Patrizia Scarzella is an architect and journalist. She has always worked in design and communications for Italian and international companies, has written numerous books and created experimental exhibitions at an international level. She has taught at several Italian and European universities, and since 2010 has been intensively and passionately involved in projects relating to design for social purposes in Europe, Africa and Asia.

40 interviste. Persone & storie, published as an e-book, is a collection of interviews and stories of special encounters with well-known figures from the world of design and architecture, gathered by the journalist over a period spanning from the early 1980s to the present day. Previously published in international magazines and specialist books, the writings share a common thread: the passion with which each of the protagonists speaks about their work and, often, about ethics as the founding basis of the creative professions of architect and designer, and their social impact.

Why forty?
It has been exactly forty years since I began working as a journalist. I started working at the editorial office of Domus alongside its then director Alessandro Mendini in October '79. Through this work I got to know and engage with companies closely connected to the world of design such as Alessi, Zanotta, Arflex and many others, living through numerous experiences tied to communications. I liked the idea of celebrating this anniversary, and in this book I have brought together interviews and articles featuring protagonists from the world of design and architecture whom I have met in the course of my professional life, and who have in various ways been special to me. I met all of them in person, with the exception of Victor Papanek, pioneer of social and sustainable design, a designer I have always admired for his innovative ideas, which anticipated themes in design that have become very relevant today.

Were there any criteria that guided you in choosing these forty interviews?
Symbolically, there is one for each year, but they do not follow a strictly chronological order. In reality, I chose them from among the very many I have conducted, because I am particularly fond of each of these stories or each of these people. The sum of these figures' accounts — each one a protagonist of a piece of the history of design and architecture — sketches a rather complex and varied landscape.

Some of them — such as Philippe Starck, whom I consider today an extraordinary and unique figure, or Ettore Sottsass — I have met several times over the years and have had the opportunity to write a number of articles about them, following the evolution of their creative journey; the only one of the forty who has nothing to do with design is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the fathers of Beat Generation literature. I loved him deeply in my youth, I read everything he wrote, and he remains an important point of reference in my life to this day. Every time I go to San Francisco, which happens quite frequently for family reasons, I visit City Lights, his bookshop, a poetic place that has retained the charm of the 1950s and 1960s. This year in March I attended the party for his hundredth birthday!

For the LifeGate network, with which I have collaborated for years on editorial content relating to sustainable design and architecture, I had the opportunity to interview Yona Friedman, a Hungarian architect, designer and urban planner, now well into his nineties, a legendary figure in design and architecture who was ahead of his time in a great many respects, with extraordinarily innovative ideas about self-construction and architecture that grows and changes over time according to needs.

There are also excerpts from interviews that were published in my previous books — for instance, the one with the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni, in the book I colori del design (Franco Angeli editore, Milan, 2007), which I still find very beautiful today. Then there are of course Alessandro Mendini, Gillo Dorfles, Ettore Sottsass, Shiro Kuramata, Kengo Kuma — some of the greats who made the history of design and architecture.

Finally, there is a section of fairly recent interviews, from 2015 to 2018, with women entrepreneurs working in the social sphere, in corporate social responsibility — an equally interesting subject to which I am deeply committed. Simona Roveda of LifeGate, Luisa Bocchietto, Nicoletta Alessi, Daniela Fantini, Luciana Damiani — all women who have known how to address this theme with talent and boundless passion, in a way that is unique and special. Each of these figures has their own specificity and individuality, and together they are like so many pieces forming a personal picture of mine, one I am particularly fond of and always enjoy looking at.

Among the people you have interviewed, is there anyone who, compared to those years, you feel already had a clear vision of the future in terms of design thinking and ideas?
There is an unpublished piece that has never appeared before — an interview with Elio Fiorucci on cruelty-free products. In my view, he was one of the most innovative and enlightened figures on the Italian scene of the 1980s, with a highly personal vision of the future. He was very fond of plastic as a material, for instance — a statement that today sounds almost reactionary and certainly counter-trend — because he used to say that a plastic object was far more ecological than cutting down trees; but on the subject of cruelty free, I must say he had an extremely forward-looking vision that was well ahead of its time. For him, cruelty free did not simply mean producing with respect for animals; his vision was broader and extended to the entire production cycle of objects, which must not cause suffering in any way — so, for example, he proposed boycotting the purchase of products not made by people receiving fair pay, or produced using child labour, as so often happens in the economies of poorer countries.

When and how did social design become one of the priority topics and areas of greatest interest in your life?
I have recounted many stories that belong to the sphere of design for social purposes and its many facets: from 2000 onwards, this is increasingly the field that interests me most and in which I have worked and set up many projects around the world. For instance, the book contains articles about some very interesting experiences I worked on in Madagascar: self-sufficient communities that produce artefacts made from recycled iron and metal, underpinned by a social idea — namely, using the methodology of design as a tool to create a sustainable economy.

That is the aspect of the profession that interests me most today. I was never interested in the object in itself, the industrial design product; rather, what is fascinating is everything that design can do beyond the product to improve living conditions and to innovate. I believe that social impact and sustainability are issues of great importance, indispensable prerequisites for design practice in the fields of design and architecture.

Is there, if it exists, a common thread running through these interviews?
The first fil rouge is personal — my connection to these stories: encounters, people, moments, accounts to which I am particularly attached. If we want to find another leitmotiv linking these forty pieces of writing, it is that these figures, without exception, do their work with an extraordinary and unique passion; the majority of them place ethics as one of the fundamental values in practising the creative profession of designer or architect, which has or can have a strong social impact. So, some more, some less, they are all aware of this great value that being a designer brings with it.