Interni Magazine - English http://www.internimagazine.com Interni Magazine en Interni n°599 HYPER-2D http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,131,intIssueID,841,intItemID,853,intLangID,2.html Stefano Caggiano by Stefano Caggiano LINES THAT BEND, MINIMUM THICKNESSES, VOLUMES THAT SEEM TO DEFY GRAVITY. DESIGN OFFERS A NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE THIRD DIMENSION WITH OBJECTS THAT DISCARD THEIR WEIGHT, LIBERATING FORMAL EVOLUTIONS SUSPENDED BETWEEN THE POETRY OF MATTER AND THE AESTHETIC PHANTOM OF MATHEMATICS. To begin, just sit down. If design is a magical-pragmatic action, thanks to which nothing will ever be the same again, even when nothing has changed, you can try to trust it once more, and sit down on nothing, without falling. CHAIR by Benjamin Claessen is a seat designed like an automobile, with precise touches and quick caresses that scatter in the wind and reject the inevitability of the ground. Like sitting on an object that doesn’t exist, or on one of its many meanings generated by the perseverance of a design that does not produce objects, but seduces them. Angel by Gry Holmskov, Gaudí by Bram Geenen; seats that seem to reverse the gravity vector like a glove, taking on a negative weight: +3g, +2kg, +1gk, 0kg, -1kg, -2kg, -3kg... Numbers, after all, are not all equal. While it is true that many pieces of mathematics have a clear physical interpretation (infinitesimal calculus applied to the kinetics of bodies, trigonometry applied to that of waves), there are many others, like imaginary numbers, for which it is hard to find a real physical illustration. Yet thanks to this unresolved, mysterious relationship (there are no circles and triangles in nature, but we use them to calculate nature’s behavior) we can construct planes that fly, computers that think, machines that feel. So the rigor of non-Euclidean geometries takes form in the design of a stool like the Nitton, by Karl Oskar, function fused in sculpture or dimensional curvature on which to perch and wait. Space can also bend, and here we see the Kami table by Ragodesign and Bysteel for Bysteel, a precise theory of right angles and terse cuts that establishes its own precariousness, making itself as unreal as geometry. The same precarious quality mixed with stability is also the conceit of the no. 7 stool by Kaspar Hamacher, an almost archetypal sign that betrays a contemporary passion for contradictions. Because the time in which we live is contradictory, fearing physical substance as a sign of inadequacy, while feeling nostalgia for it at the same time. This is why a specific practice (design) exists, that works to save matter from the indignities of gravity, elevating it to the poetry of form. And this is why, in an age in which products are made of antimatter (and bodies shrink in anorexia), constructing nostalgia becomes a lofty, refined art, whose exercise is required for aesthetics without utopia, that capture the dark side of beauty (the sense of inadequacy of physical status), reversing it into light, oxygen, and design. Design gestures that use the third dimension in an antispecific way, not for what it is, but for what it is not, pushing the second dimension to flex outward without invading the third, because that would mean giving volume and therefore weight, and here we are at the opposite extreme, suspended in a semiotic phantom made of objects that are not in 3D, but perhaps in Hyper-2D, dilated in another dimensional order that, like the secret blackness of milk evoked by Valery, has always been there, just waiting for the right time to surface. Afterwards, nothing has changed. But nothing will ever be the same.]]> 2009-12-29 09:55:31 Interni n°599 THE DESIGN OF MUSIC http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,131,intIssueID,841,intItemID,852,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani by Maddalena Padovani “PREPARATIVI PER LA PIOGGIA” IS THE FIRST CD BY LORENZO PALMERI. TO KEEP THE FAITH WITH HIS DUAL VOCATION AS DESIGNER AND MUSICIAN, HE HAS CREATED A BOOKLET CONTAINING NINE DIFFERENT COVERS BY WELL-KNOWN ITALIAN DESIGNERS, PUT TOGETHER WITH THE TECHNIQUE OF KIRIGAMI. We’re not music critics, so we’ll leave it up to listeners and music experts to judge this CD of ‘highbrow pop’, as it might be defined, boasting collaborations with big names like Franco Battiato, Saturnino, Livio Magnani and Andy from Bluvertigo. But there are other aspects that make the first record by Lorenzo Palmeri (for release at the end of November on the NunFlower label) a product of interest for the world of design. It is an emblematic example of ‘crossover creativity’, the result of an attitude toward design that doesn’t move in one direction only, in one specific production sector or discipline, but ranges through all the zones of expression of contemporary life. Lorenzo Palmeri has always combined his activity as a designer with a taste for music. Since his days at the Milan Polytechnic he has studied musical composition, and later, when he began composing soundtracks for film and theater, he also emerged on the scene of New Italian Design thanks to shared design operations, like “16 designers for Invicta” and Milano Sound Design, and solo projects for a range of companies. “These are two callings”, Palmeri comments, “that have always alternated and often overlapped in a very soft, non-conflictual way. Whether it’s music or design, for me the process is always the same: I start with an idea, I make a rough draft, I develop the project, and in the end I look for someone who believes in it, to share this path”. This dual creative identity has already found its most representative field of expression in the design of musical instruments. These are objects conceived not just to optimize their function, but also to introduce new gestures, new ways of playing, new product typologies, clearly reflecting an anthropological-cultural vision that goes beyond design specialization. The Paraffina Slapster, for example, is an aluminium electric guitar produced by Noah, invented by Palmeri to emphasize the theatrical side of music making. It has an ‘eyehandle’ with which to grab the guitar and ‘wear it’, and a ‘tongue’ that allows for an unusual action of the elbow and the hand of the musician, generating new sounds. Thanks to the original performance and innovative design, this guitar soon became an object-icon, shown in design exhibitions and museums, and chosen by Lou Reed to use on one of his world tours. With his first solo CD Lorenzo Palmeri can now fully express his integrated music-design concept. From the composition to the playing, the presentation to the physical product, the design of the music happens on both the material and the immaterial scales. “Everything tends to dematerialize today”, the designer says, “especially in the world of music. I wanted to restore the meaning and nobility of the record cover, to give a physical consistency to the music, to recovery the artistic gesture that has marked the history of so many albums and artists in the past”. The gesture of Palmeri becomes that of many well-known names in Italian design. Paolo Ulian, Giulio Iacchetti, Matteo Ragni, Marco Ferreri, JoeVelluto, Odoardo Fioravanti and Gumdesign are the friends-designers Lorenzo has involved in the making of the cover, and the end-user is also a part of the creative process. Each listener is asked to make a drawing, with the sole constraint of respecting certain points of passage of the drawing made by the artist himself: an elastic. The principle is that of kirigami: when the sheets are cut into two pieces, horizontally, the user can turn the half-pages to mix and match half-covers, creating combinations. “In this game”, Palmeri concludes, “I see a sort of design metaphor. The elastic, a colorful, soft, flexible pop object, with a random form, represents the irrational element; it is countered by a horizontal, orthogonal, rigid line; the obligatory passages of the drawing express the limits that must be respected in any project. Finally, there’s participation: this is a work that has an individual but also a group character, because it takes form thanks to the intervention of many people”.]]> 2009-12-29 15:45:10 Interni n°599 IN PRAISE OF REAL DESIGN http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,130,intIssueID,841,intItemID,851,intLangID,2.html
Does London have a special meaning for design?
“London is a very receptive city. It’s a platform that responds to all stimuli. In Milan we are better at business, and we have made design an international phenomenon, but London explores more, it’s more open to new experiments”.

Why this alliance with the Serpentine Gallery for the exhibition Design Real?
“The presence in places where design is being discussed, in an authoritative way, in the world is part of a project of ‘recovery’ of our tradition in that discipline: Rinascente founded the Compasso d’oro in 1954, and the company has collaborated with many illustrious designers. From the outset, we have not only sponsored, but also sold design. With the opening of the Design Supermarket we want to show that we still believe in the original vocation of laRinascente. The association with design culture should be seen in these terms”.

Are there similarities between the concept of the Design Supermarket and the exhibition Design Real?
“The title demonstrates a desire to make design accessible. The Serpentine is expanding its horizons to become a place of discovery for a wider audience. With the Design Supermarket laRinascente wants to make the buying of design easier: you can touch it and try it out, every day. Design Supermarket is a daily surprise, open to everyone. Taking a walk through its spaces is like a 15-minute vacation. Even the most banal purchase can be thrilling. The objective of the Design Supermarket is to give industrial production a sense of novelty and surprise, to make design familiar, getting away from the idea of products only for sector insiders”.

