The makers’ Great Exhibition

“Everyone should design… to avoid being designed” might sound like something Massimo Banzi would say but they are actually the words of Giulio Carlo Argan, one of the historians who strove hardest to define a democratic design that could mix the technical and the aesthetic to place beauty within everyone’s reach.

This self-same democratic spirit seems now to underpin the thought of the international makers. After all, how could a phenomenon such as that of the “Maker Faire” in Rome be anything but democratic when it drew more than double the expected 45,000 visitors? However, the paths of the makers and designers seem to diverge considerably in terms of aesthetics and the need to formally resolve a design. Seen from the narrow angle of those who love and work in design, many of the 600+ proposals brought to Rome looked more like unquestionably fascinating technological games, also in terms of future expectations, but imbued with an often amateurish level of formal approximation.

After all, on the event’s official website, the makers themselves describe themselves as the “…technological hobbyist of the 21st century. They have a strong passion for technology, design, art, sustainability, alternative business models.” Let us run through the points in this statement, mentally revisiting the images still tangled in the close-knit mesh of the memory a few days later.

Technology certainly was discussed in Rome and we saw many manifestations of it, such as robots that follow traces to develop artificial senses that perceive heat, water, marker signs or movement. Potential applications? The unanimous answer was: endless! From medicine to toasters, from farming to home automation. Speaking of this last subject, the house of the future was the focus of a Hackathon or technological marathon involving three companies – Elica, Slamp and Valcucine – which awarded prizes to the best techno-domestic projects.

It was also a delight to discover the existence of an Italian institute for technology that funds studies by young graduates exploring new bio-plastic materials or sensors that look like equipment for water-diviners of the third millennium. The mass public were certainly impressed by the self-propelled robots and clothes that, instead of glittering with crystals, employ LEDs to interact with those wearing them (CuteCircuit).

The open-source hardware – continuing in our examination of the Maker-definition – could not but include the small-size revolution: Arduino, of course, has completely changed the ball game and was seen here in its basic applications for neophytes but also in more advanced ones for experts. A deluge of 3D printers confirmed their growing popularity and potential, also in terms of possible raw materials: no longer just plastic but also organic substances and food, from pasta to chocolate, in fascinating projects; it is however unlikely, at least in Italy, that granny’s old Imperia pasta machine will be replaced by a 3D Printer.

The sustainability front revealed some of the contradictions of this universe, too big and too free to propose a consistent programme. On the one hand, some projects were convincing because driven by excellent intentions. The most striking were Open Galileo’s VentolONE, a wind-turbine kit that is easily sourced and assembled; and WASP, a large printer using extruded clay to build houses in countries short of industrial materials and skilled labour. On the other hand, obvious scepticism was generated by the huge quantity of small gadgets in raw plastic that filled dozens of stands and square metres.

On average uglier and more pointless than those churned out by the current industrial model, which the 2.0 inventor movement would like to overtake but certainly not by proposing degrowth – a model that moves us straight on to the aforementioned design but still a scarce presence in its current state. You have the impression of being at a seismic turning point but where the advances made by a nascent technology are matched by an impasse in form. In other words, the medium does not yet appear to have found its true expression and the ensuing invention of a new language.

Something similar happened at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, when the new machine technology was creating goods that still resembled the products of animal or artisan traction, in forms that echoed styles of the past that could be easily recognised and understood. Users back then were reassured with ornaments and moulding but do we actually need these infantile solutions? Will this really generate the famous alternative business models? The factual reply, hidden behind all the mass enthusiasm, seems still hazy. This may only to be expected and, as argued by Baudrillard in The System of Objects, 1968, we can only hope that future technical efficiency will prompt a new imagination.

Fortunately, “Make in Italy” took the trouble to remind us of the difference between self-managed innovation in an “Esperanto design” and that governed by a mature professional language with an exhibition of the finest Italian production, from Olivetti to the first 3D-printed car, following a path of technological innovation that was, as in the intentions of the curators Banzi and Luna, capable of “narrating the past to inspire the future” – and of giving Italy its rightful role as a protagonist in this - perhaps not philologically exemplary - tale but one with an good structure, partly thanks to an exhibition design by dotdotdot: attractive, functional and resolved, as things designed and conceived in their entirety should be.

© all rights reserved