About
Gigi Totaro (b. 1997) is an Italian product designer and researcher whose practice lies in product and conceptual design, with a focus on materials and ecology. Rooted in a research-driven and context-sensitive approach, his work investigates the entanglements between material culture, ecological systems, and infrastructures of mass production.

During his studies in GEO—Design at Design Academy Eindhoven (2025), and after assisting Johanna Seelemann, he developed a deep fascination for materials and the hidden processes of industrial production as carriers of ecological and geopolitical narratives — exploring how design can both reveal and reimagine our relationship with the environment.

Combining critical inquiry with material experimentation, his work unfolds through objects, industrial products, exhibitions, videos, and photographs — often developed through interdisciplinary collaborations. He investigates the often invisible narratives and systems behind industrial production, tracing supply chains and their environmental implications.

Using design as a tool for analysis, storytelling, and transformation, he develops strategies, research, and objects that propose alternative scenarios — inspiring reflection on waste, sustainability, and overlooked resources.



Works
Postnatural Remains Product, Research2025
Postnatural Remains is a multimedia installation exploring the ecological impact of illegal waste disposal in Puglia, southern Italy, where environmental crimes, including waste trafficking and dumping, continue to devastate rural ecosystems. Discarded objects, often burned or buried, have contributed to the loss of 30% of local biodiversity. The installation brings together video, sculptural elements, and an image archive to reveal how waste impacts pollinators, plants and habitat dynamics. Five looping video works and an archive table with magnifiers invite close observation of contamination and adaptation. Drawing on fieldwork, the project visualises a fragile coexistence between human-made debris and non-human life. A series of new re-designed archaeological objects propose a shift in design thinking, more-than-human, becoming tools of ecological support. Rather than framing waste solely as a pollutant, the project asks: can discarded objects be reimagined as materials for nourishment and shelter? Could a non-toxic, mutual coexistence between waste and local species become possible, supporting new forms of biodiversity in damaged environments?




Postnatural Remains            Research, Exhibition2025
The first section of this multimedia installation explores the phenomenon of illegal waste dumping in Southern Italy. In particular, it highlights the unlawful actions of local citizens and criminal organizations who, for over thirty years, have contributed to the devastation of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity through illegal waste disposal and burning practices. This first descriptive video illustrates the legislations used by the Italian government to combat these environmental crimes. This film shows how even the illegal disposal of a single object can activate a complex chain of environmental crimes, underlining the seriousness and scale of the problem.

The second section presents a series of archival images collected during my field research conducted between July and December 2024. When an object is illegally disposed of —or worse, burned or buried—it triggers a series of physical processes that lead to its transformation, degradation, and interaction with the surrounding environment. Over time, these objects may even become future fossil remains. 
The aim of this part of the installation is to invite the audience to zoom in and closely observe the micro and hidden traces left behind by waste—making visible and tangible those phenomena and details that often go unnoticed at first glance.

The third section presents the most significant finding collected during the field research: a beehive built by bees inside an aluminum container. This artifact offers a tangible and  striking example of how nature is attempting to adapt to waste, creating a form of coexistence that is, unfortunately, toxic and dangerous for the survival of local biodiversity.

Considering the option that an object could be disposed into the environment and it will decay, this project aims to be a mediator to ask the questions: How could a non-harmful and non-toxic coexistence be possible between non-human agents of the local ecosystem and household waste? How waste can instead be designed to form new habitats and sources of nutrients for multiple species, with the aim of preserving local biodiversity?

The fourth and final section of this installation aims to explore new narratives for building possible non-harmful forms of cohabitation through the redesign of discarded objects. In this section, the deisgn proposal invites to reimagine discarded objects not as pollutants, but as tools for ecological support and regeneration. Set within an environment deeply impacted by waste, the project envisions new possibilities for creating safe spaces that support the prosperity and preservation of local biodiversity.