Does design, as suggested by Design Real, have a social role?
“Even the most banal product has someone behind it, who has invested commitment and sentiment. When it reaches the consumer, this message often gets lost: you can’t fully appreciate the importance of who did the thinking, of how it was done. Showing it in an exhibition means drawing attention back to its message. The social component is there, but it is not accented. Design is part of our life. Design and lifestyles have a mutual influence. This relationship has been so fully assimilated that it seems natural, it is taken for granted. Instead, there is always someone who has invested ideas, passion and work, even in the simplest things”.]]> 2009-12-29 15:08:27 Interni n°599 LORENZO DAMIANI VS MASSIMILIANO ADAMI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,130,intIssueID,841,intItemID,850,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani by Maddalena Padovani A COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO DESIGNERS WHO HAVE MADE SCRAP AND RECYCLING A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION IN THEIR WORK. BUT THEY DO NOT BELIEVE IN ECOLOGICAL DESIGN. BECAUSE ECOLOGY, THEY SAY, IS IN YOUR HEAD, NOT IN PRODUCTS. They don’t have a website (or a watch), they don’t read design magazines, they don’t speak English, don’t frequent the ‘salons’ of the Milanese design intelligentsia. They don’t even like e-mail. You can say lots of things about Massimiliano Adami and Lorenzo Damiani, but you can’t say they’re striving for visibility or want to make a splash in the crowded scene of the Italian design system. What they have in common, above all, seems to be this reticence, a sort of professional humility. But then you discover that they actually have lots of other shared characteristics, so much so that they seem like twins who were separated at birth. Yet their projects could not be more different from each other. Impulsive, materic, disruptive are words that describe the works of Massimiliano, a clearly manual experimental spirit that has set him apart, until now, from his Italian colleagues, triggering comparisons with the bestknown art designers of the northern European school. Conceptual and silent, the projects by Lorenzo come instead from careful reflection on functions and typologies of objects, which he contaminates and reinvents with intelligent, tactful irony, often compared by critics to the readymades of Achille Castiglioni. But the figures of Adami and Damiani do converge on one point of extreme clarity: their distance from the formalistic approach of most of today’s designers, especially in Italy. We asked them whether this ‘diversity’ has been a drawback or an advantage.
Damiani:
“My projects are undoubtedly hard to categorize, in commercial terms. Form is certainly the factor of most immediate impact in an object. But I’m interested in a broader approach, in a priori thinking about the possible evolution of the species of an object. I never start with a form, but with a concept. For example, the project of the D.L.152 bowl came from the proposal of an alternative way of disposing of the scrap materials generated in the working of glass. These scraps are subjected to very precise and costly procedures; I tried to make them the soul of my project, embedding them in a transparent bowl that reveals an unexpected decorative character. I wanted to make a problem into an opportunity to create something new”.
Adami:
“I believe my work has been penalized not so much by its lack of a formalist approach as by the fact that I am identified with the ‘artistic’ project of the Fossili Moderni, which actually coexists with very different works. I am referring to much more technical projects, where the functional aspect is definitely decisive. These are two paths of research that come from the same point of view, but lead to decidedly different results. I’m not interested in having a line that unites everything I do. In fact, I’d like to develop, case by case, approaches that are always different, and I’d be very pleased if the results of my projects had a very different appearance every time. Nevertheless, I realize that this way of working does not facilitate relations with companies, because it does not give me a clear, definite identity and image”.

Another factor you have in common is the use of scrap material, recycled objects, that become the stimuli for the invention of new product types or new functions. How do these projects get started? What are the premises, the experimental processes?
Adami:
“The Fossili Moderni could be seen as a project-manifesto on sustainability and the philosophy of recycling. Actually they didn’t start with that specific aim, though I like to think they can stimulate more general reflection in this direction. The Fossili came from the idea of a container, to store objects, but made of objects. At the time I was working on the staff of a company that made retail display fixtures. I wanted to participate in a design competition and I got this idea, which I immediately tried out during lunch break, opening a trash can, taking out some plastic objects, embedding them in a foam which I then cut in half. That was the start of a path that then evolved, in technical refinements, until 2005, with the exhibit at the Salone Satellite, which started my adventure as a designer”.
Damiani:
“I have made three chairs that, in different ways, all start with the concept of scrap: the Tuttitubi, the Sweet and the Udine. They are three chairs that, in my view, can be interpreted as a manifesto of a way of thinking, and maybe this is why they have never found a producer. The idea is that of using semi-finished parts, rather than scrap from industrial processes. The Tuttitubi, for example, investigates the possibility of making chairs and seats utilizing already existing elements, but for a different purpose, like the tubes and joints usually used for plumbing. The Udine, on the other hand, began for a competition on the theme of the wooden chair, but it uses the sawdust from the working of that material to pad a seat in transparent PVC and give it an innovative image. I’ve also done other projects that, in a more conceptual than productive way, reflect on the theme of recycling. The 100% adhesive tape, for example, comes from the awareness that I have never managed to design an entirely recyclable object. Thus the proposal of a product that promotes the recycled gift, that puts into circulation the objects we all have at home but never use, which in the hands of other people might find a real function and purpose. This is a project on behavior, not a product: through my object, I suggest a new way of behaving, which might be more respectful and correct in relation to the problems of the contemporary world”.
Adami:
“For me, it’s a more modern way of thinking about ecology. An approach that challenges the production process itself and tries, instead, to optimize the use of what already exists, giving it a new, richer meaning. My Sharpei chair, for example, comes from thinking about upholstered furniture and the desire to use fabric remnants, and making the covering out of the same material as the filler, to eliminate certain elementprocesses typical of this type of product. Hence the idea of experimenting with the combination of recycled fabrics and silicon, to give folds structural characteristics, but also to provide the necessary softness for the seat. The chair was shown at the Salone Satellite in 2006 and later put in the Cappellini catalogue; this passage made industrialization necessary, which requantified the use of recycled fabric – which would have imposed too much unjustified manual labor – and permitted mass production of the fold that is both a covering and a padding at the same time”.

What are your projects and hopes for the future?
Damiani:
“I’d like to work on wardrobes and furnishing systems, a product typology usually considered daunting by young designers. I’d like to come to terms with a clearly industrial situation. The idea of working on mass-produced things excites me; especially the prospect of getting an invention into a product that reaches many people”. Adami: “I’m also interested in approaching the themes of industrial design, in putting this second design vocation of mine into focus, because I can sense it is important. I want to understand if and how much it can be developed in parallel to my more artistic activity. Let’s be honest: my dream is to be a designer, not an artist!”.]]> 2009-12-28 17:57:06 Interni n°599 MARCO BALICH. MY WORK? IGNITING PASSION http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,130,intIssueID,841,intItemID,849,intLangID,2.html Antonella Galli by Antonella Galli MARCO BALICH IS THE CREATIVE TALENT BEHIND THE CEREMONIES OF THE WINTER OLYMPICS IN TURIN IN 2006, WHICH THRILLED TWO BILLION VIEWERS AROUND THE WORLD WITH A CELEBRATION MADE IN ITALY. THANKS IN PART TO THAT SUCCESS, TODAY HE IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S LEADING PRODUCERS OF EVENTS. It’s probably an inborn taste for understatement – his mother is English – that makes Marco Balich present his work by saying, “we’re the guys who make the ‘big shows’”. That may be true, but the story is more complex. President of K-Events, of FilmMaster group, Marco Balich, Venetian, 47 years old, of Slavic-AngloSaxon origin, gained international fame thanks to the great success of the ceremonies in Turin in 2006. Years of production experience have led, with his team at K-Events, to increasingly prestigious commissions, from the launch of the new Fiat Cinquecento to the format for New Year’s Eve and the Carnival of Venice. And the challenges, at the end of this decade, continue with major works to produce in Mexico and India.

How did you build your career?
“I invented along the way. When I began, this professional role, at least in Italy, did not exist. There were no courses, no schools. My law degree was useful to find out that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I worked on many tours of big rock stars in the 1980s (72 of them, to be precise), where I learned to organize things (stage, tickets, lights, sound, media, etc); I also produced over 300 videos for Italian and international musicians and artists. I worked in television, but I understood that to produce TV programs you have to be more cynical than I am. I literally invented the Heineken Jammin’ Festival (one of the main Italian and European music festivals, ed), and in 2002 came those six minutes for the presentation of Turin at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Those six minutes brought our group lots of attention”.

