Creativity in Design: interview with Federica Sala

Federica Sala has worked for more than two decades in the design world, with cross-cutting roles ranging from curating exhibitions, books, and cultural projects to consulting for companies and designers. Her career began as an assistant curator in the design department of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, while her approach over the years has opened up to art, architecture, literature, and theater. Since 2022 she has been Editor in Chief of The Good Life Italia magazine. With Federica Sala we talked about design and craftsmanship, visions for the future and the Gen D - Generation Designer project that she curates for Dolce&Gabbana and in which we participate among the selected craft realities.

You are an independent curator, an advisor and the director of The Good Life Italia magazine. What unites these three activities?
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Curiosity, which has always led me to be interested in very different things, and which now, especially with The Good Life Italia, is opening me up to new worlds and new knowledge. All three activities then are based on work that has content at its center: whether it's the content of an exhibition or consulting to a designer, you from the outside draw a line of what could be future evolutions. And finally creativity, which is the area in which all three of these things move.

AND what is it instead that differentiates them? I imagine that between a cultural institution and a company there may be divergences in terms of objectives: would you say that your work changes in interfacing with one or the other?
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Of course, work always changes. If you curate an exhibition for a state public institution, you have to think about what they call large public in France, so a popularized cultural product with a strong pedagogical framework that allows the widest possible audience to understand the subject of the exhibition, whether it is dedicated to a single designer or a movement. A different narrative capacity is needed, one that keeps insiders and outsiders together. Projects for companies, on the other hand, can be of various kinds: cultural, communication or commercial, and this obviously changes the approach completely. Let me give an example. A few years ago I started a collaboration with Buccellati, a historic jewelry brand that wanted to approach the world of design through tableware, which they had been producing for years. My proposal was to have four interior designers work with the existing collections, with the goal of showing how those objects, which recalled a milieu of ancient nobility, could instead be very contemporary when used in a completely different way. This then led to a rationalization of their commercial catalogs. The commercial part remains very important in design, because design has a direct commercial purpose unlike art, which is perhaps more free of the connection to the market.
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In which of these two worlds do you feel freer?
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It depends from project to project and company to company. In fact, it depends on the people. You can be extremely free in a company as in an institution if your interlocutors are people with whom you have a dialogue, an affinity. In contrast, there is never freedom when your interlocutor has no real open-mindedness, or is very dogmatic. Of course, stakes are always there, but it is always the people who make the difference. So far, the jobs that have gone well, that have been a joy and maybe then generated other things, have always been related to a very good relationship with the people who were there, to the harmony that was created between me and the team of the company or the institutional reality, whatever size it was.

How much do you manage to transport your experience in the cultural sphere into the corporate communications sphere and vice versa?
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A lot, especially in recent years. When I first entered this world, my work consisted more of looking for sponsors for initiatives. Then the world of communication changed, branding came in, and all companies started working on their cultural values, heritage, vision of the future. Now potentially anyone is a patron of cultural projects. In the magazine [The Good Life, ed.] I came up with a column that tells about the projects of companies that do entrepreneurial culture through different means of dissemination. Last year we talked about corporate magazines: today there are so many people telling about their work this way-from the flour company to the architects' studio. Even catalogs are no longer just a commercial vehicle; they tell about the subject, its values, its connection with the territory. This thing has actually always been done in Italy, it's just that before you did it without knowing that you were doing it, while today you have given it a name, and when you name something then you create a system, and this also helps to rationalize a number of figures who work in those fields and who previously had no framing.

Like yours?

When I read the articles where they talk about the jobs that will be done in the future and that don't exist yet, I think that already I, today, am doing a job that didn't exist for my parents.

You were saying that this of telling one's story through cultural projects has always existed in Italy?

I think Italy is the country in the world with the largest number of corporate museums, from the Alfa Romeo museum to the coffee machine museum, MUMAC. Often and often they are museums started by a company, but then maybe they also open up to projects of similar companies. Not always: the Alfa Romeo museum was opened by one of their historic dealers.

