Last year we celebrated the 200 year anniversary of Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, who stated that, in the course of time, not the strongest would survive, but the most adaptable. Humans are constantly evolving, even though our arrogance leads us to believe we are the final product. Did this thought ever occur to you? I have always wondered how we would look like in a couple of million, or billion years. To make this constant evolution easier, Mother Nature has created a few improved human beings with the capability of transforming objects into extensions of our bodies, and vice-versa.
Exactly one year ago, I was wondering in the streets of Milan with a somber face. I had moved to the city less than a year before to work as a designer agent, someone who would find projects and connect designers with companies. Everything sounded like a pink dream, except that I arrived with a backpack and not one contact in Milan, on the edge of probably the worst global economic crisis to the day.
Impulsively, not to say stupidly, I decided to rent a space for a show during the Salone del Mobile 2009. I wanted to give designers the opportunity to show their work even in a year when big companies were playing safe and going for big star designers. The challenge was that I had no design to show, no concept, no idea, no money. I had to think and focus on what the public and designers longed during that passionate week. With thousands of companies and designers fighting for spaces and attention, what else could I offer? How could I, if only for a week, be the designer of a great show and touch the hearts of our visitors and inspire a young generation of designers?
The answer was simple: Hope materialized as exhibition. International designers flew in from all corners of the globe, great art shared the space with great design, and visitors bought products from the show and learned with designers via workshops and design talks. So I transformed a basement at Superstudio into a human power plant, seven days of incredible adaptation, integration, but most of all, solidarity among designers and a strong connection with the visitors. Everyone took responsibility, not only for their product, but for the entire show. Darwin was giving us a kick: we became a giant machine in which all parts were working together, focused on making the best with what we had, readapting and transforming the show everyday. We didn’t have a dirty, poorly ventilated basement, prototypes that probably would never get into production and comments that were not always kind. We had a super energized space where people believed on what they were showing, and with that, if only for a moment, transported the visitor to a magical, chaotic land where everything was possible.
Whatever form, shape, or state of liquidity we reach in a million years, surely the transformations in our physical structure and society will be made easier thanks to the work of great industrial designers. Hats that capture solar power and charge your phones and computers; body extensions that allow us to reach farther and scratch that itch; a brain filter that will help us cut off unnecessary information.
With all that said, I would dare to add one element to Darwin’s theory: hope. Hope that we all take risks, break rules, become the mavericks we once thought we were in our childhood, when everything was possible. Without hope we might as well push the red button.
I call my designers Hidden Heroes: The Mavericks of the Future, and invite you to share this extraordinary gift with us again in 2010.
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