Jacopo Foggini, was born and raised in Turin, but living in Milan for over twenty years.

Since 1997, Jacopo Foggini has presented several installations and exhibitions in major institutions and international showrooms such as “Installation in favor of Cancer Research Foundation, New York, “100% Design Fair”, London,” Italia” c/o Neiman Marcus, Dallas, “Acrylic Jungle” c/o Earthy Paradise, Milan; “Spirula Spirula” at Future Showroom of Meuble, France; Architecture and Designing towards a Sustainable Environment” at the National; Museum of China in Beijing, Interior Design Fair, Monaco and the Art of Italian Design, Athens.

For years Foggini has collaborated with some of the most important architecture firms in the world in public and private areas on both a national and international scale. These collaborations are intended for hotels, museums, exhibitive spaces as well as a variety of public spaces. His most representative works remain Hotel Nhow of Milan, Hotel Side of Amburgo, the Grand Hotel Principi di Piemonte of Sestriere, the Hotel Riad Enija of Marrakech, the new Bentley showroom of Milan, the boutiques of Pornellato in all the main capitals of the world, the Bisazza shop of New York as well as the Terme of Merano and the Sharq Villane & Spa of Doha (Qatar).

Jacoppo Foggini is currently working on installations in numerous countries like France, England, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Croatia, the Middle East, Japan, China, and the United States.

For the Salone del Mobile Fair 2008, has created “Ofigea”, a luminous sculpture for the “Greenergy Design of Interni “, project; the “OFIGEA” is a 55m, long luminous snake, situated on the lawn of the University of Studies in Milan, which consists of 151 discs of Metacrylate. For the Design Week Fuori Salone Fair 2009 he presented (RE)FUSE, a methacrylate carpet 80 square meter, long, realized with his atelier’s scarps from his previous works.

 

INTERVIEW

What does design mean for you? What is design in your life?

A beautiful game

Please describe the changes in design over the last 20 years.

When I look for inspiration I hold a old object in my hand, such as a Limoges coffee cup. I love the design from the past . Regarding the contemporary one I am more critic except exceptional cases.

Which designers/architects have influenced your work the most?

Ingo Maurer, is doubtless the personality who has mainly influenced my work, my poetry, my sensitivity. The delicateness with which he has dealt with the light, has always accompanied my personal path.

What item have you envied because of its design?

I have never tried this kind of feeling for any object, on the contrary I have often felt admiration for some objects such as “BOA” by Campana brothers or “ the fisherman’s tears” by Ingo Maurer.

Do you believe that design assists in the creation of a “better” world?

The design mission is leading new generation toward ethics, environmental sustainability but above all love for beauty, which is the essence to change the world.

Should design be more inexpensive or does it deserve to be paid for at a high price?

It depends on the case. If it conveys strength, uniqueness and great effort and if it is realized as a unique piece, in this case a high value is reasonable. For what concerns the industrial design, its characteristic is to be affordable to everyone.

What led you to become involved in design?

The exact moment when the idea crept into my imagination occurred when I was five years old. One night, as I was looking around my family’s plastic factory with my imaginary friend, an octopus, I suddenly saw a massive piece of machinery. I thought it was a Medusa-like monster and from its nose dripped a vivid and brilliant drop of a material technically called metacrylate that would rapidly become my adventure mate. So my job started when I was a child, I have always tried to modify all my objects, reinventing for them a new essence more and more poetic and original. I have always been attracted by the possibility to giving common and simple objects a new second life.

If you were not a designer, what other profession would you have chosen?

I would be an orchestra director or a classical music dancer