English 
Italiano 
It’s called “Siabbottoni” (Buttoning) Simone Abbottoni’s website, that explains to those who enter for the first time: “N.1 Si is the beginning of Simone, and Abbottoni is the surname No.2 Si Abbottoni – imperative of “to button” in italian – is a gentle invitation to those who talk too much and badly”. But Simone Abbottoni is also the creator of Fantacentrica, where children are the designers of their dreams and you realize it when, walking in the cathedral of the Steam Factory in Milan, you find yourself following a path made of his drawings…
Simone, tell me about Fantacentrica
Fantacentrica is an exhibition of tables designed by children and built by different teams made up of traditional craftsmen, makers and digital designer. Following an introductory lecture, I asked the children to draw tables with special features, other than those that we used to see and use. I have chosen the theme of the table, because it’s an object that can contain other widgets. People gather around the table to eat, talk, play, collaborate. Is the most social furniture of all. The results were 58 drawings, including for example the table that does the moonwalk, the one which does homework and the juke box table. As a result of these drawings were shown to subjects with very different skills but in this case complementary: programming and robotics experts, carpenters, tailors, architects and designers, who have chosen to implement the project. My task was to form teams and to mediate between the different experiences of the people involved. The goal was to create the tables of the children’s dreams, but also to make collaborate traditional craftsmen and digital makers, so that they could share a point of view without bias, and break away from their respective technicalities. Fantacentrica was a group exhibition, but has also become a design method, which always puts the focus on imagination and ideas, no matter how impossible they may seem.
Reality is the most important means of communication of all…
It is the phrase that introduces my personal website, is a phrase that tells a bit of my past as a media planner in an advertising agency. Any project is a carrier of meaning and values. I come from the world of communication, and for me design is also an opportunity to communicate, especially in a context such as the present one, in which people themselves are the media able to convey and amplify the messages. My point of view on design aims to build a system of connections, capable of producing artistic, commercial and semantic. During Fantacentrica everyone involved (FabLab, schools, professionals, the public, donors) have benefited from this system, thanks to a path of education, doing culture and storytelling.
