Ideologies are dangerous beasts: they distract from worship of the god Market. Today, ideologies are not cool. They are for the nostalgic only while politics is relegated to televised debates and editorial querelles. For there can be no politics when governments run the country like a business or when businesses are organised not to be entrepreneurial but simply to meet the dictates of the market. Today everyone apes everyone else. Commercial success generates an infinite number of clones with the result that products have become increasingly monotonous and the commercial landscape so regimented, there is no room for spontaneity or individuality. An exception to this dreary prospect, however, is alive and well in the little town of Motta di Livenza in Italy’s north-east Veneto region where Magis, a furnishing accessories manufacturer, is waging its own resolute fight against overwhelming sameness. Its owner, Eugenio Perazza, is a political activist in the true philosophical sense of the word: he is a true entrepreneur, working to invent what does not yet exist, using technologies that will make his products available to the majority; and he is in the business of human relations rather than exploitable products. He forges diversity into a harmonious whole. And his first priority is not marketing but designers, nurturing their originality and putting to use their best qualities. Magis is a sort of ideal Polis, that ideal city where elders are respected and the young encouraged. When asked to account for this, Perazza puts it down to his inveterate habit of getting way-laid, of going off the beaten track when travelling, turning down side roads to discover unknown places, try out new foods. This, he says, has made him aware of people, helping him to remember many who were once in the limelight. He has a series of unfinished projects by Charlotte Perriand, a classic example of a forgotten talent, overshadowed as she was by the towering Le Corbusier. Perazza also...
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