Computer or pencil: how did great Italian maestros design at the turn of the millennium?

On the eve of year 2000, photographer Ramak Fazel visited masters such as Sottsass, Magistretti and Castiglioni in their studios to discover the tools of their creative work at the dawn of the digital age.

The turn of the millennium, the year 2000 to be more precise, is remembered for many reasons, but the idea of a digital revolution, of a promising Internet age, of the penetration of computers into all aspects of life and work, was certainly a major part of the cultural debate 25 years ago, between collective delusions such as the millennium bug and other much more tangible rethinking of spaces and practices. “What are the tools of creativity used by top designers today?" asked Domus in issue 821, the last of 1999. “Do the traditional ones survive or have they been supplanted by their inured electronic heirs?” Alongside an essay by Daniele Del Giudice, the answer was to be found in the photographs by Ramak Fazel – a long-time Domus friend who accompanied us this year on an exploration of Gio Ponti's Rai in Milan – portraits of eight Italian masters of design and architecture met in their workspaces, part of a larger reportage. Sottsass, Magistretti, Mangiarotti, Riva, Mari, Zanuso, Bellini, Castiglioni, their closest collaborators and their Milanese studios; the archives, the pantries, the desks of designers "born ‘with a pen in their hand’ and who have, gradually but inexorably, had to come to terms with the invasion of information technology”.

Domus 821, December 1999

Computer and creativity. A homage to great designers

Quali sono gli strumenti della creatività dei grandi progettisti oggi? Sopravvivono quelli più tradizionali o sono stati invece soppiantati dai loro agguerriti eredi elettronici? La risposta l’abbiamo affidata a un racconto molto personale di Daniele Del Giudice e agli otto ritratti di altrettanti importanti architetti e designer milanesi colti da Ramak Fazel nell’intimità del luogo di lavoro, solo una selezione che fa parte di un più vasto reportage personale del fotografo. Una sorta di omaggio a questi maestri del design nati “con la penna in mano” e trovatisi, gradualmente ma inesorabilmente, a fare i conti con l’invasione dell’informatizzazione.

Domus 821, December 1999

Pencil, paper, ruler. Stencil, compass, pastels. Set-square, paper, pencil. Or an old Olivetti and a few sheets of typing paper, I might say in the case of other forms of expression. For me it was not an Olivetti, but a more antiquated Underwood, rising up like a vast altar or monument to the Unknown Soldier. I had dug it out of the cellar when I was eleven years old, and just cleaning and lubricating it, tightening its screws and getting the thing back in working order was more engrossing even than Meccano. In the afternoons I would sit on a pile of telephone directories to reach the keyboard, and the writing was there; it was the typewriter itself, a machine for telling stories, a machine which by itself told the stories that I used to tell my playmates by word of mouth, true or invented, to torment them. The pages without lines to guide the writing on its way, indicated that that type of paper had nothing to do with exercise-books, nothing to do with school. 

Domus 821, December 1999

The typewriter possessed the characteristics of print, at least when pressed; it was printing within easy reach. What the typewriter wrote came out printed, that is, objective; just as for me the novels and stories that I read were objective because they were in print. Years afterwards I changed the old and monumental Underwood for an equally old American Royal, which was very small and light and portable, in its stiff black case. So portable that I carried it about with me for decades, everywhere and always, even when I was sure I wouldn’t be using it. It was the tool of my trade; if I had a tool it meant that I too had a ‘trade’, or something I could think of, on a par with others, as “my trade”. The only trouble was I couldn’t take it out of its case like a violin and improvise something on the spur of the moment, like a strolling player in a restaurant, and then go round the tables holding out the case of my Royal to collect the money. Abandoning the typewriter for the first computer was therefore a stupidly procrastinated, ridiculously painful and ultimately salutary, liberating decision. Everyone has their own rituals for getting the best out of themselves or what little they can offer; and if somebody had asked me what story-telling and writing were I would have started out by showing them, even much later on in life, how to clean a typewriter, with a needle the wrong way round to remove the caked ink from the hollow parts of the letters without damaging the lead of their bodyline. I was much comforted, years later again, when I heard that Carlo Scarpa used to begin his architecture course at the University by illustrating the best way to sharpen a pencil.

Domus 821, December 1999

 The reasons why I mistrusted the computer at first were opposite to those for which as a small boy I had abandoned myself to the typewriter and identified myself with it. For if then the typewriter print gave the idea of something really done, now instead, the perfect computer print, with its imitation book layout and definitive look, in short, the aesthetic perfection of what I saw in the monitor, left me very unconvinced and wary of its contents. It went beyond. It didn’t take much, however, to realise that the computer and writing have a deep-rooted connection, that they are made for each other: indeed, they are made of each other. We use a machine language, an alphanumeric code and an alphabet for us totally without common sense, to compose alphabets and texts in the form of common sense. And ‘homepage’, the English term for Web sites, says clearly, and says right from the start, that cyberspace is made up simply of very fast reading and writing in the real time of thousandths of seconds, and thus understandably arranged in home pages. The home page is built with blocks of HTML text, even the icons and images and drawings are made of alphanumeric codes and letters; with sequences of characters as its floors, rooms, furniture, and everything contained in the home.

Domus 821, December 1999

It is natural that new objects, especially those engraved in the flesh and bones of our work, should leave us each time firmly convinced or deeply perplexed. They are objects, nothing more, as were the set-square or the old Olivetti. But in their nature as objects they embody at least a couple of questions: where does the work start from? How does it change? They look friendly, they save a lot of effort or time or make possible what had previously been impossible. But in so doing they shift the threshold from which the essence of what we call elaboration or invention springs. And if they resolve a lot, they demand even more. As has always been the case.

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