Apollo LampProduct2019
Apollo is a floor lamp inspired by the distinctive design approach, rooted in the Ready Made tradition, of Italian designers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. Drawing inspiration from their method, Apollo transforms everyday industrial components—stripped of their original function—into a new formal language. Assembled with deliberate simplicity, the lamp becomes both an object of illumination and playful-unconventional object.

A piece of waste from the marble industry takes on a new cylindrical shape, static like a column, becoming the base of the floor lamp with a bent iron rod. Contextually, the main body of the floor lamp is occupied by a microphone stand, thanks to which the light source can take different directions. The source is placed at the end of an aluminium rod which, through a joint, occupies the position of a microphone. The light source is LED and presents a built-in reflector.


Materials: aluminum, marble and iron
Size: 170 x 23 cm
Tackling Pollinator Decline in the Mediterranean Area Product, Research2024
The Mediterranean area has witnessed centuries of migratory flows, which have shaped the entire faunal territory of Southern Italy by introducing non-indigenous plants. However, many of these plants, which thrive wildly on line roadsides, do not produce pollinator-friendly flowers. Compounding this challenge are the negative effects of rising temperatures, which lead to long periods of drought. This environmental upheaval has contributed to a worrying decline in pollinator populations. The abandonment of green spaces in public areas, such as roadsides, further aggravates the problem, favoring the growth of plants that do not flower, thereby decreasing the already limited resources for pollinators. By recognizing the intricate relationship between urban environments and insect populations, the imperative to stimulate their prosperity becomes clear.

This investigative project proposes an innovative intervention aimed at improving the conditions of pollinators in urban spaces and hostile environments. Thanks to artificial hives, designed as new habitats where pollinators can thrive amid expanses of concrete, pollinators obtain an emergency food source during times of scarcity from transformative flowers, facing the challenges posed by drought and erratic weather patterns.


‘Tackling Pollinator Decline in the Mediterranean Area: A New Approach Through Gigi Totaro’s Lens’, interview by Simone Lorusso for C41 Magazine: https://www.c41magazine.com/tackling-pollinator-decline-in-the-mediterranean-area-a-new-approach-through-gigi-totaros-lens/

Special thanks to 
Jeroen van de Gruiter, Metahaven, Simone Lorusso

In Light of Sterility    Moving images2024
In Light of Sterility is an investigative moving images that delves into the concept of enclosed, regulated and sterile environments through a visual and spatial dialogue between cleanrooms and greenhouses.

The cleanroom is a paradigm par excellence of a sterile environment: a hyper-controlled space where every micro particle is a potential threat. Used in high-precision industries, where even minimal contamination can compromise production processes or product quality, it operates through a delicate balance of constantly regulated factors. Constant monitoring and regulation of factors such as airflow, humidity, and temperature help prevent the introduction of contaminants.

By introducing the notion of Sterile Environments, the sonic-visual narration broadens the concept of enclosed and sterile space, showing how these highly regulated structures are balancing on internal forces,making them vulnerable to external intruders such dust or bacterias. Although the functions are different, both architectures embody the idea of controlled environments designed to shelter and nurture something – a semiconductor or a plant – in a delicate balance between isolation and exposure.


Team: Antonia Aschenbrenner, Christos Voutsas, Gigi Totaro

Course leader: Bahar Noorizadeh

Film Locations
Aixtron, Aachen
Phoodfarm, Eindhoven

Special thanks to: Prof. Dr.-Ing Michael Heuken and Beatrice Maione
Tools of ExtinctionProduct, Research2023
How can a material culture be preserved if there are no more material resources available? How can we use design as a critical agent to narrate one of the world's greatest ecological disasters?

According to the Anthropologist Richard Stamps, the history we study is not what really happens, but it is what has been recorded through words and images; history is recorded in the things we have created, in the tools we use, in the bulindings where we live, this is what we call the material culture, it’s part that surrounds us. Humans gave us cultural resources. When you destroy a non-renewable cultural resource, it’s gone forever.

