On interior design

80 years ago, my grandfather opened a small furniture shop, which my father then extended and is now run by my brother. I was born 40 years ago in a baroque city: Lecce.

The past pervades you without your even realising it: I grew up amidst furniture and my background was inevitably influenced by my father, who was more interested in space than business. The objects and spaces I design actually develop in a narrative realm tied to the sentimental value of places.

I even think that my preference for interiors rather than spurious external shells can be traced back to vague amniotic memories and that this attitude gradually developed with my desire to move beyond the surface of the female body to explore what lies inside in greater detail.

But even historically, the grandfather of my grandfather’s grandfather, who was a caveman, actually chose a cave as his home, and his instinct was to take possession of space by personalising it. Then, when the first signs of what we call architecture began to appear, they were always inevitably a direct consequence of needs originating on the inside: tents and huts instead of the original caves to cater for fresh needs, more nomadic than our earliest geographically stable experiences.

Interiors are unchanging witnesses of life, spaces to literally be worn and, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t see much difference between engravings and digital print or between a boulder and a chair. In relation to this, I have to admit that the greater knowledge I presumably now have is counterbalanced by an instinctive regression, that makes me feel like the grandfather of my grandfather’s grandfather: a caveman.

The vastness of human knowledge, which the Internet testifies to on a daily basis, and the possibility of endless options, take me back to primitive emotions and feelings. Despite the wealth of sophisticated languages at my disposal, I often find myself using gestures to express myself, and I imagine that this is partly due to my experience as a father coming to terms with the primitive innocence of my baby girl.

All my work is now developing through an interplay of contemporary input and primordial output.

As absolute relativity triumphs, I can no longer come up with solutions, but I can at least help ask new questions. The lack of certainty merely forces me to be clever.

I prefer non-military sensibility to militant activism, and I have to admit I did not do my military service. My lack of fanaticism (that some people love to flaunt) means that I have always tried to avoid making excessive use of natural materials like wood and stone, preferring the most natural of synthetic materials: glass. Glass is still the most frequently used material in my projects, but without worrying too much about transparency or confession-box syndromes: I don’t feel the need for God to look through me as he judges me. For me glass is a thick paste which can be mixed and coloured and which keeps its porous tactile properties without turning into an ascetically flat pane of glass. In my settings, glass is broken down into web of tiny fragments to restore a sense of the cutaneous tissue of architecture’s sexy body: I search through space for female complementariness in order to create a sense of harmony.

I am also a firm believer in taking individual responsibility in processes ranging from the creation of a product to its disposal at the end of the life cycle, and I am more than certain that the old-fashioned principle of necessity must be adapted to cater for compatibility.

But life is a long process of coming to terms with ourselves, rather than with others, and in order to grow I have always had to accept myself as I am. I am a singer-songwriter, who has discovered three-dimensionality: I am interested in narration and in communicating with others through stories, which I stage through my spaces. I also believe that everything should begin on an autobiographical basis: the real trick is to turn autobiography into universality, experience into a universal parabola. This is also why the only home environment I have ever taken on is my own, so that communication isn’t relegated to a private realm.

I’ve always designed public spaces in the two sectors which allow the most experimentation and highest budgets: fashion and entertainment. Considering that the separation of the private and public spheres is no longer an issue of ownership but of ethics, I take note that congregation places have shifted from the outside to the inside, so as to filter in standardised situations in which we feel at ease.

Although it is hard to define the concept of beauty, I am increasingly convinced of the ethical value of aesthetics. In classical culture, ethics and aesthetics were placed on parallel lines, and it is now perhaps due to the absolute decline in ethics that we have completely lost track of aesthetics. I firmly believe in the educational value of aesthetics, unlike those people who relegate it to more transient and superficial realms, and taking it as a vital aspect of my work also means being aware of just how much it can influence behaviour.

Ever since I first began design work, my firm’s symbol has been a Cupid holding a laser gun: a statement of intents updated in accordance with the latest means of modern-day communication. And perhaps that is what I am still here creating ideal conditions for people to suddenly fall in love, physical catalysts for sentimental developments.

I often think that cooking is the only way to gently invade hungry bodies. The level of intimacy we concede to perfect strangers who prepare substances that pass through the mouth before entering the body is an act of extreme trust, and our fate lies in the hands of mutual trust. I am more interested in things that bring people together than things that separate them, and I think food is one of the last cultural expressions people share regardless of ideology.

I am pleased with the work I have done so far, because I think I have created some tasty dishes, a full range of recipes designed to fill people’s stomachs with food for the soul. But I am just a link in the food chain: I will eat and be eaten. Indeed, taking cannibalism as a ritual act which took on religious connotations in primitive cultures, since I feel like the grandson of the grandfather of my grandfather’s grandfather, sometimes I feel so deeply in love with my wife and my daughter that I’d like to eat them up.

My home is inevitably my body, and I would like to take everything inside me. My inability to express myself through drawing is quite incredible, with one small exception: ever since I was a child I’ve been drawing iconic houses with a pitched roof, chimney pot and windows. When an exhibition gave me the chance to give three-dimensional form to this thought of mine, a huge foetus took up almost its entire interior volume.

The secret of life lives in a woman’s womb, this isn’t an architectural issue, it is just the business of Living.