A journey into the work of Franco Raggi—an eclectic figure, impossible to classify within a single style, who navigates architecture, design, curating, and publishing. From the early years of his long career, Raggi has explored unexpected relationships in an unconventional and non-academic way.
Graduating in 1969 from the Faculty of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, he began his career at Nizzoli Associati and entered the publishing world in the early 1970s—first at Casabella and then at Modo, which he directed in the early '80s, transforming them into true creative laboratories for design and architectural theory. He also became involved with the experimental and provocative Radical Avant-Gardes, from which he drew a reflective, provocative approach capable of challenging the certainties of design.
But who is Franco Raggi, really? What defines him, if his work spans from small to large scale, from stage sets for performances and theater productions to museum installations? In the film, Raggi—narrator and protagonist—tells his story firsthand, defining himself through his “ways of doing.” A doing that is a way of constructing a project, but also of thinking and of being.
The film is structured in chapters, organized around “ways of doing”—a series of procedures based on paradox, irony, and creative combinations, through which Raggi playfully explores design and planning. “Making up stories, pulling faces, overdoing, stealing…” In the narrative, these “ways of doing” are abstracted from their original context and translated into everyday life situations, serving as a narrative thread to introduce themes and design works born from these intuitions: the Flûte lamp for FontanaArte (1999), one of many collections he designed for the lighting company; the Nobrocca for Terreblu (2003); the Vasovasi collection for Danese (2004); the Scongiuri candelabra for Cyprus (2014); and projects for Barovier&Toso, Cappellini, Artemide, Luceplan, and Poltronova.
Parallel to this is a narrative set on Elba Island, where Raggi creates a work for the radical house of his friend, architect Gianni Pettena, alongside those of other masters and friends like Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, and Ugo Marano, with whom Raggi shared meaningful moments in his professional path.
The journey to Casa Pettena on Elba appears to the viewer as a sort of madeleine for the narrator-creator Raggi—a fond personal and professional memory, a return to those marvelous 1970s, when utopia still seemed possible.