Interview / Alain Findeli

Design, the origins of which lie in the industrialisation of consumer goods, poses the question of the relationship between form and function, utilitarian value and aesthetic value and encompasses almost all of our economic and cultural issues: the prevalence of marketing over product, of desire over need, of subjectivity over mechanical rationality; uniting art and industry, production and consumerism; in response to the formality of the division of work and the scattering of tasks within the company; solidarity of aesthetic prerogatives and of the market; the growing dependence of the creative world on the economy; and vice versa, business and industry’s use of design as a means of standing out from the fierce competition where the demand for differentiation is imperative.