Union Magazine: Formafantasma on memory, meaning and making home

Formafantasma has long held a singular place in the world of design, respected for their thoughtful, research-led approach and ability to look beyond the object and toward the systems, histories, and ideologies that shape it. Founded in 2009 by Italian designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, the Milan-based studio works across product, spatial, and strategic design, with a practice that moves fluidly between commercial and independent work. Notable collaborations include Prada Frames for Prada, SuperWire for Flos, and Drafting Futures for Salone del Mobile. Yet what often goes unspoken is the emotional undercurrent in their work, an attention to feeling that’s rarely foregrounded, but always there.

In a reflective exchange of voice notes and emails, Andrea and Simone explore home as something both deeply personal and fundamentally political. From open dialogues and habitual care to grief, ecological responsibility, and the gendered legacy of Modernism, they speak to the domestic not as a static backdrop, but as a living, layered space – shaped by sentimentality, intimacy and inherited systems that have long dismissed the decorative, the emotional and the feminine.

It’s their project, La Casa Dentro, that sits at the heart of this sentiment, revisiting the visual language of modernist furniture while weaving in aesthetics drawn from lived experience, personal loss, and memory.

What makes their perspective so special is their ability to hold complexity, balancing the interplay between personal experiences of home and established design ideals. They remind us that the things we grew up with – the objects, materials, and rituals – may not fit into the canon of good taste, but they’re still part of who we are. That home is not a curated ideal, but a shifting, evolving ecosystem – built through use, through care, through acts of meaning-making. They also remind us that design, at its most honest, helps us honour that truth. It helps us adapt, repair and imagine new ways of living, together.

When you hear the word ‘home’, what are the first images, ideas or feelings that come to mind? How do these shape your creative approach?

When we hear the word ‘home’, it’s still childhood memories that come to mind. The feeling of our family houses, spending time with people, images from the past. That sense of home is ingrained from a very young age, so those memories are what arise. How does this shape our approach? It’s hard to be analytical when dealing with something so deeply autobiographical. The memory of home is embedded in our being – maybe even in our DNA. It’s difficult to dissect how, but it’s there.

Your studio has been described as having a ‘home spirit’. How does the domestic or intimate nature of your workspace influence the way you work?

Our studio is very domestic in the way it’s designed. It’s an open-plan space with shared areas and lots of big tables for meetings, gatherings and lunch. Everyone in the office cooks and eats together. So it feels like a mix between a home and a workplace. That spirit of familiarity influences how we work – conversation and dialogue are central to our practice, and the space invites that. It’s not just the two of us talking, but also the broader team. Research becomes communal and collective. Right now, there are eleven of us, including one person who works remotely from the Netherlands. If we were bigger, maybe the setup would need to change, but for now, it’s the best way for us to work.

How does your research-driven method help you question or reshape traditional ideas of home as a static or idealised space?

About a year and a half ago, we presented La Casa Dentro, a project that really captures our interest in the idea of home. Both of us were trained as designers, and that education inevitably brings you into contact with the ideologies of modernism – Le Corbusier, Van de Velde, and so on. We revisited the writings of these figures and noticed how Modernity was often framed through masculinity: rational, forward-thinking. The feminine, meanwhile, was diminished as irrational or frivolous. That mindset shaped the modern interior too, where anything decorative – often coded as feminine – was erased in favour of a purist, rational ideal.

In your view, can home extend beyond a physical place to a system or ideology? How does your work engage with that broader understanding?

During that same time, I [Simone] lost both of my parents and had to clear out our family house. That experience brought a personal perspective into dialogue with the ideological. Our family homes weren’t shaped by Modernism – they were full of mundane, affordable, sentimental objects tied to care and memory. In La Casa Dentro, we revisited bent tubular metal (a staple of modernist furniture) but layered it with other aesthetics drawn from our own pasts. There are many layers in the work, but essentially it acknowledges that studying design can teach you to dislike things you once loved – even though those things are still intimately part of you. Home, we believe, is a much more complex ecosystem than design often allows. Too often it’s reduced to a status symbol rather than a space of emotional or collective significance.

How does your ecological perspective transform or expand the concept of home?

It shifts it entirely. Home is no longer just a shelter for the self – it’s something that exists on a planetary level. In an era of ecological crisis, the act of care can’t remain confined to the domestic sphere. It has to expand to society and the planet. That’s what we explored in the Prada symposium Being Home, where we brought together voices from many disciplines to talk about home as a layered, interdependent ecosystem. It’s not just architectural. It’s environmental, social, emotional.

Simone, you’ve said design is “the innate human ability to make changes to suit our environment and desires.” How does this view shape your idea of home as an adaptive space?

It’s a very simple but powerful idea. Design didn’t start with the industrial revolution. It started when humans began modifying their surroundings to be more liveable. Shelter, clothing, tools: these are all acts of design. So, design is essentially what makes home. Not just physically, but philosophically. Home is an ever-evolving, adaptive condition. It’s about assembling materials, processes, behaviours and ecologies. That’s what it means to design – to build, reshape, and negotiate our existence on Earth.

How can design respond to global challenges, like the climate crisis, and reimagine home as something regenerative and resilient?

Design can do a lot, but not everything. It depends on commissioners too. Often we feel disempowered by clients who want to respond to the market rather than to urgent questions. Design is powerful when it infiltrates systems and challenges the politics behind things like real estate. But those are also political challenges. There are historical examples of design stepping up in moments of crisis – creating temporary shelters, for instance – but what’s really needed is systemic change. Europe is ageing rapidly, yet we see little design research into collective housing models that could support that. We need to rethink how we live, together.

Your project, Staging Modernity, critiques the standardisation of modern living. How does such an argument apply to contemporary ideas of domesticity and comfort?

We’ve spoken already about our critiques of Modernism. Often, when we work with furniture brands, we see how easily the design industry slips into idealised notions of domesticity that don’t reflect how people actually live. Staging Modernity was about what modernism left out – especially its relationship to the ecosystem and to care work – much of which was feminised or erased. Decoration, for instance, was dismissed as frivolous. But historically, decoration has been tied to repair, care and dignity. Rural artisans, for example, carved or embroidered household items as acts of preservation and meaning-making. In the 1980s, postmodernism tried to reclaim decoration, but often from a cynical, intellectualised position. We’re more interested in the quiet, embedded value of those practices.

How do cross-disciplinary dialogues inform your understanding of home?

We’ve spoken about home as a house, but also as a planet. That requires collaboration across many fields. In the Prada symposium, for example, we brought in anthropologists, philosophers and policy thinkers. In our work with Artek, we didn’t design products but helped reframe their entire approach to sourcing timber. That was informed by the knowledge of many people. Expanding our network beyond traditional design fields allows us to work with commercial partners in ways that are more strategic, not just aesthetic.

How do materials and craftsmanship shape your relationship to home in terms of memory and sensory experience?

We don’t approach materials only in terms of function or performance, but also the narratives they carry. Wood, for instance, can evoke tradition, but it can also be highly technical. Our SuperWire lighting for Flos draws on artisanal references while incorporating a new LED technology that can be repaired by the user at home. The aim wasn’t nostalgia, but familiarity. We want to create something new that doesn’t feel alienating.

And finally, how do you balance respect for design history with the need to rethink home for the future?

We don’t approach the past with reverence, but with curiosity. If you know the past, you can be respectful of it, but that isn’t the goal. Our job is to be critical. Design often supports reality uncritically, and we’re more interested in challenging that. The past has to be scrutinised, especially if we’re still living within its ideologies.

This article was originally published in Union Magazine Issue 6.