The Book - April 2025
The Book by Contract Network publishes an interview with Francesco Meneghello on collectible design and the first editions of WE DON’T DESIGN in its April 2025 issue, devoted to Milan Design Week.
This article was not pitched. It was requested. In March 2025, Contract Network published an interview with Michael Anastassiades in which the Cypriot designer described collectible design as ‘a story about money’, ‘a comfort zone’ for those eager to ‘cross the finish line too early’. It was a partial reading, one that called for a different perspective.
Paolo Casicci’s interview with Francesco Meneghello, published in the following issue, takes up the provocation and inverts it. The aim is to shift the focus. For designers today, the real comfort zone lies in the mechanism that leads companies to keep turning to the same names, rather than in pure, often radical, experimental research. ‘Today the design system is oligarchic. A few high-profile names act as art directors for ten, fifteen companies. This system makes the big names even bigger and the small ones non-existent.’
The article features Mirrorless, Memorie and Aldilà, the first three editions of WE DON’T DESIGN, the collectible design label through which Francesco Meneghello pursues a line of research alongside his interior design studio. Mirrors that do not reflect, rugs that do not decorate, crystal spheres holding scents that cannot be smelt. Objects that exist to question what it means to ‘function’.
