WE DON'T DESIGN is a multiform universe, a free and poetic cosmogony conceived by Francesco Meneghello to bring together, in a single format, visions and abstract experiments that embrace the worlds of art and design. Not a brand, not a collection, but a container of radical and non-conformist design experiences that transversally explore materials and formal lexicons, this happens in the imaginative world of Francesco Meneghello.
What they have in common is a system of values - codified in the nine points of the WE DON'T DESIGN manifesto*. Authenticity, independence and responsibility are the core of the project. And precious words such as sustainability and durability involve a deep reflection on the quality of artefacts and a rejection of the fast disposal of things. “A necessary reflection in a world overflowing with meaningless objects”.
WE DON'T DESIGN promotes the chance of experimenting with objects that explore art, play, dream and metaphor. “My projects force the rigid rationalist form/function dichotomy. Rather, they try to suggest a freer, more personal, more conscious interaction with the objects”. All of Francesco Meneghello's cultural and artistic references are involved: his familiarity with rationalist design, which he loves to break down and subvert in its rules, while drawing from it his taste for minimal form.
And his fascination with the world of the post-war Italian artistic avant-gardes, especially the Milanese, who opposed the expressive power of their vital and restless sign to the theoretical rigour of rational thought, like in the research of Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni. There are also strong references to the world of fashion, to the avant-garde movements of the 1990s and, in particular, to the cult of deconstruction, abstraction and absence that characterises the research of Martin Margiela.
WE DON'T DESIGN works on the idea of the “piece unique”, reproducible in series through limited and numbered editions, moving away from the economic and social dynamics of mass production and ideally touching on the idea of seriality of Pop Art. The main protagonist of each project is the concept, the ever-changing genesis that leads from the idea to the tangible form of the objects. They are pure objects, abstract objects, conceived without any decorative additions that might recall a trend, without any logos that might identify them as merchandise. “Absolute objects, designed to evoke a feeling of affection in those who choose and live them, as if they had already been in their thoughts, be they dreams or utopias”.
