Six questions on Tomás Maldonado
A series of interviews conducted by Guido Campi
Daniela Lucena
Daniela Lucena is an Argentinian sociologist who teaches at the University of Buenos Aires. Her book Contaminación artística: vanguardia concreta, comunismo y peronismo en los años 40 (Artistic contamination: concrete avant-garde, communism and peronism in the 1940s), published in 2015, is based on her doctoral dissertation. In it she analyses the radical aesthetic-political program of Concrete Art, led by Tomás Maldonado, and its links to the political context of those times. She currently works at the intersection of politics, bodies, fashion, and counterculture.
Joaquín Medina Warmburg
Joaquín Medina Warmburg is Professor of Architectural and Building History at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. He had taught and researched at different institutions, among others, the University of Navarra (Spain) the Princeton University (USA), and the Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires (Argentina), where he was in charge of the DAAD-Gropius chair. His work is focused on the history of Architecture and Urbanism of the 19th and 20th centuries and its internationalization processes, where the technical and environmental questions are of big relevance. In this sense, he has been dedicated in the past years to Maldonado`s work and his notion of environmental design. In Princeton, he conducted a seminar based on the archives of Maldonado`s seminars at that university between 1967 and 1970, which would later become the book “Design, Nature, & Revolution”.
Alejandro Crispiani
Alejandro Crispiani is tenured professor of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research is focused on history and criticism of contemporary design and architecture. His book Objetos para transformar el mundo: Trayectorias del Arte Concreto Invención (Santiago and Buenos Aires, 2011) is based on his doctoral dissertation. In it, he critically examines the influence of Concrete Art on the fields of design, presenting a history of practices that differ from the hegemonic cultural production in Latin America.
Gui Bonsiepe
Gui Bonsiepe is a designer, professor, and author in the field of design. He studied at the Ulm School of Design, where he taught from 1961 to 1968. He was appointed full-time lecturer and head of the Product Design Department in 1966 until 1968 when almost the total number of the members of the HfG resigned in protest against the conditions imposed by the local government for continuing to receive financial support in the future. After that, his work in Chile and other Latin American countries has been of great impact on the disciplinary field of design in the region and worldwide. In the last decades, he has taught interface design in different programs at the Köln International School of Design and at the Rio de Janeiro State University, among others.
You translated Design, Nature & Revolution and witnessed, as Tomás Maldonado´s friend and collaborator, the gestation of his ideas about environmental design. Why do you think a book like this is still relevant today to help us think critically about the environment?
It was one of the first books putting design explicitly into relation with environmental issues. It maintains its relevance though obviously the range of issues has increased. And a lot of new publications have been produced. But in substance it is a fundamental book – i.e., a classic.
Read MoreI would question the term “peripheral” though I have used it frequently – and in some contexts still use it. During and after the Second World War Europe was exhausted. In contrast the critical reflection about modernity and the avantgarde had continued in their own e.g., in various Latin American countries like Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico. Maldonado brought back to the destroyed Germany a renewed and more developed version of reflections about art and design. Thus, it would be recommendable to put the complementary notions Centre/Periphery not only into question but to reveal the inherent limitations of a euro-American vision of the project of modernity. Seen from Latin America, Europe was the Periphery after WWII until it started to recover slowly in the 1960. The cultural debate in Germany has been unable to acknowledge this fact and the fundamental role of Maldonado in the country where he spent 13 years (Germany). The history of the avantgarde has to be written again.
Maldonado took up the chance at the HfG Ulm to expand concretely the renewed modernity under conditions that were not given at that moment in Argentina. Elsewhere I wrote: The HfG Ulm was in Germany, but fortunately not a German school.
You were part as a student and as a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, a political and cultural utopian project that became reality. You also were later part of the utopian Cybersyn project in Chile, which integrated design, economy, politics, and the environment. What do you think the relevance of utopia is nowadays?
I consider the notion of utopia a fundamental or a core component of any design activity and design teaching. For these reasons I take a skeptical position towards the variety of approaches known under the label „postmodernism”. We should not forget that we are living in a period of counter-enlightenment that has been proclaiming the end of utopia non-stop for decades. These postmodern adventures are slowly showing an effect: a deep general crisis and disorientation. The demonization of reason leads to hopelessness and resignation, or cynicism.
In the current context of a global pandemic crisis, do you think there is a possibility of seeing positive aspects or potential in this situation? How can this be an advantage for rethinking design?
From what I have answered before you can see that it is not a question of finding or not finding positive aspects of this crisis. Design always is challenged by unforeseen events. I agree with you that design has to be rethought – especially given the observed totalitarian/authoritarian tendencies to undermine democratic institutions.
