Alessi

Interview with Francesca Appiani

About

Alessi was established in 1921 and quickly became famous for unconventional but practical household items. Alessi is a pioneering design force within Italy, contributing to the national design culture and identity. The company began by working primarily with metals and has continued producing quality metalwork while slowly integrating new materials such as plastics.

"A true work of design must be able to move people, to convey feelings, to trigger memories, to surprise, to go against the grain it has to make us feel more strongly that were living the only lives we have to live" - Alberto Alessi

Alberto Alessi transformed the company in 1970. He is known as the manufacturing maestro and the godfather of Italian product design. One of the first items was an espresso machine by Richard Sapper (1979). With the global market in mind, Alessi is starting to extend its brand beyond household products, and into collaborations with other companies (Ex. Swatch, Fiat). This deep-rooted, traditional, and inward-looking manufacturing tradition has blossomed into their own business venture, casting a poetic mold in all of their products.
The Alessi brand has over 2800 products and is known to be the "seller of happiness." Their products are characterized by a mix of eccentricity and style, playfulness and culture, irony and elegance. People don't just buy the product with interest on how well it works, but they are buying a piece of what Alessi is about - a symbolic value - owning and using objects is an exchange of cultural and social meanings.

Interview Ideas

Both Laura and Francesca were so kind in emailing back answers to our “interview” questions.

The tea and coffee piazzas were an opportunity that Alberto Alessi saw to introduce new designers to the world between 1979 and 1983. He once again did so in 2004 with 22 individuals from the field of contemporary international architecture. Alessi considers young designers into the mix of the company other than just the Tea and Coffee Towers. Alongside the many design proposals from new/young designers that go through Alberto Alessi and his metaproject assistant Gloria Barcellini, Alessi also offers and experiments in working with young designers, having Centro Studi Alessi to provide young talents design workshops. Alessandro Mendini, and other designers who have worked for Alessi for a long time, were also mentioned as another asset and resource Alessi has in forecasting and signaling new talents to the company.

Alessi started with revitalizing everyday home products and has been successful that way ever since. Now that the company has moved on to other products no longer in the domestic setting, their three branch sectors specifically share the same values, but towards a different range of audiences. Alessi’s branding shifted this past year with ALESSI, OFFICINA ALESSI, and A DI ALESSI in order to extend their catalogue to new typologies of objects. There it became three different expressions of the same corporate identity. This was done to expand their know-how in designing and integrating their global mission of “design excellence” into other fields. Alessi is acting out to provide social and cultural contribution to the evolution of the consumer society while maintaining their specialization in advanced research and top-quality design products. Their research and innovation techniques in acquiring designers marks a high-degree of experimentation in order to develop an ability to “set trends and create a culture medium aimed at developing those projects they like to call Super and Popular”

Alessi’s products not only represent quality in design but a language in their identity. Their catalogue branching recognized the many different “languages” in the Alessi family: Enzo Mari and Stefano Giovannoni, Richard Sapper and Massimo Giacon etc.

Also opening their product lines towards a more general clientele, Alessi does not compromise on their principle of design excellence, but in many ways expand to another domain of the “popular” (in particular, the playful projects of the “Girotondo” series, and the plastic items of the “Family Follows Fiction” series).

Alessi approaches new projects, whether disciplines of architecture and/or design with the same method and vision of “design excellence to its nature as an engine of design” (Alberto Alessi) when selecting designers to represent the brand through products. Their interest are in designers who are able to help people better understand the state of being contemporary

Video/Key Quotes

What We Learned

Design Approach

The foundation of Alessi’s business and their particular specialty lies in their ability to craft high quality products in stainless steel. Alessi’s design approach looks into the divided typology of products based upon functions (food drinks, offering food, bathroom, kitchen items), but remain linked to the multiple layers of history – not just the history of the objects, but the story of history of the company, society, the local culture, and how the company’s designs were to interpret it. Although products for the kitchen were the main focus of Alessi for many years, more and more products have begun to change from their standard function of being in a kitchen to being showcased on a bookshelf or a dining room. The Alessi designs exemplifies the language of a shape as a sculpture as well as quality in function and joy in use.

View on Designers

Alessi values each and every one of their designers, seeing the value of the different approaches and perspectives brought by architects, designers, musicians, cartoonists, and others – every one with a completely different method to design. Designers are great interpreters of society but are also paradoxical in breaking away from the rules and limitations of industrial work, which was shown through the example of the Tea and Coffee Piazza projects (which selected a group of new generation of architects and designers).

The Approach to Innovation

Directly relating to how Alessi’s innovative ideas occur. Alberto Alessi wanted the project to find new designers and new languages. This was to break away from the boundaries of industrial production and create a space to be extremely free and experimental (in terms of design and materials). This type of projects is extremely complicated because of the method of production. But Alberto Alessi sees every 10 or so years as an opportunity to break from the rules of production and experiment to create new industrial results and rules.

Production, as we learned from the factory tour, means they create bits and pieces, preparing for the final design. Some steps are completed but not finished (about 80% completed and ready), in the same way a chef prepares the ingredients for the meal.

Importance of Processing and Archiving

Which leads to the importance of Alessi’s process and archiving techniques. Alessi archives items called “frozen projects”. These projects were stopped because of technical or economical issues. The value and investment in doing this allows designers and the company to look back at items, and maybe even allowing production for a frozen project to restart when market/society/technology is ready for it. The museum tour showed us the importance of prototyping, showing us the process of where things were breaking and cracking. Anything that could be learned from was kept, including random objects that served as inspiration and idea sketches during the process of the projects by designers like Sotsass, Rossi, and Mendini. We’re able to see how the designs worked through different materials up to the final form. Some process examples showed Anna G corkscrews with their original plastic molds, negatives, and the bronze material to work out the detail of the corkscrew base. Others included wood and metal variations for the Antonio garlic press by Guido Venturini to test its functionality and a paper prototype of Richard Sapper’s 9090 Espresso Coffee Maker. Surely it shows the amount of detailed involved in the process of ideation without jumping straight to the solution.