Istituto Marangoni Design Milano. Supporting the students towards the development of their own vision

Founded in 1935 as a fashion school, Istituto Marangoni approached the design field in 2014. How does your fashion background define your education approach?
This year, Istituto Marangoni celebrates its 85th birthday. This is a well-established Italian school that has evolved and always managed to bring renowned professionals from the fashion world into the education field. Seven years ago, we decided to open a school dedicated only to design, and we tried to decline this discipline starting from our fashion background. This does not mean that we have brought fashion into design, but rather that we have introduced some of the best practices of the fashion world into the design world, including communication, new products, trend analysis, technology, digitization – this has allowed us to stand out from all the other schools that start with an architectural education and then move on to design.

The fashion world often has faster creation and production rhythms than the design world. How do you think that these two different rhythms intersect and are reflected in the students’ work?
The time of great suffering we are going through with the Covid-19 pandemic has led many people to think. Time is important – I’m thinking of the warning of some great professionals like Giorgio Armani – and we shouldn’t skip important steps by going too fast. Fast fashion is one thing, well-done fashion is another. Students must be constantly stimulated – it’s an essential need in a fast and increasingly connected world – but this does not mean to create products that go out of fashion after a season. Design must not present two collections every year – it must be able to grasp what is happening, because companies can survive in this increasingly competitive world not only with quality, but also by looking at the future.

How is your teaching program structured?
Istituto Marangoni Milano Design’s educational offer is very complete. We have accredited graduate courses, such as the Visual Design course, and Master’s degree courses designed to bring students as close as possible to the world of design through partnerships with well-established companies and designers. In the new Master’s degree course in Product Design we have created three modules, each one independent from the other, where students accompany a designer/art director during their collaboration with a company, in order to deal directly with business processes, creative development and deadlines of a real project. In particular, Philippe Nigro will work with Alias, Elena Salmistraro with Moroso and Studio Nendo with Alessi, in a never-seen-before collaboration between the two.

The art director of the Design School is Giulio Cappellini – a fixture in the school when it comes to discovering new talents.
Giulio started working with us when the project was still in its planning stages. We developed the interiors of the school together, so that we could perceive design in every detail, both as a physical space and as an experience. His involvement has helped to give the school an international profile by collaborating generously and with a passion that is passed on to the new students every year.

The wider phenomenology of luxury is a dimension that the Istituto Marangoni knows well. How do you think luxury influences design today and how does this affect your teaching?
I would like to summarize this dynamic with the word heritage. Just yesterday, [Sunday 4 October, n.d.r.] the school hosted a beautiful talk where Altagamma director Stefania Lazzaroni, Patricia Urquiola, Cassina managing director Luca Fuso, Giulio Cappellini, and Pigna marketing director Andrea Carnevale discussed heritage. Luxury in the design world does not represent an ostentation, but rather aims at becoming a legacy, the result of years of efforts by our entrepreneurs during the post-war period and which finds its roots in the craftsmen’s workshops of the Renaissance, if not of medieval times. The Italian excellence and mastery in working all kinds of materials is recognized all over the world, and it is due in part from to living in a beautiful place – perhaps the most beautiful place in the world.

When talking about hard and soft skills, which are the most important to have in order to teach design?
For soft skills, I’d surely say curiosity – without it you can’t design, you can’t see what the future could hold, you can’t create innovation. For hard skills, I’d say a constant attention to technological tools and digital changes.

Milan has always been Istituto Marangoni’s centre of gravity. What is the link between Italian design and the Instituto, and what are the most interesting signals coming from your young graduates about its evolution?
Already in the ‘80s, Giulio Cappellini managed to discover young international talents by reworking projects of Italian culture with an international vision. Our desire is to nurture this process. 70% of our students come from abroad, they are digital natives and have a different sensitivity. Their future lies in their vision: we manage to guide them by teaching them to understand trends and support them, but then it’s their job to put all this into practice.