Then the long production for Turin 2006 began…
“Two and a half years of work, a creative team with some of the most important professionals from the world of entertainment, 6000 volunteers, artists of all kinds, technical experts and many other figures, were all fundamental for that success. Thousands of rough drafts and documents, over 8500 meetings, in short an enormous bulk of work leading to two and a half hours of a one-shot spectacle, seen by two billion viewers in 142 countries. A unique event that can never be repeated (like all these colossal shows), that vanishes as soon as it happens, with no room for a second chance, a correction, an improvement after the fact. If it is effective, it can significantly boost the international image of a city, a company, an entire country. And in Turin I think we did just that”.

The impact was extraordinary, also because that spectacle, like the opening ceremonies of the Paralympic Games, was touching and thrilling, narrating the value and the beauty of Italy. What was your personal experience of the event?
“On the following day I was in a bit of a daze, messages were coming in from all over the world, but what struck me most was that many Italian flags were appearing on the balconies, in the windows, in Turin. When you work on this type of event you cannot rely on facile effects, you have to sincerely focus on noble emotions, injecting sensitive, moving content; to propose common values (love of country, brotherhood, peace) through original, well-designed means. We rely on simple, shared themes and narrate them in a sophisticated, lofty way. One example was the national anthem during the ceremony in Turin. For the first time it was not played by a band, but sung by a little girl wearing a white bow and a dress with the colors of the flag. It was innovative but respectful. Children could feel closer to the anthem, and maybe even start singing it again”.

How did the show in Turin create a synergy with the site set aside for the event?
“The stadium in Turin was adapted for the ceremony: two years of work and a long design phase that almost made it into a theater, with the capacity to engage and represent; the sets, in various parts of the stadium, gave the performance movement.”

The commission for the Carnival of Venice has enabled you to come to grips with complex places and works of architecture, a unique but also difficult scenario in which to work…
“Piazza San Marco and my city represent a unique heritage, so I worked with great respect; the format of the Carnival – Sensation, 6 senses for 6 sestieri (five senses plus the mind) – was conceived to scatter street entertainment, concerts, performances through the city, so people could discover the place, without remaining in the Piazza. At the Piazza, I thought of an Italian garden, with a 12-meter botanical lion, and a spectacle of lights”.

What part of your work still fills you with emotion?
“The participation of volunteers, with equal enthusiasm in every part of the world: they are the primary source of passion. The human factor surprises me every time: people really want to get involved. I was deeply moved in the summer of 2009, at the Mediterranean Games in Pescara: among the participants there were kids from Aquila, who left their temporary shelters and came to the rehearsals every morning; all the way to the final party, which was all for them”.

What are your upcoming jobs?
“We are working on two big projects at the moment: the ceremony for the XIX Commonwealth Games in Delhi and the event for the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence, both in October. For Mexico we are planning a megashow with a fourkilometer parade and a budget of 48 million dollars”.

In a moment like this, isn’t that a lot of money to spend on an ‘ephemeral’ entertainment?
“No, not if you compare it to the military spending, for example, that many nations, including poor countries, shell out to buy gear they may never use. The international return in terms of image and unity of intent generated by such a spectacle, the jobs the project generates during the years of work required for the production, and the professional skills developed (costume design, set design, technical staff) have a value that is hard to measure. This is also true, in another perspective, for corporations: in 2007, the day after the premiere of the new Cinquecento in Turin, Fiat shares rose by four points on the stock exchange”.

What city do you live in? What’s your house like?
“I live in Milan, but I could live anywhere, though I really love Italy. I have four children and a house where we occupy all the floors, in the Città Studi zone. I live Italian design and art, I have pieces from Cappellini, modern vintage things from the 1930s, and many artworks”.

