pierre

Castignola

in CONVERSATION

Q. Who are you and what is your profession?

My name is Pierre Castignola, I am a designer who’s focus is on creating objects and furniture with a conceptual background.

Q. What’s your morning ritual?

Coffee, plain and simple. The rest depends wether I drink it at my studio or my home. At home I usually put a record on and get comfortable whilst drinking it. If I am at my studio I usually have a conversation with the people I share my studio with or if nobody is there (which rarely happens as I’m not an early bird) I drink it outside if it isn’t raining while checking my mail and planning the rest of my day.

Q. Talk to us about your background?

I was born near Paris, in the suburbs in 1995. I started studying Art when I was about 13 years old and I entered a preparatory Art School in Paris after my time in high school. At 19 I decided to move to The Netherlands to study at the Design Academy Eindhoven where. I graduated Cum Laude in 2018, right after I started my practice as a designer by day and as a photographer by night.

Q. Where does your love for design come from?

I wanted to be a formula 1 pilot, back in 2006 I went to the Paris motor show with my dad and I arrived to the Ferrari booth where they were presenting their new model. It was like being struck by lightning, I stared at it motionless for an hour. That day something sparked, I was really marked by how much of an impact an object I couldn’t even touch had on me. The power of it. I thought the designers of this car were responsible for that effect and was simply attracted to explore how an object can shape our world and how much of an impact they can have on us, people. Strangely that day I decided to dedicate my time to become a designer and that very specific artefact made me somehow who I am now.

Q. How do you start your design process?

Signs and symbols, the idea of perception and ambiguity usually are the starting point of a new project to me. The core of my design belong in its conceptual background, always. I like to have a specific reason about the why I do what I do. However sometimes the starting point I’ve been looking for weeks about a new project comes to me randomly with an everyday life moment. Ideas come from the way I think and I mostly think in an absurd way.

Q. What do you enjoy most about designing?

The thrill to create something new, having an idea at a random moment then starting from scratch toward the finished outcome to make the idea alive. That’s what I enjoy the most. 

Q. Why plastic chairs, what’s the story behind it?

Copytopia actually was generated from a research around intellectual property regulation (patent and copyright). The more I was accumulating knowledge around it the less it made sense until I started to question myself : is intellectual property legitimate? Can you have an exclusive right around something immaterial? The global right of something you can’t clearly define? While exploring that world I came across a fact about the infamous plastic lawn chair. Nobody knows who was the first creator of that object because that person never filed a patent, all the patents you can find now are actually copies of the original idea to have a chair made from a single piece of injected plastic. I found that hypocritical and decided to merge different plastic chairs into one. Stepping over four intellectual properties to create a single piece. The final piece being owned intellectually by five different entities (four companies plus myself) I wanted to question who truly owns the intellectual property of the artefact to challenge the idea in itself of the system.

Q.  What are you working on at the moment?

Right now most of my time is taken by an exhibition the collective I founded with two other designers : Surplus, is designing. It’s a critical collective creating conceptual and radical exhibition. The design week going fully digital this year we had to rethink every parameter of the exhibition and come up with a new outcome.

Q. What are some of the struggles in your designing process and how do you deal with them?

As I work in a very intuitive approach I don’t necessarily have a specific outcome in mind when I make a new piece. Sometimes I can be unhappy about the pieces during the entire process of making it, until everything comes together at the last moment. This intuitive approach can be very frustrating as I spend quite a lot of time on a single piece while not knowing wether I will be happy about it till the very end.

Q. What’s your ‘go to’ source of inspiration?

I read a lot in general (or trying to at least). When I was 18 I discovered the writing of Roland Barthes, a French writer who writes essays on semiotics : the study of signs and symbols. Reading his words deeply marked me, I have read most of his books and every time I re-read one of them I am sparkling with ideas and impulsively I want to make something new.

Q.  Is there a person in the industry that you particularly admire?

There are plenty actually. On the top of my head I would mention Ettore Sottsass and Achille Castiglioni, I have the upmost respect for them as they managed, in my opinion, to be radical and industrial designers at the same time. Otherwise Marten Baas, Marcel Duchamp, Alessandro Mendini in the big names are creatives that always inspired me especially toward their way of thinking.

Q. If you could showcase your work anywhere where would it be and why?

Beside all the museum or galleries that I dream to exhibit in what would give the most satisfaction would be to display a piece where it shouldn’t belong. I would absolutely love that one of my chair ends up in the tank of a tropical aquarium and see any kind of colourful fishes swimming around it.

Q. Something else what do listen to whilst working and creating your work?

I listen to house, techno, disco, dunk, soul and a tiny tiny bit of hip-hop. I’m very hermetic toward other music. While working I usually put a full album or a dj set so I don’t have to think which track I ll put next, otherwise my attention span is close to nothing as I think what should I play next. My usual go to album are “labcabincalifornia” from The Pharcyde (i’m not a hip-hop guy but I absolutely love that album) and of course “selected ambient work 85-92” from Aphex Twin. Beside that I am just on the look out for some newcomer of the underground scene on my free time and while working I often tune on a radio like radio Nova (french radio station with a great and sometimes weird music selection) if the battery of my phone allows it. 

Q. Projects for the future?

Covid screwed up a lot of stuff, I don’t plan much ahead but since it happened I don’t plan anything to myself anymore as I have no idea what will happen. But in general, I will be busy soon for upcoming events (if they go through) while working on my next big project, I see it as the next step of my Copytopia project. It will be different but going further and more radical with the same concept. I feel people have expectation about it, they want to see what I ll come up with as the next step I will make so I am pressuring myself a bit. This is why I am taking my time on this one, I don’t want to rush it. And in the back of my mind I started thinking about an other new project, this time completely outside what I’ve done before so I’ll be starting from scratch. 

Q. Best piece of advice given?

“if you have no reason to design something then why would you do it?” As I was starting in Art school, my dad mentioned it in a conversation. It was a very small part of what we were talking about and wasn’t an advice but these words shaped me to become who I am now.