Discarded objects are unemployed functions, forgotten things and gifts.    Re-design is mainly to see and find new uses in these abandoned forms

After the positive experience received during and after the 2008 Salone del Mobile, Fethi Atakol has carried on his research loyal to the re-use design ethic: every object keeps a trace of its past existence and, at the same time, acquires a new soul and dignity, following the minimal enviromental impact processing. Objects from the past, from everyday life, discarded or forgotten, are transformed by a creative intervention, revealing hidden and unespected natures.

For the Satellite 2011, Fethi Atakol is presenting some creations from recent experiences in workshops and educational activities.

Fethi Atakol’s view connects the ethics of re-use to education and professional training for people undergoing personal and social rehabilitation, as well as to university and company workshops. Both in education and design the concern is the power to change things and, by the project’s action, change oneself and one’s organization, that is, the power to assume a new form of life. In the same way the designer’s gesture allows objects to escape destruction, and speak and do something new and beautiful, welcoming them to a new function.

Salone Satellite  / Corsia C, Spazio 37

fethi atakol

“When I travel by car, I find myself observing every rubbish container, looking for objects usually abandoned in the area. Therefore it is really usual for me to see all chairs, doors, windows’ shutters, pieces of banisters, carboys, which immediately stimulate my fantasy, that begins “to build”, in my mind, new objects by transforming the old ones. I stop there and I “capture” them: this is the moment when most of my works begin. These pieces, nearly dead, start a process of reanimation that brings them into my laboratory, where I try to understand which could be their “next life”……..

…… Some of them might wait months or years before they can find their right way. Anyway, even if they remain there, apparently unuseful, they can frequently stimulate my fantasy, offering ideas for new projects. Sometimes, it happens that from an object which returns to life with a new design, another new object or a new set with the same story arise. And, until now, this circuit seems to be endless and fascinating to me.”

Re-using

Re-use design means to produce a new function upon and by relics, traces of a previous one. The re-designed object points to opposite directions: to the past and to the future. Re-use poetics preserves the memory of objects, saves them from rejection and destruction, re-combining them in a new syntax.

The re-use designer’s action is not, therefore, to find new materials for a pre-existing form, but to see in something obsolete, discarded, the possibility of a new shape, present in potentia, potentially. In fact, a new function.

Education

Fethi Atakol’s view connects the ethics of re-use to education and professional training for people undergoing personal and social rehabilitation, as well as to university and company workshops. Both in education and design the concern is the power to change things and, by the project’s action, change oneself and one’s organization, that is, the power to assume a new form of life. In the same way the designer’s gesture allows objects to escape destruction, and speak and do something new and beautiful, welcoming them to a new function.

Social responsibility

Re-use design does not claim to replace the industrial system; still it can bear new forms and applications, and propagate practices of sustainability and social responsibility. Re-use design displays examples and processes to enhance creativity and promote self-production. The practice of training workshops circulates a new know how, a new power to create and change forms and functions in the spaces we live in.

About Fethi

Fethi Atakol was born in Bellinzona (Ticino, Switzerland) on May, 10th 1972.

His father is Turkish and his mother Italian. He moved from Switzerland to Italy in 1993.

Since 1999 he devoted himself to re-use design.

His objects have appeared in fairs and shows.

He has also worked as exhibition designer and takes part in artistic laboratories and educational programs.

He presently lives in Rimini with his wife Manuela and his daughters Giulia and Eleonora.