How did you make the curatorial selection?
We have chapters: Useless by Design, Useless is Up to the User, Useless Happens, Useless Side Effects, Useless is Contagious, Too Much of a Useful thing is Useless, and Useless is Overrated. I wanted to collect a very wide range of things to tell all the different perspectives of what is useful. I wanted to look not only at how useless happens in terms of design, but also in the production and disposal of objects. At the causes both cultural, industrial and personal, "Who is responsible for useless?"; "Is it the user?"; "Is it the manufacturer?"; "The designer?" There are so many different answers. We propose eight different questions. We don't try to give answers, it's not a dogmatic exhibition. It's a didactic exhibition, a place where you can learn.

The first section is called Useless by Design.
We basically say here: anytime that mankind takes a material from the earth and manipulates it into something else, we make a decision that excludes all the other possibilities. Useless happens first and always because someone made a decision: market, designers, institution, government, whoever; even just a craftsman with a piece of wood.

One of the things about this exhibit is that I wanted to look at all kind of emotions related to product design. Let me jump to the Castiglioni stool; why is it useless? The stool is like a surgical blade, like a club… If you don't have a certain skill, you cannot use these things. Everybody can sit on this stool, but the people who can pay 1,000 euros for it are not buying it to sit on it; they are buying it because they understand Castiglioni's work and that he was influenced by Duchamp, or Man Ray, and he was saying for the first time: ok it is acceptable to make a ready-made into design. This stool is actually very uncomfortable, if you don't understand this, you are missing the point.

So, we can say that useless is up to the user?
Without those years of practice and training and knowledge, surgical blades can cause more damage than good. But with these skills, with practical training they can save a life. An untrained user will make things useless.
The skateboarders are very interesting to me for more than a reason. They require a skill that allows them to turn useless infrastructures into useful obstacles. They have the funny capability to turn parking lots, boring spaces, or totally banal things like curbs, into something magical. They are so good and so beautiful to watch. If you can't be inventive enough to figure out how to use something, it's useless. Enzo Mari said that when the bag was first invented was very important for the evolution of the mankind, because it gave pleasure to humans. Because they could store food, they could hang out, that's when pleasure begins. Charles Eames said: "Who said that pleasure is not useful?" Ironically, the skateboard was invented in Venice Beach, two blocks from where Eames had his office and it uses the same technology that Eames used: moulded die-cast aluminium poli and wheels.

What are the side effects of the useless?
Anything that is practically useless has a kind of users repercussion, a side effect.
These are samples of Grcic chairs that occasionally arrived in the office, every time they change colour in the mould, you have three or four in-between chairs, with wrong colours. They are trash, they are thrown away immediately. Our society doesn't value them. But they are beautiful, they are like tropical fish.
So this is not a design exhibition per se, it is an exhibition about life and everyday reality and how products fit in this reality. And how they are useless or useful in this reality. I think that Kleenex is useless, I prefer handkerchiefs. Convenience is the most important collaborator of the useless.

A section of the exhibition is dedicated to design and architecture magazines. Do you think they are useless?
If a hundred people buy a coffee table, and put it in their houses, maybe 10,000 have seen it in person at the Salone del Mobile, ICFF or in a retail store. 100,000 people have seen an image of it in a magazine or on the Internet. It is a question of what role does the media have in design, which is obviously a positive thing, but also calls into question the quality of journalism. We can say that the average design magazine has a standard in criticism and journalism so low that it can suit a high school newspaper. You have to satisfy your monthly deadline, fresh news each month. Like for the Salone, you have to arrive with new products each year.

How is usefulness overrated?
I think we have a cultural and infrastructural crisis right now. The amount of products we are making just to give people jobs is kind of scary.

Your activity is split in two—design and theory—and the research part is becoming more relevant. How important is it for a designer nowadays to reflect on his profession?
Jeff Koons said: "There are as many ways to make art as there are artists". I think that no designer in the world works with bad intentions. These people love their work. I am still very focused on products. I am definitely designing. But personally I am doing at maximum one product per year. Right now I have a very good relationship with Knoll in the United States. I can do an exhibition in six months because it will last for three months. But a product that potentially will be on the market for years, we have to spend time on this. We are taking it slow. We can work on a single product for four years.

We are approaching the end of the table and the end of the exhibition....
I am ending with a happy and optimistic note. Here you have an American t-shirt in different colours. We said: "Does the world need a t-shirt in every single colour? No, absolutely not. Is it nice to have them all? Yes". The nice about life is that need and nice are not the same thing. And usefulness is overrated when it comes to design.
Again we are going back to Eames, who said that the pleasure is useful. And I totally agree.