Emiliano Gandolfi (architect)
The globalization of design is largely due to manufacturing needs - as Starck puts it, the higher the numbers, the lower the cost. It is also a question of marketing. Some firms have better prospects of circulating their brandname and hence their objects on a world scale. Conversely, the local situation is growing richer and more florid, though not necessarily in any vernacular sense of getting back to tradition. Local means using local resources, intellectual and material, to create unusual design and above all invent new facets of practicality. Such design is emerging but it has always existed. Many objects around us are not used as they should be. I've seen coffee being made on car radiators down in Puglia. Things are always being put to different uses. Such creative spontaneity creates the local design conditions. I find that although globalization is tending to level down production, on a local level there is still a constant emergence of know-how and new ideas for application. I suspect this state of things will go on expanding. People are fed up with all having the same products. Big manufacturers like Ikea will sweep the board with their low costs, but the trend will also be to customize, making products unique by one's own hand and, hopefully, creativity. Inventing new uses for mass-produced objects by simply adding something. Maybe Joseph Beuys' project will be a winner: he wants us all to be artists.