Question: Is design a luxury?

Alessi:    Depends from what you think is a luxury.  Design, for me, for all the Italian design factories phenomenon, is a new and very contemporary form of art and poetry.  Then, is art and poetry a luxury?  I leave to you the question. 

Question: How do you balance functionality with art?

Alessi:    It depends very much from the area where you are working in.  For example, my personal job in my work, I am dealing with the objects that are hundreds of years old, if not millenary sold.  If you think how old this bowl or a cup or a pot, thousand years old, that means that almost all the functional matters have been… have found their solution.  And this space, which is left, is still a space related to the emotions, not so much to the function.  You cannot invent so much in my field.