Raimonda Riccini
Raimonda Riccini, PhD in Industrial design, is full professor at the IUAV University of Venice. She is deputy director of the Doctoral School in Architecture, City, and Design at IUAV, and is involved in several design institutions, coordinating editorial and curatorial projects. Her research focuses on the theory of technological innovation and the history of design and digital culture, among others. She edited the volume of Maldonado’s writings on the Bauhaus, (Feltrinelli, Milan 2019), and is currently in charge with Luca Guerrini of the PhD seminar “L’eredità di Tomás Maldonado” (The legacy of Tomás Maldonado) at the Politecnico di Milano.
You described Maldonado as an intellectual-technician, an “intellectual grumbler”, a master of images, a theorist of industrial design, a theorist of modernity and philosopher of technology, and a narrator. If you had to choose, which one of these would be your “favorite Maldonado” and why?
Whenever I talk about Maldonado, I am struck by how difficult it is to define him. He has been labelled in various ways, but each one either goes too far or not far enough in describing him. These definitions (for example, designer or theorist) never correspond with how Maldonado works as a designer or how he posits a theory. In other words, Maldonado conforms to labels sui generis, making use of the indeterminate areas of each role and works on the boundaries where it is easy to shift from one to another. Yet he always does so with absolute mastery of the skills and knowledge that also allow him to interpret the roles from a central position, setting himself on an equal footing with his counterparts, whether they be designers or theorists.
It seems to me that the most appropriate definition of Maldonado, as he himself suggests in the same interview with Obrist, is that of a globetrotter whose curiosity leads him to travel and establish links between the places he visits. If I had to say today what my personal preference is, I would opt for Maldonado the storyteller. Although we can no longer hear his voice recounting stories and anecdotes with the tones of a South American narrator, his essays are, at the end of the day, the amazing tales of his wanderings as a tireless traveler.
In Design, Nature, & Revolution, Maldonado mapped the utopian experiences of the late sixties and early seventies. His own big utopia was the dialectical integration of culture and technology, in which the latter is not seen as an instrument, but as part of the former. What do you think the relevance of utopia in design is nowadays?
Maldonado’s approach to life was always characterized by a utopian component. His active participation in avant-garde movements as a young Argentine artist was clearly permeated by a strong utopian impulse. Although with different nuances and in more attenuated forms, this utopian spirit is also present in the later stages of his life: his commitment to tackling environmental issues in the 1970s, and his strong defence of rationality and the ‘project of modernity’ against the attacks of postmodern thought.
We can also find it in his unshakable faith in the educational and cultural purpose of teaching younger generations. I believe that this attitude, which – despite everything – he maintained until the end, arose from his faith in the values of the emancipation of people and society, and to the Marxian values that imply a practice and an ideology of change. Maldonado himself repeatedly referred to his interest in Russian Constructivism, not just as an artistic practice, but for its aspiration to ‘change the world’.
Today, we can see that design – from its development in the early twentieth century to the present day – has largely lost its initial utopian thrust. It has been downsized by the advent of the ‘digital revolution’, which in the last ten years has become the contemporary ‘master narrative’, as Lyotard would put it. Our attention for the future is now focused predominantly on networks, interfaces and artificial intelligence, while tangible objects – and with them ‘traditional’ design – have lost their central role in our daily material culture, now dominated by the immense buzz of the digital.
Despite his faith in technology, Maldonado also realized that this new situation would put incalculable power in the hands of tech giants and was deeply concerned about the consequences that this could have on future generations, specifically its impact on the various forms of memory, identity, social interaction, culture, and knowledge, to which he dedicated his last, beautiful book, Memory and Knowledge (Memoria e conoscenza, Feltrinelli 2005).
Can you speculate on what Maldonado would say about design facing the current pandemic crisis?
The answer to this question is easy. For many years (decades, in fact) Maldonado was disillusioned with contemporary design, at least in regard to what he saw more and more often at the Salone del Mobile and at the Fuorisalone in Milan, and to what was being circulated by the design media, as well as – to his great disappointment – what was being taught in many universities. He believed that the only worthwhile form of design was related to technical-scientific developments: design with a pioneering spirit dedicated to improving the well-being, health and safety of people, society, and the environment. Exactly the type of design we need in the current pandemic situation. So, once again, he was right.
You have known and been close to Maldonado for over forty years. He was well known for his ability to tell stories. Can we finish this interview with an anecdote about him?
