Recognised as one of the giants of the design world, Enzo Mari was also staunchly ethical, believing that design should serve people rather than profits. Pamela Buxton visits a retrospective of his work at London’s Design Museum
‘There’s a lot of work for the audience of this exhibition to do,’ says Design Museum director and chief executive officer Tim Marlow of its Enzo Mari show, a retrospective of the illustrious Italian designer’s 60-year career.
Although Mari, who died aged 88 in 2020, is recognised as one of the giants of the design world, he is not, says Marlow, as well known as he should be over here. This exhibition, the first major show on Mari’s work in the UK, may help to change that, spanning the polymath’s prolific work as designer, artist, theorist and teacher.
Marlow hopes the exhibition will be like ‘walking into the mind of a great design thinker,’ with Mari’s work presented chronologically alongside his research. Mari believed, we learn, that design should be ‘in the service of society rather than the designer’ and, as such, he fought against consumerism. Considered by some as ‘design’s conscience’, he advocated for the empowerment of the user, exploring open-source design long before it was known as that. He prioritised the durable and the low cost, and was generally a maverick, relentlessly challenging established systems.
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Francesca Giacomelli, the exhibition was first shown in Milan, where it opened just before Mari’s death.
Spanning more than 300 exhibits from book covers to furniture, the exhibition kicks off by diving deep into his meticulous research from 1952-68, in which he interrogates various aspects of form and perception. This showcases Mari’s rigorous approach to research and documentation, including his use of grids of numbers and colours to record his findings, along with associated drawings and paintings.
His parallel industrial and graphic design projects are easier to grasp. His practice expanded in the 1960s, including many projects for manufacturer Danese Milano, with whom he had a long and productive collaboration, producing fruit bowls, vases, containers and other domestic objects as well as an exhibition system for their showroom. Danese also produced his 16 Animals wooden puzzles for children – one of his most well-known works, which deftly evokes the animals through their silhouettes. Similarly, in his appealing Nature Series prints of fruit and animals, he strives for the very essence of their form – ‘it mustn’t be an apple, but rather the apple’. It is particularly fascinating to see the extensive design development drawings that he made for a goose before coming up with the final, pared-back design.
Mari’s design work for children, produced in response to watching how his own young children learned and played, are a clear highlight, including picture books, toys and games. Rather than amusement, he considered play to be a form of work and self-learning. He used his Living Game (1976), designed as a card game for children, decades later as an educational tool to help architectural students broaden their design thinking.
As well as his interest in reducing form to its essence, Mari worked to reduce the industrial process of manufacturing, registering a patent for a joint designed to ease the burden on production line workers making his Java container (1969), again for Danese. He also patented a locking system for his Glifo modular shelving system for Gavina (1966). Later, he collaborated directly with the workforce of manufacturers such as Berlin’s Royal Porcelain Factory (1994-7) to apply new, economical working methods, and led workshops with pottery craftspeople in Hasami, Japan (2001) as part of a creative exchange.
His designs often enabled flexibility of use and configuration. The Serie Elementare collection of 30 different tiles for Gabbianelli (1968) sought to create a design to withstand changing trends. His Aggregato light system for Artemide (1974) offered 72 options, and is still in production today.
Mari’s Autoprogettazione (Proposal for self-design) project in (1974) perhaps best illustrates his commitment to empowering the user through access to knowledge. He believed that the user’s active participation in the design and construction of objects would help foster a greater understanding of the qualities of a design and, in turn, encourage a critical reflection on their choice as consumers. His project involved issuing free instructions for 19 pieces of furniture requiring only the simplest of components and carpentry techniques, and encouraging feedback from those who tried building them. The results of this attempt to democratise design were mixed – Mari estimated that only 1 per cent of users understood the point of the project.
Mari had uncompromising views and was known for his impassioned rants. As president of Italy’s Association for Industrial Design, he criticised the design industry for failing to serve people rather than profits. In 1972, his invited proposal for a project to be realised on Vesuvius suggested making those responsible for the ‘urban degradation of Naples’ reside inside the crater of the volcano.
The last section of the exhibition features responses to Mari’s work from other designers. Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s E M Wall, which features his initials writ large but reduced to their essence, seems particularly appropriate. Upstairs, an accompanying display (Grazie Enzo: Contemporary Responses to Enzo Mari) highlights the works of UK designers including Jasper Morrison, Michael Marriott and Resolve.
While exhibition posters and merchandise naturally showcase Mari’s appealing fruit and animal designs, those visiting this show will leave with a much fuller picture of this truly formidable designer.
Enzo Mari continues until 8 September 2024 at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG