Caption: Raffaella Mangiarotti, Italy, Credit: Laila Pozzo
Image by: Laila Pozzo 
Raffaella Mangiarotti, Italy 

Industrial Designer

Series: WORKING
From: Homelands Productions
Length: 00:06:51

Jon Miller profiles an Italian industrial designer who puts new twists on ordinary household objects. Read the full description.

Industrial_small There's a huge amount of human effort buried in almost everything around us. Look deep into a toaster or a loaf of bread and you'll find engineers and farmers, bankers and accountants, politicians and tax collectors, truck drivers and mechanics. Industrial designers may be the ultimate "embeds." They're the anonymous people who decide how the things around us look and feel. Raffaella Mangiarotti lives in Milan, the global capital of design. She designs everything from toilet brushes to baby seats. For her, design isn't about new colors or shapes. It's about solving problems. Jon Miller's profile is part of the WORKING series from Homelands Productions. 

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Piece Description

There's a huge amount of human effort buried in almost everything around us. Look deep into a toaster or a loaf of bread and you'll find engineers and farmers, bankers and accountants, politicians and tax collectors, truck drivers and mechanics. Industrial designers may be the ultimate "embeds." They're the anonymous people who decide how the things around us look and feel. Raffaella Mangiarotti lives in Milan, the global capital of design. She designs everything from toilet brushes to baby seats. For her, design isn't about new colors or shapes. It's about solving problems. Jon Miller's profile is part of the WORKING series from Homelands Productions. 

1 Comment Atom Feed

User image

lovely series, one qualm

I love this series and the diversity of voices and experiences it sheds light upon. I worry that the concluding sentiment that Raffaella doesn't know how to turn "off" her professional engineering mind to, say, get to her son's school on time -- unnecessarily passes judgement on professional women in an historically insensitive way.

Intro and Outro

INTRO:

Look deep into a toaster or a ball-point pen and you'll find a huge amount of human effort -- from engineers and architects, secretaries and accountants, miners and mechanics. Look deeper and you'll see the faint fingerprints of industrial designers. They're the anonymous people who decide how the things around us look and feel. Jon Miller went to Milan, Italy, to learn meet a woman who designs the sorts of things most of us take for granted. His profile is part of the WORKING series from Homelands Productions.

OUTRO:

That was Jon Miller reporting from Milan. WORKING is produced by Homelands Productions in collaboration with Marketplace Radio. To see pictures and hear audio, go to working.homelands.org. While you're there, you can also tell the world what you think about YOUR job.

Additional Credits

WORKING is a collaboration between Homelands Productions and Marketplace Radio. Major funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Related Website

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/segments/working/designer.html