Giovanni Offredi Biography
The Milanese designer Giovanni Offredi, born in 1927, has ranged over the years from furniture design to lamps, from kitchens to telephones, from furnishing accessories to televisions. “What worries me most when I take a topic into consideration is not so much evaluating its superficial appearance, but rather its intimate essence,” says Offredi. “In the furniture sector it is unfortunately difficult to find clients willing to carry out overly innovative experiments. Furniture is in fact an asset that must last over time without exceeding certain costs. More advanced innovations can be found more easily in the objects sector." “Italian design, which has always derived its success from the balance between rationality and imagination, seems to have lost this harmony. The craving for the new has created confusion. Some get involved in forced attempts, thinking they will find space in the market and achieve success. Post Modern, born as an act of controversy against certain rationalist positions, which fossilized over time, and then established itself out of the desire to renew certain forms, freeing them from their rigidity, has gradually transformed to the point of identifying itself with the search for novelty at all costs. However, Post Modernism was unable to go beyond the surface, it was unable to give content to its forms. Here then we are no longer dealing with a cultural fact, but with a fashion fact and outside of rationality there is only passion, the ephemeral, the fleeting”. “The object must find its reason for utility in beauty; but only if it is possible to give the external appearance a content and an expressive meaning can the result be considered valid. I consider giving shape to an object as the attempt to obtain the image of its deepest reason. And we must not confuse beauty with appearance, since the latter is the superficial part of the form. The beauty will be all the greater the more its substance emerges. In essence, I want to make the objects I try to create take on a life of their own." “Among the thousand possible forms, one is chosen, the most significant of the particular cultural moment that is within us, and which is dependent on the intensity and richness of the knowledge that is pressing to come to life within us; design will therefore never be fashionable, given that this is only the ephemeral passion of its time”.
