Enzo Mari — Autoprogettazione?

Enzo Mari's 1974 proposal for furniture that anyone can make from rough boards and nails, with the drawings to do it.

The Italian title joins auto, meaning self, with progettazione, meaning design. Mari meant the project as an exercise: by building a chair, a table, a cabinet or a bed with the plainest techniques, following his drawings or changing them, the maker learns to judge how honest a piece of design is and to look more critically at the objects produced today. The furniture can be used, but Mari put the lesson first.

The first version, Proposta per un'autoprogettazione, was put together by the Centro Duchamp and printed for an exhibition at Galleria Milano in 1974. This book returns to that project and adds Mari's own commentary, a record of the reactions its first release set off in letters, comments and articles, further images and drawings, and a reflection on why the proposal still holds today.

Corraini Edizioni, 2002. 62 pages, spiral-bound, 24 x 16.5 cm. In Italian and English.