reconstruction of Berlin may truly seem a longed-for oasis in a desert land. But future interventions in the city call for greater sensitivity, especially when, irrespective of the good intentions of Renzo Piano's overall plan which only offers yet another demonstration of his long-acknowledged professional skills, the two parallel redevelopment schemes for Potsdamer Platz seem destined to degenerate in yet another exhibitionist display of personal styles.

Doubtless this will provide a wealth of fascinating material to delight future entomologists of architecture, but it will be a good deal less interesting as a valid example of urban redesign, restorative reconstruction and architectural contextualisation.

The outcome will probably be a showcase for popular - and wholly symptomatic - displays of contemporary languages and styles. Berlin - an amalgam of distinct communities and districts, a major metropolis and a fascinating historical phenomenon in its own right - has magnanimously accepted its new role as an architectural laboratory.

But it is also a city of contradictions. Its building and energy-saving regulations - no building may exceed twenty-two metres in height and, even in new buildings, lifts can only be installed beyond the fourth floor - are unusually severe for a Mecca of modern architecture.