Is design still a banner for Italy?
“It’s in our DNA. Our sensibility for form, invention, style is what sets us apart from the others, also in my line of work, in set design, costume design, the creation of spaces, colors. In foreign countries our image suffers because of the recent stories involving our politicians. But apart from the jokes, foreigners know how to distinguish between the good and bad, and they know about our virtues as well. In this sense, we have to continue working, and loving Italy”.]]> 2010-01-27 18:23:06 Interni n°599 CASCAIS, PORTOGALLO, CASA DAS HISTÓRIAS http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,127,intIssueID,841,intItemID,848,intLangID,2.html Eduardo Souto de Moura
photos FG+SG
text Francesco Vertunni project Eduardo Souto de Moura
photos FG+SG
text Francesco Vertunni IN CASCAIS, PORTUGAL, THE MUSEU PAULA REGO APPEARS IN THE LANDSCAPE LIKE AN ANCIENT OBJECT SURROUNDED BY GREENERY, LIKING PAST AND MODERNITY IN A SYNTHESIS OF GREAT IMPACT. The site, in a forest of tall trees with a central ‘void’ once occupied by tennis courts, left no doubts about where to position the new architectural structure of the Museo Paula Rego, to conserve the trees, but also to establish an open dialogue with them, in a direct, complementary juxtaposition of architecture and nature. Eduardo Souto de Moura, a protagonist of Portuguese architecture and the international scene, underlines the need for a relationship with the landscape through the lucid choice of an architecture that is anything but ‘mimetic’. His building is not covered with trees and boughs, vertical gardens, roof meadows that opt for the facile ‘ecological solutions’ of the moment. Instead, he chooses the path of a sort of ‘architecture of the origins’, ancestral, almost timeless, like things you encounter when walking in the Mexican jungle of Coba in the Yucatan, suddenly facing the ancient pyramids of the Maya. Here too, it’s a matter of pyramids: two truncated cones, mute and imposing, that rise over the complex volumetric geometry of the museum, which functions as a base. Describing the two pyramids, conceived as ‘lanterns’ to capture the light from the spaces below, adjacent to the entrance (bookstore and cafe), Souto de Moura openly states his models of reference: “the two big pyramids are not unlike those of the kitchen of the Monastery of Santa Maria de Alcobaça, or certain solutions applied in the houses of Raul Lino, and certain engravings of Boullée” (the latter being an Enlightenment architect, of the time of the French Revolution, who together with Claude Nicolas Ledoux configured the three-dimensional response to the innovative revolutionary impulses in the form of ‘architecture as communication’). But the figure of the pyramid, as we all know, has ancient origins and has settled in the collective memory of every civilization as a ‘founding’ architectural archetype; in this sense, its use becomes a sort of abstract monumental declaration, capable of giving the construction a clear symbolic value. The use of this solution, positioning a pair of pyramids on the base of the museum, transforms the latter into a lyrical, timeless work, while forcefully indicating its contemporary character at the same time. The color of the external masonry surfaces is very important for the relationship between the building and the landscape, as is the compositional solution of the museum spaces, a perfect sum of monolithic, silent, regular parallelepipeds of different heights, sculpted by essential glazed openings, organized around the larger one at the center. The external walls are painted orange-red, a complement to the green of the woods around the building, while the choice of exposed reinforced concrete and, above all, its pouring using a wooden lining of slim planks, lead to a ‘natural’ pattern that exploits the sunlight and shadows during the day. The slight discrepancies between the planks of the formworks, which might usually be seen as defects, become ‘precious flaws’: the make it possible to obtain slight shadow lines that make the horizontal movement of the textures rich and mutable, while on the two pyramids the placement of the planks in a herringbone pattern enhances the vertical figure of the two volumes with an increasing skyward rhythm.]]> 2009-12-29 12:58:26 Interni n°599 TURIN, LIGHT FROM ABOVE http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,127,intIssueID,841,intItemID,847,intLangID,2.html Pierluigi Nicolin and Sonia Calzoni
with Hun Gi Yim, Manuela Lualdi, Maurizio Bocola
photos Michele Nastasi
text Matteo Vercelloni project Pierluigi Nicolin and Sonia Calzoni
with Hun Gi Yim, Manuela Lualdi, Maurizio Bocola
photos Michele Nastasi
text Matteo Vercelloni THE RENOVATION OF AN ATTIC CONNECTED TO THE SMALL APARTMENT BELOW BECOMES AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIMENT WITH THE VALUE OF NATURAL LIGHT CAPTURED BY NEW DEVICES ON THE ROOF: TRANSPARENT DORMERS WITH PORTIONS OF COLORED GLASS CAPABLE OF CHANGING THE ATMOSPHERES OF DOMESTIC SPACE, IN KEEPING WITH THE HOURS OF THE DAY AND THE RHYTHM OF THE SEASONS IN THE CROCETTA NEIGHBORHOOD IN TURIN. The phenomenon of renovation of attics, in spite of the apparently limited scale, has become so widespread that it is now one of the aspects of real estate transformation of certain Italian cities. Unfortunately, in most cases the quantity of interventions does not correspond to quality. But in certain situations this activity has included a high level of experimentation connected with interior solutions, the relationship between the spaces of the home and the outdoor zones created on the roof, real outdoor rooms with views of the cityscape. The project shown here is one of the exceptions, approaching the theme of residential design as an opportunity to test new compositional paths, where natural light takes on a key role for the entire space, configured as a successful attempt to offer an ‘open system’, an architectural container ready for personalization by its users, a couple with two children. The residence connects the entire attic level, with its own entrance, to a small unit on the floor below, also linked to the upper level by a new internal staircase wrapped in a network of metal tubing to form a light balustrade. The small domestic cell has been conceived as a space for the children, organized in an autonomous way, with three bedrooms and two baths, rationally arranged with respect to the rhythm of the openings and for use, over time, as bedrooms for sleeping, study and play, while adapting to the growth of the children, guaranteeing independence and privacy. In the attic, also reached by the staircase of the apartment building, the entire living area has been organized, with a large living room facing a new terrace, and a large kitchen with its own small terrace, separated from the living area by a central volume conceived as an accessorized storage unit, intentionally left short of the ceiling to keep the overall space unified. This element joins the other custom architectural features, like the modular white cabinets with geometric niches in natural wood in the corridor of the children’s zone. In the back, under the pitched roof with wooden beams and planks, painted white, the master bedroom zone is set apart, organized with a bedroom, a large wardrobe and a central bath, featuring a shower with a transparent roof, open to the sky. The idea of opening the attic space outward is pursued by the entire project, on different levels: in a direct way, with the creation of the new corner terrace, a true open-air room with pergola, which underlines its indoor-outdoor role by echoing the shape of the original pitched roof in the wooden slats that enclose it. And in an indirect way, with the creation of new architectural devices: dormers with an innovative image, ironically nicknamed as ‘Milanesiane’ by the designer, to replace the ‘Parigine’ so often seen on roofs in the city of Turin. The ‘Milanesiana’ is a regular element clad in wood on the vertical internal sides, a parallelepiped cut at the base by the slope of the roof, a light, decisive monolith that interrupts that slope and offers a glazed volume on the front and at the almost horizontal top, enriched by a colored terminus that can be opened. Regularly repeated in such a way as to also redesign the profile of the building seen from the street, from the inside the new dormer characterizes the living space thanks to the different colors that filter the sunlight, ‘staining’ the white walls with selected tones (blue, yellow, green and red), whose intensities change at different times of day, and in different seasons of the year]]> 2009-12-28 15:46:13 Interni n°599 MILANO, THE BONATTI HOUSE, TWENTY YEARS LATER http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,127,intIssueID,841,intItemID,846,intLangID,2.html Franco Raggi
project team Karim Contarino, Giorgia Brusemini, Davide Furgieri
photos Guido Antonelli
text Antonella Boisi project Franco Raggi
project team Karim Contarino, Giorgia Brusemini, Davide Furgieri
photos Guido Antonelli
text Antonella Boisi IN MILAN, A HOME CREATED TWICE, BY THE SAME DESIGNER. THE FIRST TIME WAS IN 1989, AFTER A RECENT INCORPORATION-ADDITION DESIGNED FOR THE SAME CLIENT. THE RESULT: A DOMESTIC INTERIOR THAT CONSTITUTES A REFLECTION, THROUGH SURFACES OF GREAT MATERIC AND EXPRESSIVE IMPACT, ON THE IDEA OF BOURGEOIS DECOR AND MODERNITY. In 1928, in the opening editorial of the first issue of the magazine Domus, Gio Ponti, the editor, focused on the concept of a house as a symbolic container of an internal universe, the “pivot of a program of architecture with the goal of reformulating the philosophy of modern living” (Fulvio Irace, Gio Ponti, Cosmit, 1997). Over eighty years have passed since then. The culture of historical revisionism has run its course. But this project by Franco Raggi sheds new light on the perspective. Because the key to understand its essence is right here: the attempt to represent a house that is never finished, and can be interpreted by its inhabitants. A complex modernity, a mediation with the tradition of the Milanese bourgeois home and the theme of decoration that brings the design of furniture back into the architectural sphere. The pursuit of an up-do-date domestic scenario, in short, also focuses on spatial ‘doubling’ with a mixture of erudite citations and virtues that go beyond the mere formal quality of good design, finding relationships with aspects of crafts, experimentation, the quality of materials, the furnishings that become architectural signs, skins, wrappers, surfaces, finishes, constructive details, all built into the structure of the house. After all, Raggi has already explained much of this to Marco Romanelli back in 1990, when the first version was published: “My desire is to communicate over long periods, a desire for non-invasive qualities”. The message was clear: when you talk about Franco Raggi you forget about the topics of more or less skillful interior decorating. Because first of all, he remains an architect, a humanist technician called in to provide a service: to design a container with a solid structure (in terms of volumes, surfaces, colors) that can ‘stand up’ to any legitimate, autonomous furnishing choices made by the client. Specifically, our story focuses on a sort of three-room apartment on Via Donizetti, where the lack of space had generated flexible compacting, also thanks to the use of sliding door-walls that formed spaces of different sizes. Thanks to the purchase of the entire floor of the building, it became possible to construct a bourgeois, modern house in the fullest sense of the terms. With its large common and private spaces, reorganized according to a definite hierarchy that calls for the elimination of corridor in favor of places created from scratch (from landings to vestibules to the entertainment room created in the second entrance, which was no longer needed) and the reinterpretation of obsolete types, like the aristocratic boudoir and the functional office. “Twenty years – Raggi explains – is a long time, in terms of the evolution not just of the designer, but also of the client, who develops needs for a different kind of self-representation. For me, on a creative and linguistic level, what has changed since then is only the fact that I no longer do the final drawings myself, with a pencil. That method meant that the details were more accurate, more thoroughly pondered, back in 1989. In today’s projects the relationship between thought and product is more mediated, the overall approach, the strategic choices, prevail over materials and the articulation of space”. And while someone recently said that “in the best Milanese homes decisions were not made in the parlor, but in