‍IS Gen D - GeneraTION Designer, THE PROJECT YOU CURATE FOR Dolce&Gabbana, also such a project? How did the idea come about?
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The idea came from the founders, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Let's say it came as an extension of a business they were already doing. They have always been very attentive to young people, already many years ago they had opened in Via della Spiga, in Milan, a store where they sold the labels of small emerging brands. Then they started to select fashion designers every year to whom they organize the fashion show, also taking care of all the communication part, giving them great visibility. So when they decided to open the Dolce&Gabbana Casa collection, on which, moreover, they had already started working for some time, they wanted to do the same thing. Gen D was born precisely to transport into the world of design what they were already doing in fashion. The idea is to select ten international designers under 40 every year and have them work with Italian artisans. That's an important part of the project, because if you're an Italian designer you have an easier time working with a whole range of excellence, but if you're not it's much more complicated. We wanted to create cultural bridges with our territory, between the company and them, between them and different craft realities, with which the work often continues even after Gen D. Last year, for example, one of the selected designers presented his work in an exhibition at Design Miami, and all the pieces were produced in Italy, which is not at all predictable. Another nice thing is that the designers are invited to Milan and spend three days together, so bonds are created between them that go beyond the project. In the end we all stay in touch, they get in touch every time they come through Milan, and of course then they talk to each other. Thinking about it, maybe that's the real legacy of the project, creating all these bonds that stay. I think this is true patronage, because the company offers to produce a piece for you, giving you carte blanche and no budget limit, it's pure research. Of course then there is also the communication aspect, but it is not even that strong, first comes the project.

How long does the project last?
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A year and a half. For me it's a beautiful thing to see how designers change over that period, how they become more confident. There is really an evolution.

How do you choose designers?
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By doing research. I try to see as many exhibitions as I can, visit independent galleries, graduation shows etc. I read newspapers and magazines, I also intercept some of them on Instagram, or I rely on recommendations from people I know. As much as possible, I try to meet them in person, although it's easier to do this with people who live in the places I go to most often; maybe on the other side of the world it's not so easy. Then we do a series of online interviews, and from a broader pre-selection we come to skim the final group.
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How are the craft realities selected?
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We start with those that already collaborate with the company, although I have to say that every year we have to look for new ones because the needs of the creatives are always different.

What evolutions have you seen in the world of design, and what do you expect in the coming years?
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One of the most interesting things has been the recovery of the value of craftsmanship in manufacturing. This kind of attention has always been there in Italy, but I think it will continue to grow in the coming years, also given the arrival of artificial intelligence, so it will have more and more importance what machines cannot do, but hands and heart can. For the future I would say, but it's more of a wish, that I would like it if design came out of the world of home and furniture and became a public issue again. It's something we've kind of forgotten, but it comes to mind every time I look at the Milan subway designed by Franco Albini.
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To an artisanal reality like Incalmi what advice would you give?
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Incalmi, and I'm not saying this because I'm doing this interview, I think it has perfectly understood how to do things. It represents the typical values of what has been the ability of Italians to go out into the world and be appreciated: creativity, quality of execution, but also a mental flexibility to follow a project, to change direction when needed. Another thing also seems important to me, and that is that artisan realities sometimes sin in thinking of doing everything themselves, while Incalmi has always recognized the value of creative people and professionals. This is what has always characterized the birth of design companies as well, a mix of passion and entrepreneurial risk-taking. Certainly Incalmi has taken entrepreneurial risks in doing certain things, and this has given it effervescence, even compared to the many historical companies that, having now become giants, and perhaps acquired by industrial funds, have delegated the work to managers.

What role will Italian manufacturing and made in Italy play in the future?
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It is obvious that they must be defended. Certainly one of the most important aspects is the training of the new generations, so I find important all the initiatives for example of Fondazione Cologni, but also of many companies that are starting to have real in-house schools. We should invest more in education. As usual, we are a country with its pros and cons, it has always been the private sector, since the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, to make up for a whole range of things. But this would be the right time to do it, because if on the one hand so many jobs will change, maybe on the other hand we will go back to crafts, playing the piano and going to the theater.