This is an excerpt from a book about LAGO's Appartamento concept. The book covers the story behind the appartamento concept and some short dialogues and reflections tangential to this idea. The book is currently floating around, so if you are interested in reading more from it, come find me, it might be in my hands. Anyway, I've copied an interesting section regarding a dialogue with
Marco Bettiol (VIU) about the future and changes in the design world. Enjoy!
Re-inventing Made in Italy Dialogue with Marco Bettiol
With the appartamento, LAGO presented a highly innovative project and comment on the new values of design. In the Appartamento we organized a series of seminars, where we addressed the various elements that seemed to us to be the important factors for design – now and in the future.
During these seminars a number of interesting issues emerged regarding the evolution of design. A particularly interesting one was the conceptualisation of design in terms of it being a sense-making activity. We must now move from designing objects to designing meanings, because the new values of design are not about producing more and more objects (the world is already overflowing with them) but instead to produce meanings and to focus more on the immaterial side of the product. We believe that design has to be more about making sense of the world around us and to provide and create the new services and strategies that are really needed. Also of course products, but those products will be directly related to meanings.