Philippe Starck

Starck's first Italian Hotel 'Palazzina Grassi' Venice


"Free me from my inhibitions and I am in my real mental structure, which is of total diagonality. The structure of intelligence is an orthogonal and linear system. I haven't got any intelligence. That means if you ask me to play the simplist card game, I can't do it. I break out in a sweat. You can tell me 'I'll kill you if you don't do this division problem' but I won't know how to do it. It's a bit of a problem. However in exchange for this absolute lack of intelligence, I have diagonal chemical functions which mean it's not something qualitative, I'm simply talking about the function, I don't need to search, I find. Someone is going to ask me a question and before they can finish their sentence- whoosh- I'll have already gone diagonally directly from here to there, to a space in which the solution is already ready. And so I see it, already finished, perfect and at the moment I can draw it, print it out like a printer in a few seconds. So, people say, 'it's impossible. He can't work that quickly' But I can. I simply find myself in places where the work is already done. I'm analysing and thinking about things non-stop. I'm going to be continuously looking at the optical effects of the mirrors while I am talking to you. I am totally obsessed by the curve at the base of the hanging, which is not the same curve at the middle of the hanging, which is not the same as the top of the hanging. And these are the things that obssess me. Tomorrow when you ask me to draw a line, I'll already have 3 lines stored away, so I'll know how to draw it because I already know which line I liked. Working.. all the time, all the time, all the time. "


Philippe Starck interviewed by Catherine Martin
Vogue Living Australia, May/June 2009