And this is the point: though the challenge seems impossible, contemporary design has found a way to narrate the sublimation of the technical body, not by rejecting it but instead by taking it to its extreme consequences. If the tech language forged in the 1970s reduced the aesthetic plane of the object to degree zero, making it coincide with the technical anatomy of the product, the growing sensitivity regarding immaterial immanence of the present age is pushing the technical reduction of aesthetics beyond that same degree zero.
The structural cleanliness becomes so subtle, fine and refined as to reverse itself, by coherence, in a harmony of signs organized with perfect aesthetic logic. This can be seen in the Magnetica suspension lamp by Vittorio Venezia for Luce5, a direct heir of the historic Parentesi, not only in terms of its linear arrangement, but also in terms of its inner sense of poetic exploration of space, taking it beyond itself to reach the levitating magic of the magnet.
Similar clarity can be observed in projects like the one by the young Finnish designer Elina Ulvio, or in those of the Chinese design (with a Swedish background, now based in Norway) Cecilia Xinyu Zhang, both with a very delicate touch when it comes to the structure of the object, that seems almost to be made of the threads of a spider’s web, joined by the fingers alone.
Actually, Nordic purity is right in line with the poetics of the technical-aesthetic paradox. A wayfarer heading up a meridian to the north, in fact, would reach a point in which without turning back he would begin to travel southward. Likewise, in these lamps made of light, time and precision, the aesthetic dimension is reached not by taking a distance from that of technique, but by pursuing its rigorous dictates to the point of paradox.
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