the dining room”, this dwelling has a “real” dining room, containing certain contrasts, like the table with classic turned wooden legs and a technological sandwich top in glass and fabric, accompanied by ironic transparent plastic chairs by Philippe Starck and a Murano glass chandelier, “the encounter between the opulence of blown glass and color, aligned with a minimal chromium-plated solid”. There is also an office space, conceived as an efficient service zone between the dining room and the large, convivial kitchen with its own separate entrance. From the main entrance, a “calling card”, a sort of “decompression chamber”, one reaches the living area, the primary place of socializing, doubled by the combination of the two adjacent apartments. ‘Tracks’ have been inserted in the teak flooring: one in oak underlines the position of the demolished wall, others with an arrow shape indicate the paths of new internal routes. The grafting of light, rigorous figures brings out the fluid, open spatial character of the environment, a rectangle formed by the four sides, respectively separated from the study by a large wall-bookcase (inherited from the first project) in cedar with China blue lacquer parts and built-in lighting fixtures; bordered by the dining area thanks to the new wardrobe-divider that corrects the alignment of the walls; connected, through a surface that rotates to open, an abstract square acid green field, with the home entertainment area, inserted in the large original entrance, without windows, that has been transformed into a sort of padded ‘safe’, all in shag carpet, violet felt and maple paneling; extended, finally, along the front marked by a regular series of openings to balconies treated as micro-gardens, with fake grass mats and LED lighting. It is as if Raggi, once the questions of layout and use had been resolved in a balanced succession of rooms, decided not to give up on the allusive possibility of discreet decoration and the concept that lies behind all his projects: the experimental intention, which relies on surprising ability in the use of surfaces and materials. From industrial production, like the innovative Abet mirror laminates with relief decoration, texturized surfaces that cover the walls of the boudoir, multiplying its virtues as a symbolic space, a container of affective memory. Or handmade, like the rusted sheet metal that covers the walls of the access zone of the bedrooms, or the high textile partitions, floor to ceiling, that underscore the passages of the sliding doors. The luxury “inherited” from the previous apartment is echoed and expanded in the big bathrooms, a game of reflecting surfaces and selected marble, including the precious black Portoro with golden veins, Calacatta, and the finest Persian red Travertine. In the end, only the choices of furnishings indicate the variety of the accents brought by the curiosity of the client: modern coexists with classical, minimal with baroque, 1950s chairs by Franco Albini with a small sofa by Hoffmann, a Chesterfield sofa with custom capitonné hassocks, a still life with the exoticism of Fornasetti. “One task of design is not to confirm or standardize a style – Raggi points out – but to control eclecticism, mobility, invasiveness, the habit of accumulating signs, that represent a clear character of the contemporary figurative scene”. But the games of dynamic counterpoint show the way, because the quality of spaces is also made with the dialectic of hidden details that randomly come to light.]]> 2009-12-29 12:27:46 Interni n°599 RUDY RICCIOTTI AND THE OLD FARM http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,127,intIssueID,841,intItemID,845,intLangID,2.html Rudy Ricciotti
photos Philippe Ruault
text Francesco Vertunni project Rudy Ricciotti
photos Philippe Ruault
text Francesco Vertunni IN NORMANDY, IN NORTHERN FRANCE, THE ADDITION TO A 19TH-CENTURY FARMHOUSE, WHERE RESTORATION AND NEW CONSTRUCTION COMBINE IN A BALANCED COMPOSITION. A radical project, part of the design path of Rudy Ricciotti, who in the rigor of research outside of fashionable trends, has always focused on an architecture of eloquent sincerity, in terms of construction and composition. This restoration and addition to a traditional Normandy farmhouse with stone walls and a steep pitched roof is therefore part of a more complex discourse on architecture, not limited to the individual opportunity, which becomes one segment of a methodology in a state of evolution. The transformation of an existing work of architecture, even when it does not have monumental or declared value, involves memory, the construction techniques of the past, the traces left behind by history. So the request to expand the farmhouse for residential use is addressed as a theme for reflection that, acknowledging the architectural dignity of a functional construction from the past, has doubled the same typology in a clearly contemporary form, openly rejecting any stylistic or materic imitation. The straight volume and basic cross-section (like the profile of a house drawn by a child, with a pitched roof supported by perimeter walls) have been ‘extruded’ in compositional terms to align themselves with a new, completely glazed volume, like a greenhouse or a winter garden, that is actually a transparent space, open to the new outdoor deck, the surrounding greenery and, above all, the sky. The existing construction has been restored to its original appearance, both in materic terms (stone walls, wooden roof structure with thick beams, slate tiles) and in volumetric terms, with a unified open space, continuous from floor to ceiling, used today as a sort of large entrance where a blue Alpine automobile is positioned, part of the vintage car collection of the owner, displayed like an artwork. The original dovecote, beside the entrance, occupies two levels and connects the garage to a guestroom on the ground floor, while the first floor contains the large master bedroom, connected to the central part of the house by a long suspended walkway that runs between the wooden trusses. The new construction redesigns the same space, following the structural profile – in iron and glass, here – and concluding at the back, on the edge of the property, with a solid wall that conceals a large storeroom, marked at the center by a fireplace. The two portions of the house seem to resolve the contradiction between the opacity of the architecture of the past and the lightness and transparency of that of the present. The new addition also has a new underground level connected, on the ground floor, by a two-storey space, while in visual terms a series of openings in the ground floor slab interrupt the continuity of the wooden flooring with a sequence of perimeter panes of glass, bringing natural light to the basement. To underline the joint between the old and the new, in a central position, like a sort of symbolic hinge, a long straight swimming pool slides under a stone wall and enters the house, like an indoor reflecting pool, also visible from the basement thanks to a large glazing. A careful, respectful approach to the architecture of the past, to the figures and materials of an architecture rooted to the place, but without sacrificing the reasoning of contemporary design.]]> 2009-12-29 11:58:58 Interni n°599 THE MISSING LINK OF TOYO ITO http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,127,intIssueID,841,intItemID,844,intLangID,2.html Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
with the collaboration of Christian de Groote, Arquitectos
photos and text Sergio Pirrone project Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
with the collaboration of Christian de Groote, Arquitectos
photos and text Sergio Pirrone A VILLA IN WHITE CONCRETE AND GLASS. THE COMMON SPACES ARE ROTATED AND INCLINED, WHILE THE PRIVATE SPACES LOOK TOWARD THE MOUNTAINS. WHITE O IS THE NINTH WORK OF OCHOALCUBO, THE PIONEERING RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX IN MARBELLA, CHILE. HERE TOYO ITO HAS CREATED HIS FIRST PROJECT IN SOUTH AMERICA. Toyo Ito first met Edoardo Godoy at the Venice Biennial, and heard about the dream that had begun a few years earlier in Marbella, a town northwest of Santiago, amidst panoramic hills and golf courses. Eight Chilean architects and one landscape designer had discussed how to complete the first eight phases of the project in a harmonious way. It was an innovative idea, to buy a large lot, call it Ocho al Cubo, fill it with eight residential projects that narrate their own individual stories, while listening to the others as well. The eight houses would be sold to eight clients interested in the place and ready to tell others about the beauty of Chile, not just its marvelous nature, but also the work of man. The first phase called for eight concrete villas, 250-300 sq meters each, by eight Chilean architects, who would then pass the baton to eight international architects for the second phase, adding eight more villas, also in concrete, but larger (400 m2). Toyo Ito was to be the first, but he said “no, thanks”. But then he changed his mind. It would be his first South American project, a rare residential work. He could make a contribution to a good idea, 33 years after his White U, maybe finding the missing link, closing the circle he had opened way back then. When he reached the Ocho al Cubo site he realized that that buried horseshoe, closed in the pain of a sister who had just lost the father of her daughters, could open up to the joy of a breathtaking landscape. The lot sloped downward, looking toward the mountains to the northeast, beyond villas by architects like Sebastian Irarrazaval, Smilian Radic, Mathias Klotz and Christian De Groote. A horizontal roof and vertical members were the orthogonal constraints of an object that would rest on a natural rise. Straight line over curve, white concrete on green meadow, the contrast of a volume that neither conceals nor opens, but offers a glimpse of an inner world. That of the first works of Le Corbusier, of his pilotis under modular facades, authoritative knowledge of the light circuit of a fluid circular space, never exclusively internal, nor naively external. Seduced by contrasts, that never confine and always are open to surprises, to the discover of the other, Toyo stiffens the main facade with an asymmetrical grid that encloses the garage and the three entrance underpasses on the ground level, opening the second level to the three bedrooms that are flooded with morning light. The sinuous stone avenue plunges into the shade, the pupils have just dilated when suddenly they retreat under a sky with the form of an O. The valley is left outside, but it is still there, between earth and ramp, ramp and roof, beyond the shadow and above and under the opaque turquoise panels of the bedroom area. We are now faced by a world that also dilates and contracts, like the pupil surprised by the designs of the sun. The horizontal plane rocks around the irregular patio, an open-air interior. Caressed by the continuous glass membrane, which curves once, twice, breathing the living and dining rooms, and then hides in a reticent kitchen. Adjacent, still in a context of straight and curved lines, like the entire planimetric composition, the staircase leads down to what was supposed to be an annex for the governess, and later became a sheltered nest for the third daughter. From above, the White O resembles a ring, the missing link. While from the neighbor’s roof, atop the villa designed by Teodoro Fernandez, the lawn with the ocular swimming pool suggests that Ocho al Cubo is much more. - Caption pag. 3 Exterior view of the ringshaped garden that encloses the open courtyard. In the foreground, the suspended ramp leading to the nighttime zone with the three bedrooms. In the background, the dining and living areas. - Caption pag. 5 On the facing page: the circular living area opens to the glass oval and the two large windows that respectively face the swimming pool and the northwest facade. The Sendai bookcase and the wooden Ripples seat designed by Toyo Ito are part of the Horm catalogue. Sofa by Zanotta, glass table by Fiam. The overall planimetric of the project. Exterior view of the facade on the garden and the swimming pool. The white volume opens outward, alternating closed portions and gaps. Detail of the southwest corner with the large window of the living area. The external stairs lead to the panoramic roof deck. The streetfront is marked by vertical structural partitions that frame the garage, the entrance passages and the bedrooms organized on the second level.]]> 2009-12-28 15:06:11 Interni n°599 SUMMARY http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,129,intIssueID,841,intItemID,843,intLangID,2.html  
  INitaly

