Martino Gamper is the kind of product designer we all have been waiting for: Brimming with ideas, energy and humour, his designs are disarmingly irreverent and irresistibly fun, and unlike anything one will see in the puristic galleries of contemporary design. Crossing over from studying sculpture to completing an MA in product design at the prestigious Royal College of Art under Ron Arad, Gamper has had little time to worry over the theoretical do’s and don’t’s of his profession – instead, he has followed a simple rule of learning by doing, meaning: the more you do, the more you learn.
At a time where design is overly concerned with form and less so with function, Gamper is not all too bothered with either, but rather with how design might affect the everyday. Coming to attention in 2007 with his epic project '100 Chairs in 100 Days', where he assembled discarded furniture and waste material into curious and charismatic new pieces, considering the history of materials as well as the context of his work has become an important element of Gamper's practice, which sits comfortably and playfully between the worlds of industrial design and fine art.
If anything, his work is driven by an insatiable curiosity and openness, which is also expressed by the frequent collaborations with friends from different fields. Martino Gamper treats his work as a means of communication and interaction, by frequently inviting visitors and passers-by on the street to join and engage, or by creating not only the furniture, but also improvising the 7 course-menus for his legendary Trattoria pop-up dinner evenings – elevating, as an inevitable and highly welcome side effect, design into a profoundly social activity.
With mono.kultur, Martino Gamper talked about his idea of fun, why a chair is the ultimate challenge and what design has in common with cooking.
Visually, the issue is bursting with references and ideas, reclaiming image material from left and right, while unveiling the structure of a book with three booklets of different sizes all lovingly assembled into one – and manually at that, which makes for some rough edges or rather what we like to call extra personality.
Interview by Emily King & Kai von Rabenau / Works by Martino Gamper / Design by Kai von Rabenau
“Five issues later, I was obsessed: Here was a publication that, with each issue dedicated to a single long-form interview, was less about collecting personalities for front-cover bragging rights and more about truly, painstakingly, and intimately getting to know them. Which is all any of us dream about when it comes to our cultural idols, even those of us who, from time to time, have the honor of crossing their paths ourselves.”
— Sight Unseen
“The structure of the magazine itself has been made using 3 different sized booklets that have been manually assembled together to create a unique and interesting object.”
— Inventory
“The main text section is beautifully rendered in two colours with extravagant shapes cut out of the text, reflecting Gamper’s furniture. This latest issue of mono.kultur is a beautiful piece of print.”
— MagCulture
