MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom

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words and design
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X. Allard: It’s the designer’s privilege
to sometimes provide us with an element of
nonsense. At the Milan Furniture Fair, there
was a smooth shiny cube which looked very
hard and uncomfortable. But when you sat
on it, it was soft and moulded itself around
you. Technology can contradict materials…
Ora Ïto: Some objects are at the frontier
between art and design. They create surprise,
introducing an additional emotion, one not
necessarily directly related to comfort. Being
involved in the industrialisation of objects,
present in shops by the thousand,
I sometimes need to do things which have no
economic interest but which open up paths
for debate and refl ection.
X. Allard: Are you in favour
of reinterpreting existing codes or,
on the contrary, of a complete change?
Ora Ïto: I always keep a connection,
a relationship. But I’m always calling into
question my obsessions and moving
them forward: the future, materials,
deconstructing to reinvent.
It seems to me more diffi cult to transform
a category of objects which have been
there since the beginning of time than
to create a clean break. When I was working
in the fi eld of tableware, I did not reinvent
the fork – it remains a platform for carrying
food – but I expressed it in my own way.
I allowed it to develop stylistically by saving
on materials, changing the way in which
we put it down…
I love the future and I am fascinated
by major French brands such as Alstom.
You work almost more according
to a prototype philosophy than according
to a mass production philosophy.
Alstom is constantly innovating. This is why
your work is closer to a spaceship
than to a car. I’m for instance fascinated
by the design of the TGV. Roger Tallon
is moreover one of the designers whom
I respect the most (ref. AT Magazine n° 4).
X. Allard: What do you think are
the challenges for mobility in the future?
Ora Ïto: The most important one,
in my opinion, is to know how to go from
one point-to another, consuming the lowest