trends
TAPE DESIGN
FUNCTIONAL POLYGONS

design
COLOR PROJECT

production
CHROMATIC DETAILS
ECOWOOD
SIGNATURE PLANS
BEYOND THE BATH

young designer
ALESSANDRA PASETTI

case histories
THE CENTRAL ROLE OF DESIGN

business stories
FINANCE AND LIFESTYLE

project
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BUILDING

office & contract
THE SENSORIAL OFFICE

fairs
MADE EXPO 2010 A MILANO
SEATEC: ABITARE IL MARE 2010
34ª ARTEFIERA A BOLOGNA
MACEF: THE IDEA FACTORY

communication
WANDERSFUL TARGET
MOROSO: STORIES FROM THE WORLD
PRADA BOOK: CREATIVITY,MODERNITY, INNOVATION

city and territory
DANTE BENINI, LIVING GREEN
EXEMPLARY CITIES AT GREEN LIFE
FLORENCE:THE CREATIVITY FESTIVAL

exhibitions
ABITARE IL TEMPO BETWEEN ART, DESIGN AND DESIGN


INternational

nuove geographies
EINDHOVEN: DOUBLE-FACE DESIGN
BELGIUM: NEW DADA AND NEW DADA ACCESSORIES

design
BEWITCHED BY THE INVISIBLE
LIGHTNESS FROM JAPAN

giovani designer
SUSANNE PHILIPPSON

food design
CHAMPAGNE

protagonists
LADY CORIAN®

project
LIBESKIND VILLA
WOOD MOOD
ITALIAN MATERIALS IN THE WORLD

showroom
IN LONDON DESIGN SPEAKS ITALIAN

fiere
HABITAT VALENCIA FORWARD

production
LONDONER WOOD
ESTABLISHED & SONS AL VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM


INtertwined

exhibitions
KENDELL GEERS EUROPEAN TOUR
JENNY HOLZER IN BASEL
THE ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCES OF LIFE
ALBERTO BURRI AND LUCIO FONTANA
CERAMICS AND STONE
UTRECHT MANIFEST 2009

sustainability
H3 HOTEL: LIKE LEGO

competitions
CRISTALPLANT DESIGN CONTEST 2010
DRESSED STONE 2010

prizes
ELECTROLUX DESIGN LAB
SAMSUNG YOUNG DESIGN AWARD
GREEN LIVING PROJECTS

in bookstore

cinema
IN SEARCH OF LOST CINEMA

info & tech
DOMESTIC NETWORKS

fashion file
FUTURISTIC SILHOUETTES


INservice

translation

firms directory




 INtopics

editorial
BY GILDA BOJARDI

INteriors&architecture
international living spaces: salvage, decor, modern
EDITED BY ANTONELLA BOISI

marbella, chile, the missing link
DESIGN BY TOYO ITO & ASSOCIATES, ARCHITECTS
WITH THE COLLABORATION BY
CHRISTIAN DE GROOTE, ARQUITECTOS
PHOTOS AND TEXT BY SERGIO PIRRONE

normandy, france, the old farmhouse
DESIGN BY RUDY RICCIOTTI
PHOTOS BY PHILIPPE RUAULT
TEXT BY FRANCESCO VERTUNNI

vendicari, sicily, oasis for humans
DESIGN BY DANIELE ROSSI
PHOTOS BY SANTI CALECA
TEXT BY ALESSANDRO ROCCA

milano, the bonatti house twenty years later
DESIGN BY FRANCO RAGGI
WITH KARIM CONTARINO, GIORGIA BRUSEMINI, DAVIDE FURGIERI
PHOTOS BY GUIDO ANTONELLI
TEXT BY ANTONELLA BOISI

turin, light from above
DESIGN BY PIERLUIGI NICOLIN AND SONIA CALZONI
WITH HUN GI YIM, MANUELA LUALDI, MAURIZIO BOCOLA
PHOTOS BY MICHELE NASTASI
TEXT BY MATTEO VERCELLONI

cascais, portogallo, casa das histórias
DESIGN BY SOUTO DE MOURA
PHOTOS BY FG+SG
TEXT BY FRANCESCO VERTUNNI










INsight

INcontro
marco balich
BY ANTONELLA GALLI

INprofile
nanda vigo
BY MATTEO VERCELLONI

INpeople
lorenzo damiani vs massimiliano adami
BY MADDALENA PADOVANI

INarts
in praise of real design
BY CRISTINA MOROZZI

grandi legni catalougue
TEXT BY ANDREA BRANZI
PHOTS BY RUY TEIXEIRA

INtoday
super, maxxi, zaha in rome
DESIGN BY  ZAHA HADID
TEXT BY MATTEO VERCELLONI
PHOTS BY LUKE HAYES

INdesign

INcenter
multicolor design
BY NADIA LIONELLO

worksites
BY NADIA LIONELLO
PHOTOS BY SIMONE BARBERIS

INproject
green creativity
BY TERSILLA GIACOBONE
PHOTOS BY CARLO POZZONI

ithe design of music
PROGETTO BY LORENZO PALMERI
BY MADDALENA PADOVANI

INview
iper 2d HYPER-2D
BY STEFANO CAGGIANO

INproduction
the subtile charm of metal
BY KATRIN COSSETA

INservice

address
BY ADALISA UBOLDI

firms directory

ON THE COVER:
THE H2O BASIN BY LORENZO DAMIANI AND THE FOSSILE MODERNO CABINET
BY MASSIMILIANO ADAMI. THE FORMER, CONCEIVED MAINLY FOR INDUSTRIAL AND PUBLIC SPACES AND DESIGNED FOR THE SOLO SHOW IN-COERENZA AT THE OTTO GALLERY
IN BOLOGNA IN 2004,‘FUSES’THE FUNCTIONS AND PARTS OF THE TRADITIONAL WASHSTAND
IN A SINGLE PLASTIC PRODUCT. THE LATTER IS MADE BY DIVIDING A SINGLE CHEST INTO TWO HINGED HALVES THAT OPEN TO REVEAL THE CONTENTS: SALVAGED OBJECTS EMBEDDED IN POLYURETHANE FOAM, SLICED TO FORM THE COMPARTMENTS OF THE CABINET

 ]]> 2009-12-29 16:05:42 Interni n°599 EDITORIAL http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,128,intIssueID,841,intItemID,842,intLangID,2.html 2010-01-11 19:24:14 Interni n°599 Germano Celant and Frank O. Gehry http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,97,intIssueID,827,intItemID,839,intLangID,2.html Matteo Vercelloni interview by Matteo Vercelloni Art critic and cultural mover Germano Celant has curated major exhibitions, including A rte & Architettura (Genoa, 2004). Artistic director of Fondazione Prada in Milan, starting this year he is also the head of the art and architecture section of the Milan Triennale. This conversation was prompted by the exhibition he has curated there on the recent work of Frank O. Gehry.Twenty-three years after the exhibition on Frank O. Gehry you curated at the art museum of Castello di Rivoli, once again you focus on the great Canadian architect and Ca l i f o rnia resident, this time at the Triennale. Is this interest in Ge h ry’s recent work part of a sort of critical statement about the idea of architecture, which in the metropolis of the new millennium will necessarily involve a synergetic convergence of art, entertainment and design practice?
“My critical and historical path regarding the intertwining of art and architecture began in my first collaboration in 1965 with the magazine Casabella, directed by Alessandro Mendini, where because I came from the world of art I began to cross the two languages, looking for points of contact. My contributions have always had to do with the visual and sculptural aspects, and it is no coincidence that in 1969 I coined the term ‘radical arc h i t e c t u re’ to indicate the research of groups like Archizoom, Superstudio, Archigram, Metabolism, and individuals like Hollein, Isozaki, Abraham, Pichler... In the 1970s the path continued with contributions in Domus, on architects like Ant Farm and artists like Gordon Matta Clark, and with the exhibition “Arte & Ambiente” at the Venice Biennial in 1976, where I began my interest in California culture, which included – besides the artists Nordman, Nauman, Asher, Irwin and Turrell – Frank Gehry, after I had visited his home and studio in 1974. After 1980, the cross-pollination of the arts became my practice of crossing of languages, leading to research on art&books, art&fashion, art&video, art&photography, concluding with the major exhibitions Looking at Fashion, in Fl o rence in 1996, Architettura&Arti in Genoa in 2004, and Vertigo, the media century, in Bologna in 2007. Ne ve rtheless, the convergence of the arts can already be seen in all the historical avantgardes – from Futurism to Constructivism, Neoplasticism to Surrealism – so the episodes of the present are simply a consequence, a realization, which after Warhol has become full democratization of the languages of doing and communicating. In this path, since 1974 I h a ve constantly paid attention to Gehry, both due to friendship and due to operative exchanges. It was Frank, with Peter Arnell, who asked me to write the preface to his first monograph, published in 1985 by Rizzoli International. But before and after that we work e d together on “Il corso del coltello”, with Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg, a performance that came from my course in 1984 at the Milan Polytechnic, and was done in Venice, and then elsewhere in various forms, in New York and Los Angeles. As a curator of the Guggenheim Museum I worked with Gehry and Tom Krens on the project for the Bilbao Guggenheim, until it was built in 1997, and today, with the same team, we talk about the project for the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. So I have always seen the connections between art and architecture, where design practice is not just technical, but also subjective, intuitive, spectacular, communicative, creative, sculptural”.

