Giorgio Tartaro, the voice of Italian Design, launches his new format “10 questions to”. This week the interview is with Tobia Repossi.
- We met each other some years ago. I was the director of BOX magazine, you were a young designer who was showing his talent with diagonal projects. From bicycle racks to cardboard furniture. Then ZonaUno. What do you keep of that Tobia Repossi?
Unfortunately the black color of my hair I left it in that meeting, but for the rest not a lot has changed. At different scales I continue stubbornly to apply the same methods and to work on my usual themes of interaction and inclusion. ZonaUno, the agency that I founded some years ago in Italy, was an interesting experience with some incursions in the communication field that perhaps distracted me a bit from the focus of my profession which is and will always be to investigate spaces and objects. I have a pleasant memory but I wouldn’t do it again, too many people, too much tension in a country that was facing economical crisis.
- The big leap to the East. China. Some difficulties at the beginning, then always better.
Now you manage a team of many people. Tell us how it was possible.
I landed in Shenzhen called by some Chinese customers and dealing principally with five star hotels and resorts, quantities and speeds which are not comparable to European, but undoubtedly quality problems. For this reason I decided to open TR & Partners to intercept the demand of western thinking and standards by local clients. Today the studio is grown, me and my partner Freddy Curiel intercept many companies from United States and Europe with interests in China or, on the other side, Asian companies looking for international quality. We are part of one of most important Design Institutes (mandatory to have all the permits) and we are the most visible design company with foreign management in town. We work on spaces and products for big names like Tencent or Vanke, but also for small startups helping them with the development.
- We wrote each other recently on a very important concern about IP protection. Can you clarify your thoughts on the situation?
China is facing the world design scene unfortunately without real rules on IP protection. The copyright law is today useless thanks to an amendment on China market product exclusivity. In synthesis, if the product has been patented and seen in other countries it can not be protected in China and so it can be copied. Chinese international vocation is nowadays surpassed by local rules and restrictive protectionism. Also some individuals, masking themselves in maker or hacker communities and hiding behind the “Sharing is caring” motto, are promoting a system where stealing products and ideas looks perfectly fine. In this environment is very easy to find your design spread in the local shops in a few hours. I usually am philosophical about it and often call the companies to convince them to work with us.
- You complained with me about some journalists giving a distorted image of the city. Can you speak about this problem?
The problem is that a megalopolis of 18 millions is a place where a lot of people land: different ages, different stories, professionals but also some young inexperienced. It often happens that international magazines are interested to the Shenzhen’s design ecosystem but sometimes they just focus on wrong themes. Buying a Prada bag for their wives in the copycat market might be funny or exotic, but the Lohu market or the garbage electronics hell of Huaquiangbei are the shame of the city opposite to the excellences that it can offer. It would like writing an article on Milan and visit the landfill, which is of course existing, but probably not the main characteristic of the city.
- I need to ask you your personal point of view on our Italian situation seen from there.
Probably I don’t know so much, among some affections what connects me to Italy is the continuous struggle with the Registry of Architects to explain that I live and pay my taxes abroad and I can not attend these interesting and expensive courses about the use of wooden window in some remote Italian regions to obtain credits.
In my opinion the country is restarting, in particular I see a very beautiful and sexy Milan, suitable for foreign investments also thanks to the recent Expo. I hope the system will catch new opportunities and abandon small racisms and stupid localism. I dream of a Milan which can become the capital of design in Europe attracting big companies, especially after Brexit, with an aggressive marketing of tax reduction and high level services.
- How’s your everyday work exactly? If I’m not wrong you design from interiors to accessories…
I am definitely guilty of building a company that offers a wide range of services and I take full responsibility. Fact is that I still didn’t decide if it’s more amusing to be an architect or a designer. Sometimes it’s even a communication problem, it was already difficult to explain in Italy where as architects we where designing houses and as designers the furniture inside. Imagine here where we design big working spaces and smartphones that are so far from each other. To avoid every misunderstanding, TR & Partners is divided in two different teams and my role is to define an approach much more that imposing a design to my colleagues. Also because they are better than me.
- Which other design topics do you see in the nearest future?
The government imposes project strategies in a very clear way: passed are the years of five star hotels, then design centers, maker spaces, then the unsolved problem of urban villages, in the future museums for sure. Right now the issue of the moment is China getting older and the topic of residences for elderly is definitely hot. We are designing one in Harbin and one in San Bernardino California with Chinese investments.
- Italian design has based its success on social, political and cultural research. Is there a Chinese design method?
The project environment in China is still immature, design is confused with aesthetics and not recognized as a problem-solving and innovative practice. We are lightyears far from the birth of a methodology, but the entrepreneurial network and manufacturing technologies are extremely developed like nowhere in the world. Hundreds of incubators, investment agencies, e-commerce platforms, logistics, an extremely fertile background for startups and Fortune 500 companies. When China will also reach a project cultural awareness it will be difficult to keep the pace.
- In an impossible game could you tell us the things you would change in China and Europe on design path?
I would change the aesthetic and superficial approach to design: in China is born by a language issue and nourished by a fully iconic culture. It promotes a polluting and useless design and enhance the perception that everything can be design and everybody can be a designer if in possession of “good taste”. Institutions, fairs and sometimes museums are sometimes promoting a concept of design which is emptied of its original meaning because widened to other fields that have no title to be called design.
I would change the colonialistic need to put traditional Chinese elements in every project. It ends in horrible aircon machines with lotus flower prints or in malfunctioning working spaces based on superstitious Feng Shui principles.
I would change the diffused attitude to be different at any cost ending in all the same projects rigidly directed and sponsored by a central government too far from innovation logics.
About Europe I think we should learn to “do” design a little bit more rather than talking about it. We are loosing the leadership of the design continent, we need to be more competitive, maybe learning from China.
- Last and expected question. When and if are you coming back and with which future projects?
My Chinese parabola is not yet finished, but I confess that I want to measure myself in different places and I also have affections that are pulling me back to Europe. It looks that my partners, obviously tired of me, want to kick me to London to explore the local market. We think there will be inevitable new connection between China and a progressively exiled Britain. There are also Chinese companies willing to invest betting on a collapse of prices, we would like to intercept them. I’m looking forward to see what will happen.
Offices Qi Lu Pharmaceutical 100.000 smq in Jinan China
Shop Inxuan 200 smq in Guangzhou China
Shop Nuvole di Emma 200 mq in Shenzhen China
Offices Tencent 22.000 mq Nanchang – Xi An – Harbin in China
Train Series China
VR Glasses China