10/14-10/21 - Achille Castiglioni and workshop

I'm summarizing the classes from 14th and 21th october in one post, because in both of them the subject was the industrial designer Achille Castiglioni.

In the beginning of the first class, each of the students made a short presentation about their works and then the professor talked about Castiglioni and some of his works. Achille Castiglioni was a very famous Italian Industrial designer. A lot of his inspirations came from everyday things and he often made use of ordinary materials. For him it was very important to use the minimum amount of materials to obtain forms with maximum effect. Castiglioni had a very playful person, always loved to "play" with the objects and this could be seen in his works, his projects should have a friendly relationship with the user. In the class we saw pictures of his works and some products like the "sleek spoon", a very interesting spoon that was conceived to Kraft mayonnaise jars. This spoon has a very interesting design and the purpose was to facilitate and improve the removal of the mayonnaise from the jar, since the curvatures of the spoon matched the curvatures of the jar.

                                                              Castiglioni's sleek spoon

Other very interesting project and perhaps the most iconic project of Castiglioni was the "Sella stool", that is basically a phone stool. Its a bike's saddle adapted into a spherical iron base, that gives a dynamic balance while seated.  This object was made in order to sit while in one's feet, because in the fifties the houses used to have wall phones, so the person was forced to stand while using the phone. And then the professor talked about the design aproaches of Castigliani:

- Redesign: it's the reformulation of an existing design, in order to improve it.

- Ready made design: It's the creation of a new product with parts from other products.

- Metaphor: it's when the design has the reference of another product, it's a way to play with the form.

At the end of this class, professor Yamazaki started a workshop session with "ready made design" and the results were very interesting!