On the eve of the company launching new product in Australia, indesignlive sits down with the director of Kristalia to hear about what has driven his career in the world of design, and how curiosity and communication have been key to his success.
November 19th, 2013
“My education was casual, as it derives from a series of professional experiences, not education, which I ceased when I was very young, because I got married quite young and needed an income for my family” explains Magrini, recounting the beginning of the trajectory that led to his directing Kristalia. “Then in the industry I was lucky enough, and in a sense open-minded enough, to experiment with and experience many different things. I’ve worked as a labourer in factories, even in the most humble tasks.”
Boum Chair
Magrini began his career in the world of communications, where he worked with furniture companies and gained an understanding of their merits and defects. “I realised that in our area companies were good at production but not at marketing and commercialisation. Because at that time it was enough to simply produce furniture and you could sell it, you didn’t need to promote it.” he explains. “At that time I’d never designed a thing in my life, I didn’t even know how to hold a pencil!”, he continues, “but I understood that specific items of furniture needed to have specific characteristics of usability. It mustn’t simply be aesthetic, it must be useable.” Thus around 1992 he started to design products for clients, with the assistance of colleagues, and learned about production, and then the idea started to mature that since he wasn’t doing such a bad job of designing for other people, he could do it for myself. And so, with a few partners, who were all friends, he founded Kristalia.
Cu Side Table
For its first nine years, the company produced timber furniture, enjoying relative success, but in 2001 an intentional shift was made to far more technical, technologically advanced materials. “I’ve always been a very curious person, curiosity has always guided my activities, so when I would see research in other sectors – furniture design is not exactly the emblem of research – like car manufacturing and mechanics, I would always seek to understand whether that research could be applied to the furniture sector.” comments Magrini.
Mobius Side Table
The new direction yielded excellent results, making Kristalia a market-leader in innovation and technology.
“I’m not a designer, because I don’t come from that educational background”, says Magrini, “I’m a person that designs things that have very specific functions, and that responded to some very specific requirements in the home that were very tangible… lets say I was very lucky – I was able to see born, communicated, produced and sold each piece, and with minimum intervention able to guide each stage of the process, without being overly involved in any individual facet.”
Plana Chair
Kristalia is distributed in Australia by Fanuli
fanuli.com.au
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