In the exhibition Gehry’s architecture is displayed above all with models and sketches. Evocative drawings, “indefinite, models that underline much more than technical drawings, the sculptural factor of each building, the skillful Dada procedure of the collage, that goes beyond, at least in the immediate context, any functional reference”. In your introduction to the catalogue (Frank O. Ge h ry dal 1977, ed. Ge rmano Celant. Sk i ra editore, 318 p., 35 euros) you talk about architecture as a “mixture of grafts […] a place of emotion that permits immersion and the entry of freedom an heterogeneous expression […] a liberating tool”. Do you think this idea of architecture as a sculptural-emotional element – in which the artistic dimension permits escape from the ‘canonical’ compositional logic of the discipline – is one of the ways out of the crisis of modernity for contemporary architecture?
“ In the exhibition at the Milan Triennale, with Frank we decided to avoid the ‘non- emotional’ aspects of the project. Meaning the operative, technical part that comes after the construction of the definitive model. Hence the emphasis on the initial sketches and the sequence of manipulations – primitive and selective – of the models, to which, in parallel, we added the more sophisticated, technological part, namely the use of Catia. In fact, talking with Frank, we discussed what is happening today in the world of architectural design after the introduction of Catia, the tool that allows technology to translate, right down to the smallest details, the plastic hypothesis of the model. Everyone uses computers, but the first part of constructive thought takes concrete form in scale models, which convey the emotional and physical, tactile and visual aspects. This is then translated for functional and urban purposes. Thus the two extremes of the exhibition. We need to think about this dualism, because the activity of the architect is still schizo p h renic today. Though it has freed us from the less creative part, that of engineering and economics, the computer still lacks what Frank calls the “missing link”, that human, intuitive component that, undoubtedly when it is input by some future young architect into the electronic system, could close the circle and bring design to the same level, though updated, of the practice of Michelangelo, capable of controlling the whole construction, from the first to the last moment. This is why I talk about a ‘liberating’ process, not yet completed, but which all new architects will inevitably have to take into account: at present the only one who is getting close to some results is Greg Lynn, who not coincidentally worked with Gehry on the Sentosa project. Computeraided design is an important subject for the future of architecture and we will have to pay it close attention, without getting scandalized by the widespread use of simulations and electronic thinking: it is through the ‘confirmation’ of the intuition and of subjectivity, by this means, that the canons have been ove rturned and modified to facilitate experiences that range from Peter Cook to Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel to Asymptote, Diller & Scofidio to Rem Koolhaas, certainly disorienting for traditionalists who defend an architecture still linked to the International Style”.

In one of your books, published in 1984 (“Artmakers, arte, arc h i t e t t u ra, fotografia, danza e musica negli Stati Uniti”, Feltrinelli editore), you devoted one chapter to Gehry, describing his w o rk as “litera ry, pulsional arc h i t e c t u re”. The fact that you inserted arc h i t e c t u re in an interpretation of artistic and expressive phenomena, as a form of communication, still seems like a valid indication, and it underlined, together with “the ambiguous osmosis between sculpture and arc h i t e c t u re” of Ge h ry, the ‘urban’ dimension of his works, some of which we re seen as “ idealized cities”, “city- houses”, “c o n t e m p o ra ry acropoli”, in a positioning of the edifice as an ‘archipelago’. A dimension that still remains in Gehry’s work and can be sensed when walking through the models in the exhibition, emblematically summed up by the Atlantis Sentosa in Singapore. In this context, however, and not just for Gehry, an attitude seems to emerge that at times has a dual face: taking the building as a self-referential icon, complete in itself, dropped in like a bit of counterpoint in the urban fabric, or making the project an opportunity for rooting, almost for a ‘refoundation’ of territories and pieces of the city. Do you see this perhaps apparent dichotomy in the state of contemporary architecture?
“At the time knowledge of Ge h ry’s work was based on my interpretation of California postminimalism, where surfaces and the impact of light began to count, both on the external skin and in the internal habitat. What he had developed, from Studio Danzinger, 1964- 1965, to the Davis house in Malibu, 1968-1972, and Santa Monica Place, 1972-1977, could be connected, I thought, with the spatial experiments I had seen in the works of Eric Orr and Michael Asher, Maria No rdman and Ro b e rt Irwin, which had influenced my research on Arte & Ambiente for Venice. Writing about Gehry, I seemed to have intuited that his design, besides being influenced by the architectural ephemera of Los Angeles – where the houses of Santa Monica or Venice are all in wood and rough materials, like chainlink and sheet metal, also for anti-seismic performance – was also marked by a very emotional procedure, extremely intuitive, connected to the world of art. This is why I used the term ‘pulsional’, connected to the dream path of much artistic research, but also the first experiments of radical architecture. What struck me was the idea of a thought I would define as ‘medieval’ today, that of the house-village, where eve ry single functional unit, fro m the kitchen to the bedroom, the garage to the living area, was defined by a single form and a single color. Add to this the fact that houses could be conceived – like the Ge h ry Residence – in order that a work of arc h i t e c t u re – as happened in Eu rope – could ‘e n t e r’, stratify, accumulate with others, and you can see that my interest in the procedure was inevitable. The disruptive effect of this urban grafting, that seems like an updating of what happens for our ancient monuments, which are ‘disoriented’ and ‘decontextualized’ with respect to the modern, was not so different from what was happening in art. Only for Ge h ry and other protagonists of contemporary arc h i t e c t u re, the uprooting is projected into the pre s e n t , not the future: the collision no longer takes place through removal or destruction of the context, but by disruption and construction of it. So it is a ‘bulk’ projected forward, that creates the same ‘disorder’ as an old cathedral or castle, immersed in the central fabric of a city, but seen in the opposite direction. The process of fragmentation and fluidity is clearly legible in the Sentosa project, because it is conceived for a liquid condition, that of the aquarium and its centers of attraction, but it is also linked to the fact that the project was done in collaboration with Greg Lynn, who is experimenting with how to bring out the ‘missing link’ of thinking about construction with the computer.”

Getting back to Gehry’s work, you emphasize that his compositional procedure follows a “circular prefiguration” in which one does not concentrate on a front and a back, but proceeds in a “spherical vision, where all the surfaces are shared, because what counts are the relations between elements, and what is transmitted and inserted between them”. Does this ‘anti-hierarchic’ approach to the building, the unified synthesis of the architectural object, come in your view from openness to the world of art and the contamination between different disciplines?
“The spherical vision, a definition that belongs to the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, is an inevitable passage toward a modernization of perception. We no longer live according to simple coordinates, but ones that are marked by a civilization of the global structure, so that arc h i t e c t u re ‘in the round’ is undoubtedly related to knowledge of artists like Kienholz and Moses, Serra and Oldenburg, who have a sculptural vision. There is also the lack of a single position for an architectural element, which can be placed in any part of the building, just as the building can be placed in any part of the world, once the contextual relations have been examined: it is a design philosophy that already appears in the interaction of the Ge h ry Residence, where the walls are thin and communicating, and the entire complex makes the past, the bungalow, and the future, the structure in sheet metal, wood and chainlink, coexist. At the same time, the use of Catia has made it possible to turn the designed ‘c u b e’ or ‘s p h e re’ by 360 degrees, also allowing any kind of crossing and deformation, without having to rely on purely functional reasoning. A free use of forms and volumes has been discove red, but discovery also means removing the wrapper that c overs an object, so the skin has also been freed, making it a self-re f e rential, selfcommunicating feature”.

