#5 The Dictatorship of the Consumption

Amedei is the courage to pursue a dream. It is a new generation of chocolate producers with the know-how that was passed down from a family who processes confectionery raw materials, with a dream that was inherited from grandmother Amedei, a Tuscany-born woman who was fond of cooking, flavours and taste. “I can resist everything except temptat...

Does the architect respond to the client or to himself? Every architect necessarily responds to himself. The architecture he expresses is the fruit of his values and sensitivity, the fruit of a personal quest, therefore. In a way, it is the transposition of his way of being. It is not a matter of following fashions or styles. It means translating...

Is there any correspondence between the pseudo needs of a consumer and a visitor's needs? Visitors do not have pseudo needs but rather unexpressed or repressed needs, if any; on the contrary, consumers almost always have needs that are falsely generated by the external impulses of the economic and social context. To the world of consumption, visi...

Swarovski, 14,000 employees, revenue 1.67 billion euro, but also 800 events organised every year in Italy alone. Not only an economic organism, but also a conveyor of culture. How does it feel today to be defined as a multinational company? Proud or flattered? Uneasy. In any case, it’s a word that has been outdated by what is now called globa...

Artemide and Moroso, two companies confirming the contemporary relation between man, design and habitat. Why are consumers attracted by your products, what do they base their purchasing choice on? Carlotta de Bevilacqua Gismondi: Light today is conceived as something that is fundamental to improve and personalise environmental qualities in ever...

Casole d´Elsa, summer 2001, Surasi Kusolwong organises a stall market. The people know that there, for one thousand liras, the equivalent of half a euro today, they can buy all sorts of things they do not need: a pink plastic colander, a pair of Chinese slippers, stools, nor, later, would he have deemed it worthy to enlarge coffee cups, had he not...

“My wardrobes are packed, I don’t know where to keep my clothes anymore; and yet, I still feel as if I have nothing to wear.” I’ve happened to hear people saying this sentence or something very similar to it. It can be understood in different ways: “I have a lot and it’s still not enough” or “I don’t have the right clothes to wea...