What Shapes with Paola Antonelli

Tune into our first episode featuring Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) hosted by Veronica D'Souza. In this insightful conversation, Paola explores the power designers have to shape the way we live, think, and imagine the future. From the transformative potential of great design to the far-reaching consequences of bad design. Hear her personal perspective on why design matters, and how it influences our everyday lives in ways we often don’t see.

Thank you for listening! See you in Copenhagen for 3daysodesign 9 - 11 June 2027.

"What Shapes" is the 3rd and current podcast series by 3daysofdesign. Every episode in this series are produced by 3daysofdesign, Boogie Pictures & Veronica D'Souza. 

Music by Veronica D'Souza. 

Learn more about our festival at www.3daysofdesign.dk

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:00

I always say that I'm like a vampire. You know, when I feel down with what's going on in the world, I do a studio visit. If it's a bad studio visit, I get even worse. But if it's a good studio visit, I can suck the blood in a sh.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

You are listening to What Shapes, a brand new podcast by Three Days of Design. Exploring how design can shape our world. And we're kicking off this very first episode of the Design Rockstar. Our guest is Paula and Tony. Senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And for more than three decades, Paula has explored what design can be. From objects to technology, ethics, culture, and humanity. Paula has been named one of the most influential design thinkers, one of the most powerful women in art, and one of the leading voices shaping contemporary culture today. My name is Veronica De Susa, and I have the great joy of being your host. Welcome to What Shapes? Thank you for having me, Veronica.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

It is my absolute pleasure. How did you fall in love with design?

SPEAKER_04 1:19

By growing up in Milan. You know, it's um there hasn't been a moment, it was just part of life. So I I I was born in Sardinia, I grew up a little bit in Ferrara near Bologna, but then most of my life was in Milan, and my parents are from Milan. And in Milan, design is a natural part of everybody's life. So I remember when I used to go to my mom's hair salon, I would see, you know, there would be maybe Hello magazine or some other like Gen Gente, which is another general interest gossip magazine, and then there would be Domo San Abitare. So it was not something for people that were in design, it was for everybody. So that kind of gave me a sense of discernment about design, uh, recognizing good design mostly. It took me a while to recognize bad design. It's funny, you know. It's sometimes you get you get educated naturally to recognize beauty and not the opposite of it, which might be laziness or you know, just like neglect, not really ugliness, but but that took longer.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

You said that good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty. And I think it's fair to say that in the more than three decades that you've spent kind of expanding the idea of what a design is from an object that has become widely recognized. That is quite uh pioneering. You think so, huh?

SPEAKER_04 3:05

Yeah, no, because I I feel that I've changed my mind at least a little bit. There was such an absolute statement, and there were a few concepts in it that are very questionable and should be toned down a bit. Not only the concept of beauty, but we can talk about it, but beauty is still in it's still understood in a certain way in the world, symmetry, there's a classical nature to it, and instead beauty can be punk and it can be profoundly ugly and still be beautiful, so uh needs a little nuance.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

What shaped that kind of expansive vision, that search for always investigating what design could be?

SPEAKER_04 3:48

Well, I think two two things. One is that I've always revered journalism. So um might be out of time right now. Journalism is kind of like beleaguered, but I still really revere the idea of journalism. And I was working as a journalist, uh, yeah, I mean, amateur journalist when I was in my teens, you know, for newspapers in Milan. So that idea of reporting, of investigating, investigative reporting to me is just sacrosanct. And the second is that university that I went to, because it was such a mess. You know, we were 15,000 students only in architecture, only in Milan, which meant that we didn't do anything practical.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

It was all theory because there was no place to do even to draw, even.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

So I got really strong um theoretical background, number one, and number two, there was no separation of design. So everything landscape design, urban planning, object design, graphic design, building design, everything was under the same roof. And uh it was part of the polytechnic, so also engineering fell together. So I I guess um there are some schools that teach you architecture as the love of buildings or design as the love of objects. And instead, I was in a very open-ended system.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

In many ways, you've you've contributed to continuously adding uh kind of adjacent fields to how we show design and what we understand as design. Or has there been moments where you've been pushing for something that you call design, but that has met some kind of resistance?

