It all started from the top floor, which you moved into. How did you proceed after that?
Looking around Turin, I was drawn to the idea of a condominium where several families live, partly because it is rare in London where I live and where most people live in single-family homes. That led me to imagine the people who would have lived in this condominium.

You imagined the inhabitants as if in a story?
To some degree yes, although I didn't have a clear picture. Looking around Turin for old furniture was a phase that helped me get to know the city better. I started from the discarded furniture and built up a picture of the interiors, how people lived in them… When working with furniture, you sometimes find things at the bottom of a drawer that belonged to a previous owner: a small bowl, a piece of lace or some small object… As I found pieces of furniture, I started "custom" furnishing the single "slices" of the house, which although similar in style are actually very different from each other. For the first week, I never knew what floor I was on but then I gradually started noticing the differences and realising that no two floors are the same. It's important because it's the space that steers you.

Despite being in a gallery that is very much art oriented, you really wanted to highlight the functional value of the objects and spaces. Can we say that your work is essentially a custom-built interior?
I basically wanted to create one apartment per floor.

The furnishings on each floor convey an absence, that of the people whom we only know through the objects that accompany their imaginary lives.
I really wanted to conduct what you could call a sociological study and understand who the people this furniture belonged to were.
I tried to mix "bourgeois" pieces with "industrial" ones, such as the kitchen that might have belonged to a Fiat worker, or a piece that a carpenter made to measure by hand. I wanted to react to the place. Each material has a precise connotation, a story that can be linked to a personal memory.

How has this work been received by a public that is actually linked to the art world?
Strangely, people have not asked themselves whether it is art or design. They immediately perceived it as a house. I think people understand that it is a different exhibition from the others, one in which the furniture tells a different story. This was my starting point. I told Franco that straight away. I wanted to have an exchange with the building. I was less interested in the issue of the art gallery.

Where do you stand on this ambiguity between art and design?
I think we have to be very careful not to confuse what a designer or artist does with the market. A piece shouldn't be judged on the basis of the context it is in. I think people sometimes talk too much about the market and too little about the work. When Marc Newson did that famous exhibition at the Gagosian, everyone was talking about a gallery owner taking an interest in design and the prices quoted for the pieces but hardly anyone really delved into the work.

But the fact is that a gallery owner like Noero is interested in your work and holding an exhibition with a designer for the first time must mean something.
Of course, I don't want to ignore the market situation. As far as I am concerned, however, it doesn't affect the way I work. This attitude may be linked to my own personal story. When I left the Royal College I thought "I'd rather do a few pieces, one-offs maybe, than a large number with a manufacturer that might not even make me a living" (we know how hard it is for many young designers today). I was helped by the fact that I had trained as a carpenter so I was able to construct my own pieces. A few years later, I found myself working in Milan and the role of the designer was very clear-cut but I have always thought design was art because it's a creative process. I wanted to try and be creative with the job itself. Anyway, from my standpoint, it was really odd to try and be a designer the way everyone else wanted to, like Castiglioni (to use the example of someone I admire) did because he was a very good architect and he drew. I can draw but I need a more immediate medium and I prefer to "attack" things.
So, from the very start I said: why do I have to embark on something that forces me into a five-corner detour when I can get straight to the point and do it myself? Then, I had already taken the liberty of making unique pieces, (which could, if you like, be seen as an addiction or an obsession), why should I start making limited series? I am not interested in making a number of unique pieces that are all the same. One is enough, then I want to do something else. I already have plenty of ideas for a totally different piece! I think that's where the idea of Art Design is wrong. When you make the umpteenth piece that is just the same except for the slightest variation… in the end that has turned into production.

If I have to link the Art Design issue to my own case, I have to say that I found working with Francis Upritchard (my wife, a sculptor) and Karl Fritsch (a jeweller) a huge experience. We started doing it a few years ago for Kate MacGarry in London and continued more recently in an exhibition for the Govett Brewster gallery in New Zealand entitled "Gesamtkunsthandwerk". We really wanted to get "hand" into the title to emphasise the handmade theme. As I was saying, it was a huge experience for me because we worked so that meant there was no perceived separation between the pieces. The furniture is mixed with sculptures and jewellery – we made some pieces together – and, generally speaking, it was an opportunity to express ourselves with no separations or disciplinary boundaries, without thinking where a work might begin or end. The good thing about this job is that it gives you the freedom to choose which front to work on. On a totally opposite one, for instance, I also like doing projects for Magis, which is a manufacturer that does a lot of engineering on a piece so they make a whole lot of drawings and prototypes…. I would say that the starting point is crucial but then I let the piece go its own way. Nor do I rule out the possibility that it may one day find its way back to the street

Your story is linked to unique pieces, to a "actionist" approach to work, physically attacking the pieces in real time
I see unique pieces as total freedom. If I had to make a precise drawing before constructing a piece, it would create a distance that does not fit in with the way I see things. I think that you understand more as you go along. That is the essence of the creative process. You learn nothing if you start with an already defined design and simply construct it. I see the process as a discovery. Every piece I make, I learn and I see tiny things that hint at new possibilities. That is why I like working like this. When I am working, I attack a piece and perhaps then don't like what I'm doing but I go on cutting and it gradually emerges…

Paradoxically, what Michelangelo said springs to mind: he worked at removing and freeing sculptures from their blocks of marble. You (mutatis mutandis) draw your pieces out, freeing them from old unused furniture that no one wants anymore.
Old furniture has a strong personality so I find myself having to cope with a heavy, cumbersome aesthetic. I don't always like the pieces I choose, indeed, paradoxically, I sometimes decide to work on pieces I don't like because that is the only way to make it a real challenge. We designers have very precise taste but with these pieces of furniture I have to mix different styles, epochs, materials and moods. I am fascinated by being able to challenge something so behind the times that it has left the consumption cycle and is lost from our aesthetic horizon.

It would be interesting to learn how you read a piece and how you decide to start. Where does the vivisection process begin?
I have to say that the first cut is always the hardest. I am realising more and more that "doing" and "thinking" are two very different worlds. I think they exist in two different sides of the brain. Now and again, I find it very hard to start. It takes me two or three days to get into the mood…

You have a physical relationship with the object. You dismantle it, cut it and reassemble it… maybe you choose a fragment that represents everything and that goes into another composition...
I often throw away 90% of a piece. At the start, anything is possible. You have to read, you have to choose and you have to understand what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of because when you cut into something you inevitably produce two pieces.

It is a sort of cellular proliferation
The piece you want to keep is not always the best one.