Bespoke projects and furnishings for private individuals and public bodies: libraries, offices, ships, museums and much more. All between craftsmanship and industry: this is the recipe for navigating the stormy waters of a world market that needs quick answers and in the name of quality. And everything always starts with people, with how they work together. For FARE Insieme Giampaolo Colletti interviews Paolo Castelli
di Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
There is a scene from Pulp Fiction, film by Quentin Tarantino, which has entered the collective imagination. A sentence that represents a programmatic manifesto of doing and especially of doing well. “I'm Mr. Wolf, I solve problems.” If there is a reality that more than others declines this aspect in the best possible way, it is Paolo Castelli, a leader in the world of furniture solutions and of objects of art, also involving contract projects for residential and public spaces. At the centre there is the design and implementation of solutions for hotels, theatres, banks, libraries, private villas, ships, museums, airports, up to the titanic challenge of Expo 2015, with the interior design of the Italy Pavilion (Padiglione Italia), a masterpiece of the Made in Bologna. «An incredible experience, a great pride. It was like building the Eiffel Tower», Castelli recalls.
Everything starts with people
The challenges are faced with competent and passionate professionals, focusing on the respect for the rules, on intuitions that are necessarily linked to procedures, on team play. The team itself already consists of people who work together in a multi-disciplinary logic. Because even in this case the solutions are found by networking and Mr. Wolf is a first person plural. Thus, Paolo Castelli becomes an international story. One hundred and forty years of research from Italy to the rest of the world. «There is no magic wand, everything always starts with the people who make the difference. On the other hand, when managing projects of such complexity as we do, human capital is everything. It is not just a matter of skills. Reliability is important and this is why we are “problem solvers”: projects have hitches by definition and along the way we find the resolution of problems quickly.» This is Paolo Castelli, born in Bologna in 1966 with a degree in the economic branch of the faculty of Political Sciences and an experience in the United States. Then his return to Italy. Castelli has always defined craftsmanship as art and focuses on the supply chain made up of a network of artisans, artists and designers working together. In the stormy sea marked by the strong accelerations of the market, Castelli managed to keep the bar straight, always pointing the compass in that hybrid area that binds craftsmanship to industry. A third way that encompasses dynamism, flexibility, agility. This is why the company is able to demolish a building, rebuild it from scratch and provide furnishings, with the logic of global value engineering, a sort of turnkey service. «We are able to work on complex projects without giving up the artisan mentality, with an approach applied to production and at the same time an absolute attention to detail, for high quality. I often say that the oversized sofa can become the rule that must be faced, not avoided. The comparison is not risky because we are linked to the customisation of the product. We have engineered 458 products for third parties», Castelli points out. Thus, the Made in Italy becomes a plus because it implies having a gear that makes you excel.
Knowing how to do and knowing how to think together
The company has more than 100 employees and partners, for more than half engineers, designers, architects. Then there is the team linked to logistics as well as the purchasing, legal, administrative and financial departments. «The people in the company have always been with us, we have grown together. Now we are focusing on the digital skills, even with strong specialisations, as long as they know how to work in a team», Castelli specifies. The headquarters is in Ozzano dell'Emilia, in the Bologna area. The headquarters-design studio, which today deals with product design and general contractor projects, was born here. Then there is the showroom in the heart of the prestigious Milanese district of Brera, and a marine division in Carrara for the management of naval supplies. But the perimeter goes far beyond the national borders. In 2018 the arrival in Paris, with the opening of the showroom in the Marais district, which was recently moved to the prestigious boulevard Saint Germain. Then in 2019 the opening of the office in London, which is able to manage important projects. But by true, before being a company, Paolo Castelli represents the story of a family that built this business immediately after the unification of Italy. The year was 1887 and the grandfather Castelli decided to open a cabinet shop in Bologna. It wasn't just a laboratory. Already at the time there was something more. Then over time the artisan dimension linked to the managerial approach and the opening beyond national borders. In 1994 the young Paolo, the great-grandson of Castelli and the second last of seven brothers, integrated the curtain firm Modular with the Domodinamica company, specialised in furniture and design. Hence, the birth of the current Paolo Castelli S.p.A. Now we look at innovative techniques related to sustainability: the Greenkiss collection, which was born a year before the pandemic emergency, is based on the idea of delivering to customers a product that is not only made with ecological resins, but is built with unselected FSC wooden feet or jute straps. «The attention to the environment goes beyond the accessory element and becomes an integral part of the project. And then each tree that is cut is further replanted. The green techniques of our artisans also look to the wisdom of the past: like the acetic finish that gives the wood a particular tannic colouring, more or less intense depending on the time of permanence of the wood in the acetic bath, or the open-pore finish that allows the essence to maintain its natural appearance.
After all, the furnishings were once already green», Castelli specifies. For this visionary designer who has become a successful entrepreneur, the most exciting part of the work is repeated every time a new product comes out of the collections. «After all, it is as if a child were born. To do it, you certainly need competence, flexibility and vision. But then courage, most of all.»
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