SPEAKER_04 5:26

It's never happened or it's always happened, depending on the context, right? When I'm amidst designers, they are elated. They just want to expand more and more and more because you know, the goal of designers is not only that of doing beautiful products, whatever their products are, but it's also to be used better. And to be used better means to be understood, respected, and involved also in the making of society in a more direct way, policy making and uh governor, governance and more. So when I'm with designers, it's never a problem. When I'm instead in more traditional uh artistic contexts, there's instead a lot of like protective reflex, right? It's a self-protecting, protective system that of art. So they need to push you out as much as possible because they need to maintain the aura. And design is so powerful because it really has to do with everything that art has to do with, plus the reality check of having to produce something towards progress. So that's where I sometimes get the pushback. Design is, in my opinion, an umbrella that gathers everything that has a goal that needs to be reached using the means at your disposal in the most elegant and sustainable and humane, and you can continue adding attributes way possible. The materials can be wood or they can be code, or they can be bricks, or they can be mycelium, you know, and the scale varies depending on the context where you're working, but that's how I see it. All that is design.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

You talked about shifts before and kind of changing your perception uh which I guess is a healthy sign as a human being that we keep in mind. Definitely, yes. Um Do you have a few examples where you think that shifted that shifted your perception of how you view design?

SPEAKER_04 7:37

Well, let me think. Um it happened so many times that it's hard sometimes to pinpoint. First of all, I have to limit this gigantic definition of design, and I tend to limit it at uh something that involves at least one of the senses and that is meant to really be used by people and to go towards the progress of the world. So I also consider scent a form of design, and in 2010 I I organized a whole symposium about it. Um but one of the biggest turning points to me was when I think it was 2013, there was the announcement of the 3D printing gun, 3D printed gun. I remember that I used to always talk about this concept of good design with capital G, capital D, which is a concept that was also purported by MoMA, you know, at the middle of the 20th century, this idea that you could educate the masses and elevate the masses through so-called good design. So this idea that design is always for always for good. I remember when the 3D printed um announcement happened, and I don't know if you remember, but the idea was to have this open source files that anybody could use to print a lethal gun pretty much at home. You could have it like a mediocre, you know, second-tier 3D printer. And it was published by Cody Wilson, who was this um um, well, he called himself a philosopher, like a libertarian in Texas. Then he ended up going to jail for several other reasons. But it was really shocking because all of a sudden, everything that I held dear, uh, progressive, new technology, advanced technology, design, open source, everything. Descentralization. Yeah, everything, you know, just like everything was turned upside down. It was like for evil. So I started thinking of uh, I was telling you before I was not thinking of bad design, I started thinking about it. And you know, uh my great friend Alice Rosthorn has a lecture that she kind of updates every year about bad design, which I love. And you know, I was not thinking about it before. This is not even bad design, this is evil design. So I started this project with a colleague, Jaymer Hunt, about uh design and violence, and we looked for objects that have an ambiguous relationship with violence in society, ranging from the 3D printed gun to some prisons, especially in Scandinavia, that are almost like great leisure hotels, to the helmet to protect uh football players. So all of these objects that are good, yes, but also bad.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

You mentioned earlier that accessibility and kind of you know, that's also been a a shift of from the Renaissance era of saying top-down, uh, and that some of the the ways you look at design have shifted around that, and which I think is also you know clear from both design emergency and from a lot of the kind of later projects that you've been working on. So if you should uh and that's always difficult, but if you should have your your current Paola Antonelli definition of design. What does that sound like?

SPEAKER_04 11:00

It's still the same. Um and that's the trick that I learned at school. If you have a definition that's abstract enough, then you can manipulate it, right? So I don't change it, but then it encompasses everything. So it's between goals and means, right? Something you have to achieve a goal and you use the means at your disposal in the most elegant, economical, you know, humane, sustainable, respectful, blah, blah, blah, blah way possible. So if you see, if you see it that way, you can really, really make it completely fully adaptable because all of a sudden the goal could be a collective goal and it could be established by many people as opposed to having one manufacturer or one family, you know. So it's uh it's almost like an equation, and the variables change every time, and uh and the outcome changes. So it's still the same definition.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

You've been consistently vocal about design not being neutral and that it has power. So if you could direct that power, at least use this microphone to to speak your truth to the people listening. What do you think are some of the most important things we should be focusing our design capabilities on right now?

