When Domus met Rodolfo Dordoni (1954-2023)

Profession, understanding and intuition, even before inspiration; elaboration before conception – “More than designing, I elaborate” – proportion before any other design principle, especially for interiors. Over the years of his career, Rodolfo Dordoni was able to build  the aesthetics of entire eras piece by piece, as much with entire ranges of furniture born from explicit production requests as with objects that stood out as icons he liked to remember, such as the Lumière lamp for Foscarini and the Suitcase armchair for Minotti. The Lombardy-based manufacturer being the first to announce Dordoni’s death is one last eloquent sign of a life dedicated to design and spent intrinsically as an art director, for some of Italy’s most important brands such as Artemide, Cappellini, FontanaArte, Foscarini, Roda, and Minotti, not to mention countless other collaborations. In 2019 Domus had visited Dordoni in the large open space of his Milanese studio, and it was an opportunity to collect from him a true manifesto of profession and vision of space and life, which was then published later in October, on issue 1039. Below you will find the interview by Cecilia Fabiani published on that issue.

What’s your idea of workspace? How do you experience your office?
My concept of workspace is on display at my studio. It’s a big open-plan space. The openness helps create serenity and equality. I want the youngsters here to feel that they are not just part of a work process, but also belong to a network of contacts and relationships. Of course there are pros and cons. When you have to share everything, there is an initial form of resistance. By the end of the year, we want to grow in size, meaning an increase in people and space. There are about 20 of us now, but the aim is to work with more ease. After years of maintaining an identical approach, I now wish to create a versatile interior where I can integrate my hobbies, mainly art and cooking. The architecture department, led by my partner Luca Zaniboni, will have a technical focus, while I will dedicate myself to a more flexible design department. My time spent at the office will not be used only for design work, but include things like organising exhibitions.

What about your house? Which is your favourite room? What are the most important characteristics?
The time I spend at home is limited essentially to mornings and nights. My favourite part is the kitchen. I love cooking and having friends over for dinner – not for business meetings or public relations. The kitchen is a place of sheer conviviality to be shared with dear friends. The bathroom is important for its intimate, non-showy dimension. I have an elementary but comfortable bathroom, big enough to not be limited to function only. Two elements should never be missing in a house: light and a view. The latter adds interest, and if you have a view, it should be enhanced by the interior design.

What are the differences between designing a home interior and a public one?
If you possess a sense of space and proportion, there are not many differences. Designing a public space is like making a product: you work with companies whose production is serial, you design according to your own taste without being self-referential, and you try to be appreciated by as many people as possible. If your making a private interior, there is an exchange of opinion. If the clients are a couple, there can be diverging ideas between them. Working for the public realm requires strategy; working for private clients is more complex. It requires convincing them and sometimes guiding them psychologically. What are you most interested in when you design an interior? What do you aim for?
When it comes to interiors, what distinguishes one designer from another is the sense of proportion, the combination of materials, the use of colour, the choice of dimensions. It is important for the result to possess coherence.

How have interiors changed over the past 10 or 20 years?
The biggest change is the way the common people furnish their house. The public has evolved thanks to means of communication, the advertising strategies of manufacturers, and the possibilities given by low prices. It used to be that companies made stand-alone pieces of furniture and were recognisable for their type of product. Now, they build their identity on the taste of an entire collection that they illustrate with photographs, displays and websites. This helps consumers read the proposals in their entirety. The better education regarding interior design has led to the fact that regular houses contain reasoned choices of furniture lines instead of individual pieces unconnected to one another.

Designing furniture, lamps and other elements of interiors implies having your own vision of living. What is your aesthetic, your design philosophy?
To me, an object has meaning when it has a reason to be in its context. I have always tried to make products that are part of a collection, a family of items conceived for a certain environment. I imagine where these objects will be used, in order to make them stronger and flank them with other objects. I do not perceive them as being used alone. I’m a pragmatic man, so my main objective is that the product functions immediately, not at some future point, and that it lasts for a long time. What gives you inspiration for your designs?
Design is a profession, even if it is done with enthusiasm. The concept of inspiration might be more suited to the ambit of art. I work with just a few companies, but in a continuous way, because that’s how I gain a precise focus of the designs I make. They start with the company itself, its character, its range of products. I design couches for a number of manufacturers. They must all be different and coherent with their respective product range. I do not have projects lying around waiting for future use. All my products are conceived ad hoc. When a new company approaches me, I immediately say that I am uninterested in a one-time collaboration. I do not want to risk making a bad product and not even having the opportunity to correct it. Working with continuity and constancy allows you to apply a method, which makes things easier for everybody involved. Initially, all this might be read as me being maniacal, but then the method acquires the value of a code. Obsessions are what distinguish one designer from the next.

Are there products that identify you more than others even years after their creation? To which are you most attached?
The ones that originated more out of intuition than reason, such as the Lumiere lamp by Foscarini and the Suitcase armchair (1997) by Minotti. I had been collaborating with Foscarini for a few years, and had become a bit involved in the artistic direction there. At one meeting, I was explaining how the company’s name was Venetian, from Murano, yet it did not carry all the characteristics of its roots. Nor did it have those of a technological company. The traits that seemed defects could become advantages and make us versatile, I posited. We could use the artisanship of Murano together with technology. On a sheet of paper, I sketched a lamp standing on an aluminium tripod with a blown-glass shade. The drawing represented the company’s strategy. Then it was taken and faithfully turned into a lamp that now, 30 years later, is still a bestseller. The Suitcase armchair, available in crocodile-printed or pony-skin printed leather, was born almost out of provocation. The Minottis had contacted me to design for them, and I needed to test their commitment to following my reasoning regarding a product range, its link to fashion, the idea of collections and not single products. It was a way to make them understand that I was bound to be “extravagant” (by way of exaggeration, that is – I do not consider myself extravagant) and uncompromising. They were all ears. Ever since, we have been enjoying a lengthy and fruitful collaboration. How has your way of designing products changed over the years?
My way of designing has not changed. The many products made over time have become references that I continue to work on, a bit like test models. The product is an evolution. More than designing, I elaborate, make changes to prototypes and remodel things. My work is less conceptual than it used to be; it’s fewer drawings and more manual skills. Which type of interior design or product would you like to work on for the first time?
I’d like to design a small hotel with a limited number of rooms, each different, each conceived for different types of people and lifestyles. Instead of snobbishly saying, “This is what the hotel will look like,” I’d say, “Hotel? Here are many small hotels.”