Loredana Mascheroni: What are the reasons of this long design process?
Jasper Morrison: The reason the development of this project took so long is that I had never done an outdoor furniture project before. Besides, Kettal knew very well what they wanted from the project and it took me some time to tune in to the kind of language they were looking for. What they wanted was something very neutral and that was visually very lightweight.
What was wrong your first ideas?
The first proposal I made was for the chair hadn't the right code. The reasons were many: it was not a chair that could be made into a family, it was not stackable, it had rather more a language of a bench than a chair. The turning point was when the production manager showed me some images of rather classical garden furniture: I slowly began to absorb the history and the right language, and I started to speak a new language. The first piece to be ready was the chair. When you have the chair, it is easier to continue with the rest of the pieces of a collection.
Kettal has a good engineering department, able to solve any problem. We met more or less every two months for the last two years at least, it has been a big work and an interesting project, we have been through many prototypes to get to the complete collection but I think the result justifies the effort.
This year there are a lot of projects for the outdoors proposed even by non specialised companies.
Do you remember that ten years ago it was kitchen and then it was bathroom and now it is outdoors… there is always an area that is rooming. Outdoor is rooming because of smoking laws in Europe, you can't smoke in a restaurant so suddenly outdoor becomes more interesting. And then also people want to spend more space outdoor and enjoy outdoor life.
This trend is everywhere apart from Edra… This is probably my thirty-fifth Salone. I have seen this trend come and go. One edition is more restrained, then it can be more flowery, then people get bored and someone reinvents the decorative look. But maybe we are in a moment where there is less desire to express something exotic, something very luxurious. On the other end there is the Far East market, which needs that luxury. As usually there is room for everybody.
This is probably my thirty-fifth Salone. I have seen this trend come and go. One edition is more restrained, then it can be more flowery, then people get bored and someone reinvents the decorative look
I think platforms like Kickstarter can be very good for certain kinds of innovative projects which have a big potential, like a watch that can be connected to iPhone, for products that didn't exist before and that have a big demand… But it's not going to replace companies and designers who work seriously.