Rather than a single anecdote, I would like to describe an aspect of everyday life in his home-studio in via Manzoni in Milan. Maldonado had a sacred respect for the lunch break. In any situation, even before an important deadline, everyone had to stop at one o’clock and take a complete break from whatever they were working on. Lunchtime was dedicated entirely to relaxed conversation, to discussing the most disparate topics, whether it was current affairs or chatting about the family. However, at the centre of all this was the preparation of large dishes of spaghetti that he cooked himself. He would use 500 grams of pasta for three people, but if there was only one extra person, he would cook a whole kilo! Immense portions, worthy of his physique. As soon as the pasta was ready, he would call us impatiently to sit around his kitchen table. I have vivid memories of these moments that were typical of a traditional Italian lunch, in which the pleasure of food was mixed with the pleasure of a never-banal conversation, and which was often also very funny thanks to Maldonado’s proverbial storytelling skills.
Medardo Chiapponi
Medardo Chiapponi is professor of industrial design at the Università Iuav di Venezia, where he was dean of the Faculty of Design and Arts from 2008 to 2012. He has taught at the Polytechnic of Milano, at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Schwäbisch Gmünd and at the Polytechnic of Turin. He has published monographs and essays in Italy and abroad, such as Ambiente: gestione e strategia, Milano 1997, and Cultura sociale del prodotto. Nuove frontiere per il disegno industriale, Milano 1999.
How did you meet Tomás Maldonado?
I met Tomás Maldonado when I was an engineering student at the University of Bologna. I had read “Design, Nature & Revolution” and it had fascinated me. I saw that he was a professor in the faculty of humanities in my University, at the DAMS degree course he had just founded together with Umberto Eco and several other eminent colleagues. I used all the possibilities offered by university regulations and I attended two of his courses and did my degree thesis with him. It was not at all usual for an engineering student to do her/his thesis with a professor of humanities, but doing it changed my life. After graduating, I started working with him, I followed him when he moved to the Milan Polytechnic and he became, as well as a master, also a friend.
I believe that “Design, Nature & Revolution” is still relevant today for several reasons. The first is that that book was not only a very early and very strong denunciation of the environmental degradation. In addition to other equally early complaints it adds confidence in design as a tool to address that degradation. Another fundamental point, in my opinion, is the connection between the state of the environment and the state of society, a connection that is also expressed with the distinction between nature and the environment. This is why the Italian title and subtitle “The design hope. Environment and society” seem more convincing to me. Then there are individual environmental problems such as the enormous growth of the “waste population” which today are even more evident.
It seems that you continue Maldonado´s task in searching for a praxeology of the project. How did Maldonado influence your work?
To say that Maldonado has influenced my work is both too much and too little. It is too much because Maldonado was, not only for me, a generous master who encouraged his disciples to develop their own critical sense and their own independent ability to judge. It is too little because, with his writings and his activities, he indicated to me the need to consider all aspects in the praxeology of the project, from the social, to the economic and political ones, to the technological ones, to the environmental ones. This also made me choose to deal for many years with medical design, in which all these aspects are present in the highest degree and which had been at the center of Maldonado’s interest already in his Ulmian period.
What are the most complex challenges for designers by taking the environment into consideration?
The most relevant challenges for designers who want to take the environment into account derive from the complexity of the environmental system. A system in which anthropic components regarding the sociosphere and technosphere and non-anthropic components regarding the biosphere and geosphere coexist and at times are mutually competing. Another difficulty arises from the intertwining of problems that affect the macro-environment, the meso-environment and the micro-environment. To give just one example about it, the reduction of the protective layer of atmospheric ozone, the so-called hole in the ozone, that is a problem of the macro-environment, is due to the use of CFCs in several sectors including the production of cold that affects our ways of life, the objects of our daily life, that is the microenvironment.
In the afore-mentioned book, Maldonado critically maps the utopian experiences of the late sixties and early seventies. What do you think the relevance of utopia in design is nowadays?
Maldonado dedicates not secondary attention to the theme of utopia in “Design, Nature, & Revolution”. Indeed, it would be more correct to speak of utopias in the plural because it refers to different types of utopia, deals with old and new utopians, distinguishes between positive and negative utopias, reasons for social and technological utopias. To me it seems interesting his definition of utopia understood as “designing without doing, a design whose fundamental purpose is not immediate realization”. This type of utopia, which does not presuppose an immediate realization of a project, but does not even exclude it in the future, can also be relevant today as it can offer ideas and visions capable of looking beyond everyday life that can be implemented later.
“Design, Nature, & Revolution” offers, according to Maldonado, no prescriptions for a better environmental design and planning, but it rather points out the “errors to be avoided”. What gives you hope in contemporary times and what do you think should be avoided?
Maldonado’s design hope is not a naive optimism. It is critical trust in the role of the project and the refusal of a passive pessimism that leads to abdication of any form of action and intervention on reality. I feel I share this position even in these difficult times. Moreover, times have never been easy.