This series, COLLECTIBLE In-Depth, unveils the backstage of contemporary creation. Tackling various topics from personal designer processes to the position of collectible design on the global design market, COLLECTIBLE In-Depth offers different views to suit all tastes. Today we speak with with Riccardo Sommo – founder of MMOOS. and BRH+ (Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò) -Designers of MOSTRO Collection and Art Directors of MMOOS.

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C: MMOOS. is a newborn reality in contemporary collectible design. How do you navigate the tension between innovation and tradition in your approach to designing collectible objects?

Riccardo Sommo:  MMOOS. is the contemporary interpreter of a precious heritage of rare stone workmanship, that was carried on since 1919 in Torino – Italy, by the Sommo family. The unique expertise of our century-old business is the pillar around which we develop our objects, leading to material and design choices that are unexpected and at the same time deeply respectful of the nature of stone. For instance – in the collection MOSTRO, the travertine is left un-stuccoed, and cut in an original way, that allows for the inner porous structure of the matter to surface and express all its beauty.

C: What is the relation you hold with the designers you work with?

RS: For the debut collection of MMOOS., we collaborated with Turin-based design studio BRH+, who is also in charge of the art direction of our brand. Their design sensibility embraces critical engagement as well as environmental and symbolic instances with a clear and evocative vision, which are all important characteristics for us. We would like future collaborations to follow this guideline as well, to bring more perspectives onto the dialogue we already started focusing on, around the role of objects as powerful narrative devices.

C: How do you position your city in the global design market, what makes your city unique, trends?

RS: Turin is a city of culture, somewhat decentralised with respect to the main circuits of contemporary design, yet it boasts a brilliant creative scene in great ferment. The distance - short, but substantial - that separates it from Milan allows one to look at design with a cleaner eye than the logic of trends, while remaining a stone’s throw away from one of the global design capitals. In this sense, it is a unique city in which to develop new proposals that can then transit through more relevant markets, but always aiming to bring the impact back to the territory. We believe that this relationship with territoriality is a fundamental value that must guide responsible choices, with a perspective on sustainability.

C: You mention sustainability. What ethical considerations guide your material choices and sourcing practices in the production of collectible design pieces?

RS: With our collections, we want to make a statement to stress the importance of preserving natural resources and limiting extraction practices, that jeopardise the already precarious and fragile balance with the environment we live in. That’s why when we entrusted BRH+ with the design of our debut collection we worked specifically around the need to employ material that was caved in the past, and then abandoned, as in the case of the Rosa Peralba marble employed in the MOSTRO collection, deriving from an old quarry, unused since the 1990s.

C: How do you see the role of interdisciplinary collaboration shaping the future of collectible design?

BRH+ (Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò): We have always been of the opinion that any design process is based on research, study, experimentation, and on the dynamic exchange of diverse skills and knowledge sets. We therefore believe that the design discipline, in all its meanings and not only in its ‘collectible’ declination, today as in the past, is defined and motivated precisely by interdisciplinary collaboration. Design is a porous and open practice: in the best of its embodiments, it is a strategic lever of positive cultural and social transformation. Therefore, it cannot take place without referring to a collective ‘we’, that also concerns the process through which the best collectible design takes form and substance.

C: Why do you focus on contemporary collectible design? What does it mean for you?

BRH+ (Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò): We are interested in expressing ourselves in the extended field of design, without preconceived limitations. Our specific interest in Collectible Design also falls within this context. We consider it an important opportunity to deepen research and experimentation, but also and above all to define narratives, understanding artefacts as significant narrative vectors or instruments of symbolic expression. The possibility of manifesting our thoughts through the logic of limited series or one-off pieces also intersects with the idea of giving the material outcomes of the design work a value that we believe can be more relevant - an affective even before an economic attribute.

C: How do you question or challenge functionality in your design process?

BRH+ (Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò): Functionality is for us part of the action with which we express ourselves. In our view, the pursuit of this functionality must be understood as an important occasion to trigger a meaningful reflection, an opportunity to activate thought, perhaps a pretext to contemplate - in a more or less abstract key - on a specific aspect of our contemporaneity. In the MOSTRO collection we have interpreted functionality in this way: the Latin monstrum is the prodigy, the unusual and unnatural - or supernatural - event. It is therefore, not only a sign but also a non-ordinary divinatory
object, a special hybrid – an entity which is perceived as an aberration, as a real anomaly; it is the interruption in the
pattern of conformity, the fracture in the homogeneity crossed by the light of the future.