Addendum - Newsletter chairs.ws n.05 April 2010

DESIGNING PATH OF A MASTERPIECE
by Raul Barbieri


Simple objects, but never banal. Innovative, at times ironic and transgressive, however always provided with characteristics that make them evergreen and qualify the environment in which we live. This attitude has always been my guide in design.


I am an architect and I started working in the home-building. Architecture in Italy was heavily subjected to political interference, while the newborn world of Design seemed to me to be characterized by total freedom and meritocracy: a valid, original idea lead straight to an interesting dialogue between designer and manufacturer.

In fact design in Italy had a remarkable evolution and the architects were its protagonists, at least in the beginning. I have always been intrigued and involved by industrial design, and in the last several years I have been dealing mostly with Product Design and Corporate Identity.


I believe that design always arises from the creational urge, the need to bring something non-existent to life, something you want to become real.

Designing an object always requires a transgressive part to overcome the previously set limits, but more than that design requires strong motivation, necessary to place a new product in an overloaded world, where you feel the need to subtract more than to add.



The feeling with the manufacturer is essential for developing a designing path and to represent a coherent company image, clearly recognizable by the customers, to help their conscious choice in such a wide, often disorienting and overwhelming scenery.



Born in Milan in 1946, Raul Barbieri graduated in architecture at the Milan's Polytechnic and started working as a professional associate; in 1989 he founded  his own practice in Milan which specialised in design, corporate identity and architectural planning.

The design and realisation of a neighbourhood of semi-detached houses in Milan - in the Città Studi area -  which in 1999 was presented in London on the occasion of the exhibition Golden Compass ADI Architectural Design, date back to this period.

Barbieri has co-operated with various design schools and has held short courses on design at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, LES ATELIERS of Paris and the European Design Institute of Milan. He has had a long-standing co-operation with ADI, the Association for Industrial Design in his capacity as co-ordinator of the department of designers. Many of his designs have been awarded prizes or selected in major international design competitions.

CLIENTS: Plank, Rexite, Tronconi, Ycami, Zucchetti.





Raul Barbieri
architect

Contacts:

Via Pietro Custodi, 14
20136 Milan Italy
Tel. +39 02 89401181
Fax +39 02 89410226
www.raulbarbieri.com
info@raulbarbieri.com