SPEAKER_04 12:23

Right now it's about being political, not being lazy. Um if that means if you're doing beautiful ceramics at home, do your ceramics and then go in the streets. If instead your design is already involved in public, just speak up and speak up not for a party or just for the sake of speaking up. Find your own ideals and goals and fight for them through your design, also. I believe that designers could be better used because you know our nature is intrinsically constructive. We try to not really solving problems, that's such a reductive uh way to think of design, but we have a good way of analyzing and setting the problem in front of us in a way that can also bring in other people to collaborate, right? So we can we build teams, we are good at setting up the problem so that it can be tackled. And that's we should be used better, you know. That's what I really want to want for us. And another thing that I want for us is for us to be paid all the time. Um, we have to train the world to the fact that intellectual labor is labor. If you get asked for an internship or for a lecture for a panel, demand to be paid. It can be a few, you know, kroner or a few euros, but people must understand that intellectual labor is not uh ethereal. You still have to be paid just like the electricians and the caterers are paid. So these two things that we have to work on is re-establishing intellectual labor as labor in society and trying to get involved in the mechanisms that create policies and create governance so that we have a say and we're not just passive observers.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

I think power is incredibly interesting. Um and I think design has not been attributed enough power, I think when you when you think about the field in comparison to how powerful it can be. How is it for you in your role? Whereas, you know getting into MoMA, I guess, can kind of make a break, or not break, but it can make uh at least direct attention uh to someone or a purpose. How do you personally kind of deal with that both privilege but also responsibility of making those choices? And what are some of the hardest dilemmas?

SPEAKER_04 15:04

I feel very comfortable with that power. I wanted it and I have it, and I don't think that anybody really gives you power, you take it. And and believe that making my way to MOMA, which was kind of haphazard because it was an ad in a magazine, was my way to take that power, and now that I have it, I just look for people that have that power within them through their work. I mean, you sound like you're equally curious and equally excited as when you started out continuously. Yeah, no, it hasn't gone down at all. And you know, I I am uh sometimes I am delighted by somebody that says, we've we've made too much, there's too much in the world, let me subtract. I mean, to me, conceptually, um I always I always like compare the goal or the idea with how the person has gotten there and how difficult it was and what was lost along the way. So if the design subject is how to eliminate 80% of the couches that exist in the world and recycle them, I'm like, I'm all for it, right? But there's never ever shortage of great design ideas. So I'll gone forever.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Is there something that you're particularly curious about now? I mean, I'm thinking that if we all try to just travel a little bit into the mind of Palantunelli, what what is occupying you maybe of themes or things that are happening in the world, or whereabouts are you kind of throwing your antennas?

SPEAKER_04 16:45

Many, many, many, many. So on the one hand, while you were talking and asking me this question, the first thing that I thought about was energy. I'm very curious to understand more about the Mini nuclear plants, and uh, because I've always been interested in nuclear energy and in energy in general. Um, so I've been trying to study to understand what that means and also how batteries will be in the future on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm very interested in our political inertia, and uh I would like to understand how we can all rise up to stand up to bullies, which we're not doing enough right now. Uh so I'm I mean, I can I can go on forever. Luckily, I have an outlet for all these themes because I run these salons at MoMA that are called MoMA RD salons. The idea is that you can use a museum as the RD of society. We are at number 59, so you can tell. We haven't done one on nuclear yet, and we're gonna do one on lazy, you know, this month. So every time, and we did one called The Age of the Bully, like two years ago. So all of these different topics come to mind when it comes to the design field. When I'm really looking into are two topics, you know, and they're both the subject, three actually, they're all subjects of an exhibition. What are you seeing?

SPEAKER_02 18:09

What is occupying you? How do you think we can use design as resistance?

