Flaviano Celaschi

Flaviano Celaschi’s research activities have focused in recent years on the following thematic areas, which sometimes intersect.

In general terms, the theme that interests him most is the culture of process within design. Prof. Celaschi’s polytechnic approach and research experience in the field have led him to develop an instrumental separation between “product culture” and “process culture” within the wide sphere of design culture.

Prof. Celaschi believes it is vitally important for the future of design, and the benefits that design can bring to people and to the environment, that the process culture should assume greater importance with respect to the product culture, which now prevails.

Thus Prof. Celaschi’s approach to design runs the gamut from training professional figures, to publishing, to formulating practical plans for companies and organisations – important steps towards an innovative product culture and new kinds of interaction between consumer and contemporary goods.

Following are some of Flaviano Celaschi’s interests:

CONTEMPORARY GOODS
Goods are the cornerstone for Prof. Celaschi’s design philosophy. From the undifferentiated products exchanged for money on the marketplace which were the subject of the earliest pre-Marxist political and economic thinking, he follows the path which has led goods to become the basis of modern society and processes for exchanging goods to invade every moment and every sphere of the contemporary lifestyle of post-modern man.

The keywords in Prof. Celaschi’s philosophy are: contemporary goods (to be distinguished from modern goods); market exchange (the location where, and process by which, exchange choices take place and conditions for exchange are established); evolving desires and needs; and value (a fundamental element for exchange).

The synthesis of these ideas is the model of design as a mediator of know-how (Germak ed., L’uomo al centro del progetto, 2008), requiring the designer to govern the mix between these factors: meaning, value, form, and function.

Prof. Celaschi introduced the term “merceologia contemporanea” (contemporary goods) into the international debate in 2000, with in his book Il Design della Forma Merce. The term was intended to define a field in design culture, and the book investigates goods and their capacity to be transformed by the design culture, which is in turn linked to the humanities, arts, production technologies, economics and management.

Prof. Celaschi has studied the evolution of contemporary commodity economics from the standpoint of three sectors or productive areas which he believes are particularly salient, and which illustrate the excesses and peculiarities in the contrast between globalisation and local culture.

The world of LUXURY GOODS, MADE IN ITALY, and CULTURAL HERITAGE reflect the complexity of the debate, and of the phenomena which it attempts to explore.

Luxury goods are a vast family of goods that possess the interesting capacity to enhance exponentially the consumer’s perception of their value; the buyer is prepared to pay a price that is out of all proportion to the actual cost of producing the article in question, thus satisfying a personal need that is both irrational and anomalous.

The typical Made in Italy products – particularly food, vehicles, clothing and accessories, and furnishings – are another area in which Prof. Celaschi looks for recurrent characteristics of the phenomenon. His interest is focused on the features that all of these sectors have in common, and that might indicate a shared way of thinking about and implementing design.

Finally, Prof. Celaschi seeks to analyse the complex category of cultural heritage, which are becoming more and more a part of the world of “goods”. Nowadays cultural assets must be made accessible to users, and designers can make a significant contribution to this process. Furthermore, the process by which goods and cultural assets are brought closer together is instrumental for identifying what elements allow a product realised by a designer to be likened to a true cultural asset.

These themes are explored in the book Lusso versus Design (Celaschi, Cappellieri, Vasile, 2005), as well as the publications in the 5th issue of “SDI Design Review” of Sistema Design Italia.

METADESIGN AND DESIGN PROCESSES
By metadesign Prof. Celaschi means two distinct but interrelated questions. First of all metadesign is the phase of observing reality and creating a synthetic model; these moments precede, in the design method, a third phase which will transform reality, and require the designer to analyse and understand the problems he has been asked to solve.

Metadesign according to this definition is the difference between a scientific approach to the project and a more personal, artistic approach.

But metadesign is also awareness on the part of the designer that he must not only find a design solution to the problem at hand, but also define the project’s path, adapt and perfect analysis and work methods, and give primary importance to the culture of process – because each project is part of a context of resources, time constraints, historical period, author, and client, all of which are different and unique. Hence the method must always be flexible; one might say that metadesign is the continuous redesign of the design method.

