In March, Tommaso Caldera will present his first creation, born of his collaboration with B—Line. His idea of maximum modular and aesthetic composability perfectly matches B—Line’s spirit, just as does the essential concept that distinguishes his work, brimming with versatility and rationality.
Born in 1986, graduating in Industrial Design at Milan’s Politecnico, he numbers collaborations with the Odo Fioravanti studio in Milan and, subsequently, with the Jonathan Olivares studio in New York. Since 2012 he has been working as an Independent Designer from his own studio in Pavia, with his works being shown at the “Salone del Mobile” through the sector’s leading Italian and international companies. In 2013 he was selected by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York as Top Young Industrial Designer and since 2016 has also been lecturing in Turin, Bologna and Milan.
He defines it as a Singular Efficient Variable and it’s called AD.DA: what will his forthcoming design proposal be?
During a recent interview, this was Tommaso Caldera’s recount of his meeting with B—Line and his approach to Design.
How did you get to know B—Line and how did the collaboration start?
The encounter with B—Line was one of those pleasing moments, beginning at a table, starting with a discussion on personal opinions and on one’s idea of this type of work. I met Giorgio Bordin during the 2019 “Salone del Mobile”. We didn’t immediately start talking about projects or briefs, it all just started over a coffee and some idle chat. It was only later, and after several meetings that Giorgio asked me to submit some proposals on a specific brief that the company needed at that moment.
What is your interpretation of design especially after this pandemic? What are your sources of “nourishment”?
The hope is for all the relational dynamics that have taken shape in these recent months to fade as soon as possible. It is a work made up of encounters and confrontations between people, in which distance and the lack of programmability and future perspective not only “muffle” the process but distort it, introducing variables that are difficult to deal with and circumvent. Each single phase, developed within specific limits, then needs to open up to a “real” discussion between the parties, otherwise we will be moving towards impoverishment and sterility of the design process.
The chief “nourishment” comes from research. Much of the work in the studio is dedicated to researching what has been done and what is being done in this field and in the adjacent disciplines, the goal being to always have a finger on “the pulse” of contemporaneity: personally, this type of knowledge and awareness allows for a freedom of movement that would otherwise be short-sighted and contracted.
What designer objects do you have in your office and/or home to which you are particularly attached?
My interest in Design started when I became attracted by the bond between people and objects of all kinds (from the most iconic to the most anonymous) and was driven by my personal attraction towards them. It’s therefore difficult to identify anything specific. The last object I look at before falling asleep is a Mayday by Flos designed by Konstantin Grcic for Flos, the first I look at on waking up is a 1960 Longines wristwatch with which I have a very personal bond. I would choose these two as representing the beginning and the conclusion of a day, in which each moment is linked to something specific.
Are there meetings/events/people that have profoundly marked your activity as a designer?
Meeting Odo Fioravanti, and the years in which I worked with him, are those that have marked the path for everything that ensued and that is happening now. He apprenticed me in his workshop, teaching me everything, and recognising, long before I did, when the time had come for me to leave his Studio.
It is a field in which Masters often continue to cast their shadows over the people they “developed”, even once their paths have separated, and in which their fear of losing their influence and position could lead to dynamics that prove dysfunctional to the sector’s growth.
My fortune in having met Odo and not someone else, can be compared to when a bus misses you by a few centimetres while you’re crossing the road, but you only realise this a few meters on, because you were engrossed in your own thoughts.
And a book on design that you would recommend to beginners as well?
“Molto difficile da dire” (“Very difficult to say”) by Ettore Sottsass for Adelphi.
Sottsass is the most heterogeneous, poetic and interesting personality we have ever had in Italy’s field of Design. This book collects a series of essays and thoughts that touch upon various aspects of Design, Architecture and the world of design in general. The risk of studying the masters, whether contemporary or from the past, is in trying to emulate their path, mimicking a method and an approach that are not their own. “Very difficult to say” does not re-propose a path, but poses a series of questions and tries to reflect on some topics, showing a complexity and richness of thought towards which anyone who is starting to do this work should strive.