Following on from our succcesful Enzo Mari workshops, Bob Richmond and Clarissa Berning are travelling to Japan in October 2025. Working with the Morris and Ruskin groups in Osaka and Tokyo, our aim is foster new dialogue in relation to social design in contemporary contexts. The journey has been made possible with the generous support of The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and The Guild of St George.

“Ultimately the goal of Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione is not to just offer measured drawings, rather it’s a manual to teach a vocabulary that anyone can use to design and build their own furniture.”

Enzo Mari’s furniture designs and Autoprogettazione

Enzo Mari (born April 27, 1932, in Novara, Italy–died October 19, 2020) was a noted Italian post-Modernist artist, writer, and product and furniture designer who incorporated ideas of the arts and crafts practices and of communism as an essential part of his design practice and philosophy opposing the idea that good design is a privilege for the wealthy.

 Affordability was a very important objective for Mari. He always aimed at creating design objects that were intuitive, elegant, functional, low cost and that would make a personal connection with their users. During his design process, Mari would become intimately involved with the artisans and manufacturers to ensure that his objectives of functionality, quality, and cost of his designs were met. In spite of his high standards, during his career Mari built strong collaboration with numerous design shops  and furniture manufacturers of the time such as Artemide, Alessi, Zanotta, Driade, and Muji.

Of all of the numerous design projects along Mari’s career, Proposta per un’Autoprogettazione (Proposal for a Self-Design) occupies a special place due to its ability to deliver a message through the creation of an object. In 1974, he published the book Autoprogettazione with instructions on how to build easy-to-assemble/do-it-yourself furniture using as raw material only rough boards and nails. In the book, Enzo Mari uses the term Autoprogettazione as a concept to bring awareness of the process of “making” and design, and instructs the reader to build practical and useful furniture pieces through very simple techniques; hoping that the benefits drawn from this process of “making” would be more valuable than the object being made.