The concept of metadesign is developed by Prof. Celaschi in various publications between 2000 and 2008, but is better defined in the book Design e Innovazione (Celaschi, Deserti, 2007). It is further focused around the concept of “mediating design” in Celaschi’s essays in Uomo centro del progetto (Germak ed., 2008).

DESIGN SYSTEMS
Prof. Celaschi is currently pursuing the vision that Alberto Seassaro has studied in connection with the building sector (Storia e struttura del settore edilizio in Itaia dal dopoguerra a oggi, Seassaro ed., 1979). It is a structuralistic vision that seeks to describe the design phenomenon in Italy as “a system of relationships”, made up of integrations between components and subjects, roles and figures, and the interplay among various specific interests.

Seassaro’s work during the 1990s at the Politecnico di Milano led to the concepts of “Sistema Design Milano” and “Sistema Design Italia”, meaning complex systems of interactions in which hundreds of individuals participate to achieve the desired result.

This vision contains elements that represent a radical departure from the common interpretation of Italian design as the fruit of isolated “poets of the pencil” and courageous “captains of industry”. Prof. Celaschi’s participation in the birth and development of the Design Faculty at Politecnico di Milano, with its complex internal and international network of relationships, has progressively led him to develop the idea that these issues must be investigated today at a trans-national scale, in the complex relations that exist between developing and industrialised countries within the globalisation process.

It is in this global context that Prof. Celaschi has developed a growing interest and experience in the Latin countries of Europe and South America as locations to study the complex relationship between the industrialised world and newly-developing nations (BRIC nations). He actively promotes the Latin Network of Design as a Process, endorsed in the “Charter of Torino” stipulated in July 2008 as part of the activities of Torino 2008 World Design Capital. This will be the start of a permanent forum for experts, academics and businessmen from nine Latin countries in Europe and the Americas who are interested in making a cultural investment in process design and in developing a “Latin Design Sysem” to spread the process culture.

PUBLICATIONS

1. Celaschi F., Materiali e sistemi industriali per l’edilizia, Maggioli, Rimini 1995

2. Celaschi F., Aree ed edifici industriali dimessi, Maggioli, Rimini 1996

3. Celaschi F., Ciuccarelli P., Seassaro A., Eyewear Design, Il Sole 24 Ore, Milano 1998

4. Celaschi F., Il design della forma merce, Il Sole 24 Ore, Milano 2000

5. Celaschi F., Collina L., Simonelli G., Design for district, Poli.design, Milano 2001

6. Celaschi F., Trocchianesi R., Design & beni culturali, Poli.design, Milano 2004

7. Celaschi F., Cappellieri A., Vasile A., Lusso versus design, Franco Angeli, Milano 2005

8. Celaschi F., Deserti A., Design e innovazione, Carocci, Roma 2007

9. Celaschi F., Il design come mediatore tra bisogni, in Germak C. (a cura di), Uomo al centro del progetto, Umberto Allemandi & C., Torino 2008

10. Celaschi F., Il design come mediatore tra saperi, in Germak C. (a cura di), Uomo al centro del progetto, Umberto Allemandi & C., Torino 2008

11. Celaschi F., Atto culturale e design. Progetto e valorizzazione dei beni culturali, in Parente M., Lupo E. (a cura di), Il Sistema Design Italia per la valorizzazione dei beni culturali, Poli.design, Milano 2009

12. Celaschi F., De Marco A., Staszowski E., Galisai R., Casoni G., Sharing skills in design driven innovation processes, in “Strategic Design Research Journal”, Vol. 2, N. 1, gennaio 2009, pp. 24-36

13. Celaschi F., Formia E., Design cultures as models of biodiversity: process design as agent of innovation and intercultural relations, in “Strategic Design Research Journal”, Vol. 3, N. 1, gennaio 2010, pp. 1-6