Morgante's day in Future Systems
by Andrea Morgante

Saturday is a working day, us architect think,
here at Future Systems office in London.
I’m living within walking distance from the bureaus,
yet I do not love waking up early, especially
Saturday mornings.
The hard part is not be working extra time,
rather making it through the compact, solid mass
flow of people, directed to Portobello Road, that
with regularly floods Notting Hill street
while I’m crossing it.
I pick up many homely accents flying by: Milan,
Venice, Rome, and Naples. It’s deeply, naively
reassuring, having left my home country 2 years
ago to work here.
Opening my office doors, I enjoy silence within
its walls. Inside, I find only an American colleague
and Jan Kaplicky, Future Systems’ founder in 1979.
He waves his hand briefly, then he goes back
to work on his tools-of-the-trade covered desk.
The office’s ambiences appear enormous, when
no presence animates it, yet preserving its origin
as an industrial-size warehouse in what is used
to be a Jamaican ghetto.
I take off my shoes in a black moquette area,
as per office manual, to walk through its imaginary
Chromatic Entrance, into a red carpeted floor,
where all functional areas lie :
The production, meeting, models workshop,
and kitchen. No walls to create isolation here;
Everyone can cross his colleagues’ sight in a global
panorama. You really feel spoiled to have had the
chance of such a rare working environment.
My almost-Italian black coffee’s perfume reaches Jan,
who joins me, at his time, for a quick break.
He’s been already in for a couple hours thinking,
imagining, and designing. Today just like
many other days.
While I am telling him the events of my previous
evening, he fatherly inquires if “I behaved…”,
then goes back to work to his desk.
I often work alongside of him, a precious, rare,
unique experience to me.
He’s one of the few surviving Masters of
Architecture, yet he’s capable of listening to his
employees’ daily stories. His presence’s a structural
part of the office, and his desk, continuously
filled with ideas and sketches, every day,
even Saturdays, a reassuring sight.
I will work up to lunchtime, as I have to check
and modify some drawings for a joint Ferrari-Maserati
stand upcoming in Frankfurt Exhibition.
These will be sent Monday to our Italian contractor,
who’ll run the final check-up before construction.
Meantime my American partner Jeff makes
up his mind, and puts on some Jazz music, quietly,
creating an atmosphere. Jan raises his thumb
in approval, and our Saturday work overtime turns
even mellower. Then Soren comes in, a Danish
colleague on the 30s : he has to update some
final drawings for the new Selfridges Store in
Birmingham. Only a few months away from the grand
opening, he’s been working more than
two years on it. His tired and he will not probably
agree with my relaxed and chilled out view of the
Saturdays; his time is running out , too many details
to finalize, I could bet these months look like
days under a countdown to him.
The specialized Press and Public comments
on Selfridges are already exciting and encouraging,
keeping the spirits high in the team, as well as
in our office. We even receive congratulations
from people outside our professional environment,
to share their awe for our works.
That’s more than words can explain.
In between CD tracks, Jeff does his part :
he’s working on two different projects, about
to be built : a prefabricated school in Richmond,
green suburbia south of London town, and a
new fashion store in crowded Oxford Street.
The latter isn’t a hard challenge for our teams,
having “ broadened their shoulders”,
experience-wise, with Marni’s mall network.
Richmond’s school is rather similar to the
Media Center, both structurally and in its
building process.
A shipyard contractor will build it, and new
classrooms will be strengthened with Fiberglas
monocoque structure, decorated on their
outside surface by a giant sketch drawn
by a schoolboy, one of its future inhabitants.
It’s almost lunchtime, pasta with bacon
awaits me, and now I hurry up finishing my drawings,
some of which are following me in
Alessi Italy on Monday. We’re almost ready to start
producing a new tea and coffee cup set, and
the final prototypes have being shown
in Milano’s Triennale.
A totally exciting work, made by an endless number
of sketches, 3D models and foam models.
The sole data volume collected for this project
is comparable to those used to design
a normal building. Absolutely stunning.
My computer screen blackened now. I wave
again to Jan while I put my chair back against
the desk, and I promise him not to be late
at the airport on schedule for Monday’s flight.
He answers back ironically: “ I would not be so
sure if I was you!”.
Bacon aside, I’m always an Italian running late.

Italian-to-English Translation
Courtesy of Fabio Cesarone