SPEAKER_04 18:14

It's not easy to say, and I wish that I were a leader, I'm more of a follower when it comes to revolutions, but I've been studying a lot what the Black Panthers did, believe it or not, because their revolution was a whole system. And I guess all revolutions are. That's the one that, not all, but many revolutions are, but that's the one that I uh was closely studying because um of a book. They had an education system, uh, a way to distribute food. So it was not about, oh, let's go in the street and then like just canon fodder, you know, let's see what happens. No, it was really about creating an alternative that was solid also as an economy, so and as an ecosystem. So I think that maybe uh creating a parallel universe and all of a sudden doing it in a stealth way, and then all of a sudden we reveal ourselves and uh we're fine without you. I mean, I don't know, you know what I'm saying? It's and it's not anarchy at all. I'm talking about a system that has its own regulatory. Also, I'm speaking in Scandinavia, in speaking in Denmark, it's completely a different situation. But um, in many parts of the world, that would be a fantastic way. But I I think that um at least in the United States, the uh that side of the fence is very flabbergasted right now, like deers in headlights. I'm hoping that a leader will come that I can follow.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Let's hope that some leaders are listening. Are there some areas within design, Paola, that you think are still overlooked?

SPEAKER_04 19:56

Well definitely in some parts of the world crafts are overlooked because they're not considered as worthy of being called design. Neither are they considered worthy of being called art, so they're falling through the cracks. This is very much connected to culture, so it depends on where you are. But um I remember that many years ago I was talking with Satyendra Pakale, you probably know him. He's a wonderful Indian designer that grew up in India, but then worked uh in the Netherlands. He was a Philips, he also studied in Germany, I think, so or in in the Netherlands too. Um so he was doing industrial design, but then going back to India and studying the lost wax process and using silicon instead of wax, so it would be more precise. So, in a way, really trying to bring back to life his tradition and bring bring it back to our century. But I remember him taking me around parts of India and being really vehement about the um the destiny of craftspeople in India that are not given, in his opinion, the respect that they deserve, right? So that's really a political class issue. In a place like the United States, it's more of an intellectual and cultural hierarchy issue. But the truth is, crafts are the way that could really allow us to have a vision of design that is inclusive and universal. Because in many cases, it's women and people in the so-called third world that use crafts to produce their designed world. Why? Because there are no industrial models, there are no industrial plants. And says who that industrial plants elevate objects to a higher uh, you know, to a higher stage. So we we're kind of like embroiled in the modern conceptualization of the design world and in the uh cultural hierarchy that sees art up there and then design, but industrial and modern there. So I find that um misunderstood or misplaced crafts for sure is.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

I could speak to you for a obvious seat, but I know you have other things to do here in Copenhagen. If we look back in ten ten years' time, these are at least predicted, very kind of changing times we are in and going into in terms of technology, different uh interconnected crises, etc. What do you hope has changed in how we either perceive design or what we use design for?

SPEAKER_04 22:47

You know, Moa is so bad at predicting the future I can predict the present, but not the future. But all I'm hoping for in ten years from now is that I can see designers being mayors. I mean, it's happened already in certain places like Curitiba. I see designers as being mayors, as being CEOs, I see m many more cheap design officers. I just um it's not really a matter of product, but it's a matter of status and uh respect given to design and understanding by the general populace of what design can offer. Thank you so much, Paula. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

It's been a true pleasure having you here. Yeah, it's been fun. Thank you so much. I want to uh end this episode with giving you the last word. So it can be an advice, it can be whatever is kind of is in your heart of hearts that you would like to leave the listeners with.

SPEAKER_04 23:44

I know the situation is difficult right now. I know many of you are going through really tough times and might feel down and depressed and understandably so. But if you can find your own vampire blood, you know, anywhere you can find it to give you a little boost, it's important now more than ever to set the basis for the future that we want to design.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

This podcast, hosted by Veronica D'Souza, was recorded live in Copenhagen during Three Days of Design 2026, Denmark's official design festival. Thanks for listening. See you in Copenhagen June 9th to 11th, 2027.