13 May Ettore’s words!

The topics involved included the abandonment of artisan techniques, of the ‘hand made’ and therefore the proposal of new scales of values, that is the scales of the quality of the ‘machine made’. … we wanted to combine the rationalist ideology with the presence of a culture ‘of the senses’, of a culture of weight, of the smooth and wrinkled, of silence and noise, of temperatures, of asymmetries and disymmetries and more … Here are some of the because of Memphis. (“Domus”, Milan, no. 887, November 2005)

Architecture has always been and today is more than ever a magical rite: every time the magical reality of architecture is lost, architecture is also lost. (Written 1946-2001)

I just wanted to say that beyond the “instructions for use”, tools and things are, in the life of men, the means by which they perform or try to perform the rite of life and if there is a reason why design exists, the reason – the only possible reason – is that design is able to restore or give to tools and things that sacred charge by which men can escape from mortal automatism and re-enter the ritual. (Written 1946-2001)