The Crit #3: Martino Gamper
From career highlights to design nadirs: The Crit, a new podcast from Disegno, invites leading designers to pass judgment on their own work!
Each fortnight, Disegno’s editor-in-chief Oli Stratford sits down with a leading designer to discuss their career and analyse their past projects. Each episode, our guest will tell us what worked best; what failed; what pushed their career to new heights; what feedback most shaped their practice; and what they feel needs to be redesigned.
At the end of each episode, to complete their crit, they’ll be asked to give themselves a grade for their career to date: fail, pass, commendation or distinction.
It’s a design-school crit, delivered every fortnight! Subscribe to the show here, or sign up wherever you get your podcasts from.
Our third guest on The Crit is Martino Gamper, accompanied by show host Oli Stratford.
Episode #3: Martino Gamper
As his new retrospective Before, After and Beyond opens in London, we’re joined by designer Martino Gamper to discuss his career to date.
From 100 Chairs in 100 Days to Hookalotti, Gamper is a thought-provoking and often irreverent voice in contemporary design, creating work that asks deep, but playful, questions about how and why we make the objects and spaces we surround ourselves with.
With designs that spans exhibitions, interiors, one-off commissions and mass-produced products, Gamper’s work is often hard to categorise or fit into neat disciplinary boundaries. Nevertheless, Gamper’s practice has proven highly influential, with projects presented at institutions including the Serpentine Galleries, V&A, Palais De Tokyo and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
Listen to the episode to hear Gamper assess his own career, from success with a self-initiated stool, to impassioned critique from Enzo Mari (both positive and negative), and the joys of simple, unauthored design solutions.
Show Notes: Martino Gamper
Best design: Arnold Circus Stool
Worst design: An unnamed wooden chair for an Italian furniture brand
Most successful design: Design is a State of Mind
Most impactful feedback: Enzo Mari’s criticism that some of his work was neither craft nor industry
Dream design: An anonymous, ubiquitous object or detail
This episode of The Crit was recorded at Uncommon Holborn.
The Crit’s graphics were created by Leonhard Rothmoser.
The Crit’s music was created by Yuri Suzuki and Team Suzuki.