M: Did you have a guide during your research phase?
U: Yes, we had a "cicerone" in each country. It was extremely helpful to have a local person. We actually decided upon our route depending on the contacts that we found around the world. But we were not looking for designers like you are doing, we had many different kinds of people I think the closest person to a designer was a friend of mine in Tokyo. It wasn't easy sometimes to explain to them what we were looking for, we did not want any souvenirs or objects from the past but
we were looking for contemporary and everyday life objects, without paying too much attention whether the objects were coming from the same culture. I think that the incredible aspect of this project was that we had a structure of research based on the essentials of life, such as alimentation, hygiene, resting, reproduction, security, and so on, so basically what we all have in common, and this would open up an infinite possibility of research.
M: Did you complete any kind of research on the countries prior to visiting them?
U: No, it would have been impossible to do beforehand. It was a total of 14 countries in a timeline of 4 and a half months, and during the process of research new families of object was born very spontaneously, like for example the system of cooking that people use outdoors, usually powered by gas, gasoline, carbon, that maybe we could call barbecue, but for them is a normal way of cooking.