You can’t see it, but you can divine it in his work. Every piece of furniture, every interior or house, every page of graphics designed by Piero Lissoni is in opposition: industrially spare and sensuous, understated but luxurious. The 50-year-old Milanese designer is
himself full of contradictions: idealism and pragmatism, mischievousness paired with conviction. He says it’s impossible to isolate the several disciplines in which he works but considers himself an architect first. Though he doesn’t believe that design can change the world, he is an old-world humanist who responds innately to the human applications of his work.
Lissoni earned his architecture degree at Milan Polytechnic but also studied in Barcelona, Hamburg, New York City, Amsterdam, and San Francisco. He established Lissoni Associati in 1986, a year after he became the art director at Boffi, a position he still holds today.
On a visit to New York to promote the launch of new products for Boffi, Fritz Hansen, Kartell, Living Divani, Porro, and Cassina, Lissoni is seated on one of his own Mex sofas in the Cassina showroom, screwing up his face after a sip of Manhattan-made espresso (“This is a strange creation. It is Frankenstein coffee”). If he is exhausted by meetings, it is impossible to know. He thinks before he speaks and has a sonorous way with English that combines short and long sentences in a constant present tense that is both bare and poetic.
I use my spirit, my behaviors, and my special language, but I modify that language each time for the different factory, attitude, and human measurements. In the romantic point of view, the designer becomes one with the idea, but for me it’s not true. It’s a day-by-day discussion [with the client], and without this discussion, a strong collaboration, it’s quite impossible to make something.
First, it’s a joke. But, second, I don’t lie about the story of uncomfortable ideas. We sometimes choose an uncomfortable solution or uncomfortable people, you know?
I don’t divide aesthetics and functionality; but, honestly, if I have to choose between them, surely I choose the first. I never choose only the functionality. You have some incredibly ugly chairs in the office and your back position is perfect, but you watch the pieces and you think, My god, what is that? It’s a torture machine. I prefer to sit on an uncomfortable, beautifully designed aluminum chair designed by Eames, why not? From time to time, I like to design something uncomfortable. And everybody uses my pieces, and they talk every day with me.
“Bastard, why are you destroying my life?” In any case, it’s good for them. We’re married to the idea of everything needing to be comfortable, but can you imagine what kind of boring life that would be? Everything comfortable is not possible.
I prefer to connect these different worlds inside the same universe. This idea is quite Milanese. Because our tradition, it is like in the Renaissance time. We learn that we are not only designers. A Renaissance man, he was a poet, a doctor, a painter, an engineer, a man on the street. Now the behavior is quite Anglo-Saxon, everyone specializes.
I think this is a mistake. Now you must stay inside the limits. You are to transform yourself into a special genius—but the genius is inside of a cell, and you are to open your cell, and you are to talk with another genius in the cell nearby you, and the other genius, they are to open the door and talk with a genius in another cell nearby them, and it continues. It’s not enough only to talk about the engineering and design and style and language, and so on; you have to connect everything. I prefer my Renaissance. It’s
a schizophrenic idea; but at the same time, it’s for me a super-modern point of view.
Yes, it’s a terrible problem. It’s a terrible problem because now everybody uses this idiot computer, and they design some un-believable shapes sometimes totally without reasons. They modify the shapes and some technologies, but we lose our tradition and we lose our future. You don’t have any idea how many people show me unbelievable drawings designed by the best electronic system but totally without sense. It’s only
to make you say wow.
Listen, we will never stop using technology. When we were in the Stone Age, we were using technology. We used the correct technology for the time. Nobody jumps from the past into the future in one day. The evolution is a day-by-day evolution.
Now I ask, “Why do we have to produce this piece in carbon fiber, why?” And they say, “Because it is modern,” and I say, “But what is modern?”
It’s very narrow. Some designers make some amazingly bad work and they say, “I am modern.” I think, If you are the future, well, I prefer to stay in the past. But the new generation of people, for example, they do electronics very well, but they don’t do it very well mentally. You have to use your brain. You have to use your special sensibility. It is in your eyes and your hands and your brain.
Before, it was not possible to make a simulation. Now everybody designs with a computer, and it makes possible incredible movement and shapes and you think, What is that? Who lives in this house?
Sometimes I ask, Please, silence! Can you imagine a world full of Frank Gehrys, it’s genius, but can you imagine 100 copies of Frank Gehry, 1,000 copies of Rem Koolhaas, or 10,000 copies of Zaha Hadid? Of course, the original is very good, but it’s a nightmare. You switch on a computer, and then you build some incredibly sophisticated, good-looking images that are totally without reason.
My best issue is that I have a good cutter. I cut with my scissors in my mind. When I start to design, I use my mental scissors and they cut and cut and cut because I like to see the skeleton of the project.
Yes, because I am super optimistic
Not me. I’m European and I’m a bit stiff, a bit aristocratic for that reason. I like to draw by myself with my papers. Every kind of paper is good. Napkin or good paper, it’s good for me. I like to make a lot of sketches.
I design for myself, honestly, because I am the first client. It’s not an arrogant point of view; it’s actually a normal point of view. I’m never thinking that a good design changes life for people. If you like, you buy; if you don’t like, you don’t buy. I think to myself, Would you buy this one? If the answer is no, we stop immediately.
Probably, I would design a daughter.
We are open to discussion about that. This is a good project. A son is okay, too. I think the real quality of a project is its human dimension. To design children is a project with a fantastic and strongly human scale.
