Clino Trini Castelli, a designer known internationally for introducing the No-Form concept, anticipates in this article the themes he will deepen in the meeting that WOW! organizes at the Herman Miller showroom in Milan on March 31st, entitled “40 years of High Touch Design. Designing beyond form with re-design strategies between the emotional identity and aesthetics of sustainability. ” (More info here)
Invited as guest of honor, Castelli will illustrate the concept and history of High Touch Design and the tools of Primary Design.
The event, aimed at a selected group of designers, also includes the participation of Frida Doveil, architect, professionally grew up in the Primary Design cultural climate, and Bertie Van Wyk, critical thinking Workplace Specialist of Insight Group Herman Miller.
The Redesign of the Action Office.
Forty years ago, in 1982, Herman Miller decided to launch the development phase of the first major CMF Redesign program in history intended to remove the signs of emotional obsolescence from the identity of the Action Office, before its 1983 relaunch at the Neocon in Chicago. That project of mine, based solely on the renewal of Colors, Materials and Finishes of the famous office system designed by Robert Propst in 1968, still remains a valid model of Aesthetic Sustainability for the current Ecological Transition.
That decision was also possible thanks to the publication of John Naisbitt’s best-seller “Megatrends. Ten new trends that will transform our lives”.
The second trend in fact concerned the combination of High Tech / High Touch and the humanization of technology through the deep touch of emotional factors.
A theme that coincided perfectly with my Eurocentric project of “soft redesign” based on the practice of Primary Design.
Alvin Toffler, author of the 1970s best-seller “Future Shock,” described John Naisbitt as one of the shrewdest observers of the changes sweeping America. Today it can be added that his visionary nature was also demonstrated by the third chapter of the book, which even then introduced the theme of Globalization.
It goes without saying that thanks to that unexpected astral conjunction my new CMF Design system was promptly approved by the board of directors of Herman Miller and that Naisbitt himself was involved in the product launch strategy. It was therefore extraordinary to discover, in 1983, the coincidence of a unique ‘sentiment’ between the Merchandise Mart in Chicago and the Salone del Mobile in Milan, two great design poles that had previously been very distant.
Text by Clino Trini Castelli
Clino Trini Castelli (b. 1944) designer, artist and design theorist lives and works in Milan. Internationally known for CMF Design (Color, Material and Finishes) of which he was the initiator, Castelli introduced the “No-form” renewal of plastic languages applied to industrial products through the tools of Design Primario. As opposed to traditional compositional methods, Clino Trini Castelli has focused on the design of the more intangible aspects of figuration, like color and material, light and sound, emphasizing the virtues of a sensorial approach to art and design. Since the early 1970s this has made him a pioneer in research on the emotional identity of products in the industrial sector. His work has received important European, American and Japanese prizes, including two ADI Compasso d’Oro awards.
