HelveticaObjectifiedUrbanized: The Complete Interviews: The Design Trilogy Interviews by Gary Hustwit

Author:Gary Hustwit [Hustwit, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Design / General
ISBN: 9780989532150
Publisher: Versions Publishing
Published: 2015-02-11T18:30:00+00:00

Paola Antonelli

(PA)/

October 7, 2008

New York

Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design as well as the Director of R&D at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Paola has worked on exhibitions such as Humble Masterpieces, which celebrated traditionally unheralded design icons such as the paper clip; Design and the Elastic Mind, which considered the relationship between design and technology; and Talk to Me, which looked at design and the communication of people and objects.

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Gary Hustwit — Okay, for starters, I’d like you to define what design is.

Paola Antonelli — Oh God!

GH — Industrial design, product design, what they both entail as an industry. I’d also like to get a better idea of what a designer’s role is.

PA — Well, I’ve been collecting definitions of design, really, for a few years. I have about 172, and yesterday I found some more on a website. It’s so encompassing, just the noun itself, that you can say anything you want about it. I have my own definition, the one that works for me and the one that also shows which kind of design I’m interested in.

To me, really good design is what takes revolutions and progress and makes them into objects that we can use. I like that push forward that designers give to us by taking innovation and bringing it home, in a way—making it into things that we can use. That’s my kind of design.

GH — And how would you describe the role of the designer?

PA — Designers are at people’s service, in an ideal world. What I tend to say is that designers almost take a Hippocratic oath, as if they were doctors. That’s how they differentiate themselves from artists, because sometimes what they do formally looks like art. They come up with prototypes, with scenarios, with concepts, but in truth, they always have this idea of servicing people, sometimes their clients.

They have different ways of working, but what they have in common is that they bring together teams, and they act as synthesizers of goals and of means. There’s the goal of the manufacturer, and then there’s the means: the kind of production plans that you have, the budget, the marketing plan, the object, the function. It really is an amazing role that they have of bringing things together, and it’s quite unique. I don’t know too many other professions that have the same kind of modus operandi. Maybe architects, but architects do it for one thing, and designers have to have an idea and then see this idea realized in sometimes millions of objects.

It’s a really, really tough job, because the distance between the perfection of the idea and the final object is really big. You have to be able to defend your idea and at the same time understand the needs of everybody around you so that, in the end, your idea is still in the object.

GH — What are your feelings about objects in general?

PA — Objects are fantastic. I

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