Since 2013, in the territory of Puglia, in southern Italy, a deadly bacterium from a  Costa Rica coffee’s plant, called Xylella, has killed over 21 million ancient olive trees. These iconic trees have played a vital role in shaping the region’s identity across centuries, influencing its communities, cultures, stories, languages, foods, and gestures. Nowadays the 40% of oil production has been lost, with it an enormous material culture linked to this tree is disappearing.

Investigating the devastating impacts of globalization and recognizing objects as carriers of narrative, this ongoing research project proposes a material investigation through the preservation of the disappearing tools used by farmers during the olive harvest, using the remaining materials of the contryside, charcoal and sawdust. The project aims to raise awareness about the threatened future of the olive tree in the region of Puglia, underlining how fragile is nature with the aim to carry memories and experiences of an historical tree.

For the material usesd to forge the objects, I developed a material made of sawdust and charcoal that does not require any firing. In this way the objects are made from only the materials that remain when an olive tree is burned or sawn in order to isolate and eliminate the bacterium. At the same time it is a biodegradable material that can be used in various fields as a newly engineered material.


Special thanks to Yassine Ben Abdallah and Maud Plantec Villeneuve

Moon MoldProduct, Material Research2023
Plaster molds, commonly used for mass-producing ceramic objects, are often designed without undercuts or sharp edges to make it easier to release the form from the mold.
Moon Stamp is a material experimentation that challenges and pushes the boundaries of the metric properties of a material like plaster.

The design of this mold is based on the organic shapes of corals, whose structure presents many holes and cavities, probably the most complex shape to extract from a plaster mold. The result is a unique and non-replicable object/tool, whose product language is tactile, made up of a texture reminiscent of a lunar landscape.


Material: plaster
Size: 8x20x3 cm

Geology of WasteProduct, Research2023
In 2019, Greenpeace, as part of the MayDaySOSPlastica tour, documented the alarming plastic pollution that afflicts the marine area near the mouth of the Sarno river, classifying the river as one of the most polluted in Europe. For centuries the Sarno river was venerated by the citizens of Pompeii and above all it was a source of sustenance for one of the most densely populated areas of Italy. In this scenario, due to water pollution, the massive presence of plastic waste and the presence of volcanic sand land, a new artificial man-made material called plasticglomerate could soon spread, profoundly changing this ecosystem. Plastiglomerate is a material that describes rock fragments, sand grains, plastic debris and organic materials (such as shells, wood and coral debris) held together in a matrix of once-much plastic. Plasticglomerate could potentially form a marker horizon of human pollution on the geological record and may survive as future fossils.

The project wants to address the new role of this material, by looking at its legacy that we will leave, analyzing the relationship between what will be natural and artificial and asking what will be the role of design in a damaged world. Perhaps, in the future palstiocglomertates will be perceived as new and precious artefact that could be found, where in the not too distant future plastic will be considered as a precious material of this damage era.

The design of this project is inspired by the findings of Pompeii, inside which, thanks to a low tech tench, contains coal which is able to purify the water.


Special thanks to Carlo Lorenzetti

Credits: Jacob Philipp Hackert - http://www.sarnotelling.com -  https://www.inprimanews.it -  https://images.metmuseum.org -  https://www.cosmos.so - Greenpeace Italy, Inquinamento da plastica. Greenpeace: alla foce del Sarno, May 2019 
Across a Flock’s OrbitGraphic, Photography2025DAE Geo-Design MA Thesis 202
Across a Flock’s Orbit is the first theses publication from the 2025 alumni of the Geo-Design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE).

As a member of the graphic team, I contributed to the visual identity and narrative of the publication by developing a photographic project around it — aiming to translate its themes and atmosphere into a vibrant visual language.


Supported by Design Academy Eindhoven
Copyright © 2025 the students and Geo-Design, 2023–2025

Gigi TotaroEmail: gigi.totaro5@gmail.com