At a certain point, in Ge h ry’s work the disconnect between the skin of the building and its spatial form, concealed by layers, surfaces applied or twisted around a hidden body, has produced what has been defined as the architecture of the canopy: a harsh critique that underlined the way that in certain works by Gehry the external image was dominant with respect to the spatial research, which got overshadowed. Almost as if to say that under the ‘titanium skin’ we might find any volume, without altering the value of the architecture, which was reduced to that of a media icon. What do you think about this interpretation?
“The architectural skin, which freely takes form in space, is first of all a critique of the absolute, speculative use of the parallelepiped that has dominated European and American c u l t u re, reducing everything to a Lego-type approach. Furthermore, the spherical character of the wrapper has disrupted the idea of the facade, which was so handy for urban interlocking, aimed at maximum spatial exploitation, and it has given buildings more air, putting entrances in irregular positions, not just based on street grids. Actually Gehry has been following the indications of great architects – from Le Corbusier to Alvar Aalto – to bring the city back to a more open, natural context, where the architectural intervention can have its own visual and physical ‘territory’, not with all the pieces interlocked as in a puzzle, as has been the case in many neighborhoods, from Italy to China, even in recent d e velopment. Creating a ‘cloud’ that protects does not only mean producing an anti-materic situation, based on the exaltation of the void, but also producing a unique sculptural effect, because the use of titanium makes the reflection of light change, putting the building into relation with the weather. So this is an architectural dynamism that has been repressed: the flat, boring, anonymous, repetitive facades of many architects may conceal internal spatial research, but they let themselves be standardized by economic factors”.

Gehry’s architecture can be defined as an architecture of entropy. You talk about “almost jazz architecture, based on surprising juxtapositions”, a sort of multiple, polyphonic procedure that operates as an ‘open system’. In theoretical terms, does this lead to the possibility of a ‘non-finite’ architecture, subject to biological growth over time, accepting new portions and prostheses? Do you think this idea of an ‘open project’ can become a feasible scenario?
“It’s a procedure of interlocking and grafting, as happened across the history of different stratifications, so the assurance of infinite permanence of architecture is no longer guaranteed, it is possible to foresee changes, combinations. Architecture runs the risk of change, and it is interesting to notice that while Ge h ry opens the building to availability and refoundation through the use of puzzle forms, another architect, Rem Koolhaas, thinks of rotating architecture, as in the Prada Transformer, made in Seoul in 2009. If we look closely, they a re both moving tow a rd a design that can be reworked – not just in theory, but also in practice – according to the probabilities of change triggered by globalization of production and communication: they work on a risk of metamorphosis that is more timely than an a rchitectural practice based on permanence. Of course this ‘movement’ and ‘transformation’ c o n vey a focus that looks ‘o u t s i d e’ arc h i t e c t u re, that of living in a space perceived as a seismograph, capable of recording external changes, a terminal that is not just electronic but also constructive, capable of challenging its fixed points and certainties, of adapting to what is happening outside. It may be utopia, but is in this sense that architecture becomes jazz and can be thought of as a jam session, where all the components of the archipelago and the village (of Gehry) interact and flow into each other, as at Sentosa”.

A scenario where perhaps the ‘trespassing’ between different disciplines, the mixture between expressive dimensions, becomes a ‘rule’ to be invented, case by case?
“The term ‘trespass’ is dated, because today the practices intermingle and there are no borderlines to be crossed, just points of contact that lead to an osmosis of all the languages. If this used to be considered a matter of ‘rupture’, that was due to the fact that our information stops short at the historical avant- gardes, which worked to destroy limits. Maybe for this reason many architects are working on a re - e valuation that is not just historicalanalytical, typical of the academic world, but also one of process: this was started by Aldo Rossi and continued by Hadid, who has returned to the architectural voyage of Malevic, while Gehry has been seduced by Expressionism, from Scharoun to Murnau”.

This is your first exhibition at the Triennale in your role as director of art and architecture. Can you tell us about the program of disciplinary interaction you intend to implement? Id e a s for future events ?
“With my background as a historian of contemporary art and a theorist interested in all cross-pollinations of the arts, today I don’t seen any difference between the subjects to exhibit or to treat scientifically; the Triennale is successful precisely because it is a melting pot of creativity, from art to design, arc h i t e c t u re to fashion, graphics to cuisine... In this direction, I am naturally interested in the protagonists of major linguistic ‘breakthroughs’, makers of international history, like Ge h ry, so my program will try to follow this disorienting, but also reassuring, method”.]]> 2009-12-16 15:29:37 Interni n°599 Arengario, Museo del Novecento, Milan, 2002-2010 http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,827,intItemID,838,intLangID,2.html Gabriele Basilico e Giovanni Chiaramonte photos by Gabriele Basilico e Giovanni Chiaramonte Arengario, Museo del Novecento, Milan, 2002-2010The new Museum of Modern Art of the Civic Art Collections of the City of Milan will soon be opened inside the historic Palazzo dell’ A rengario on Piazza Du o m o. The project of transformation of the palazzo calls for the insertion, in the ve rtical space of the tower, after re m oval of elements added in the 1950s, of a ve rtical access system with a spiral staircase. A rising spiral of images and movement.]]> 2009-11-30 11:40:27 Interni n°599 Milano, Levi’s and Virgin Active Buildings http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,827,intItemID,837,intLangID,2.html Studio Rota & Partners photos courtesy Studio Rota & Partners Inside the ‘Maciachini pro j e c t’, the redesign of a vast urban area to the north of the city p reviously occupied by the factories of Carlo Erba, in an area of almost 100,000 sq meters, two buildings by Rota – one for offices, the other for fitness – are conceived as an integral p a rt of the green space. The entire operation of urban renewal is based on a sum of buildings by different architects to create a sort of complex multifunctional park, with buildings that redefine the perimeter and a vast, central green area, placed over an underground parking garage. The almost ‘empirical’ confrontation of different compositional approaches has avoided the dangers of constructing, as has already happened in the city, in nearby examples, new monolinguistic, monotonous, mute settlements, with no dialogue and no interaction among their parts. As Rota himself observes: “The architects looked at each other, but we never had meetings. I believe this was a good idea, to safeguard the diversity of the city. The city we appreciate, in fact, is made of many buildings that accept the rules, leading to diversity, but with a common goal. Things that are too closely coordinated lead to too much uniformity. It is fun to have multiple visions and languages in a single place, a rhythm and a measure emerge, and become more recognizable”. The two buildings shown here rely on their ‘collage’ assembly to generate the necessary urban diversity, playing the role of a manifesto of lively materic and formal contrast. The work takes place on the ‘skin of the architecture’, and in this case also on the roofs, because they can be seen from the upper levels of the surro u n d i n g constructions. The result is a mechanism of montage of figures and volumes. Set on a glass base, a continuous ribbon with a graphic-decorative texture of shaded tones, marked by a rhythmical sequence of openings, becomes the streetfront that establishes a dialogue with the existing brick smokestack. The lateral volume transforms the concept of the curtain wall, the glass facade of the office building, into an eloquent abstract pattern, with diagonal rotation of the support posts, replacing the traditional regular rectangles of the modular partition with the more dynamic figure of the rhombus, repeated in different harmonious tones. The glass block is joined by a dynamic interlock of volumes whose surfaces are treated with geometric motifs and different colors. The collage pro c e d u re characterizes the buildings as a whole, in a situation of carefully balanced orchestration with respect to both the urban frontage and the green area. ( M. V.)]]> 2009-11-30 11:36:52 Interni n°599 Dolvi, Temple of Hanuman http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,827,intItemID,836,intLangID,2.html Italo Rota, Davor Popovic photos Italo Rota, Davor Popovic Just in case you have to build a Hindu temple
These notes may come in handy some day, if you find yourself in the same situation I was in five years ago. One evening at the Mumbai airport a gentleman handed me a ye l l ow envelope with these words on it: “If you are interested, please open this when you arrive in Milan”. A few days earlier I had passed by a temple in the port zone of Mumbai. I had tried several times before to enter it, but had always been blocked by the Siddhas on guard. That time they looked into my eyes and let me in; I took it as a sign of fate; once in Milan I opened the yellow envelope, which contained a pithy message: “Do you want to build a temple?” For someone like me, born in the center of Milan, it was truly a strange and w o n d e rful thing, certainly not exotic or adventurous, but simply fantastic. I had just finished building a church in Rome, and this made the proposal even more intriguing, also because I have always thought that having multiple gods was better than having just one. T h e important part is to find the sense of things, in every different manifestation. I went to visit the territory, on the river estuary at Dolvi; in the midst of metal factories we found the land suitable for a new temple, a temple dedicated to the god Hanuman (a spirit with the appearance of a monkey), also known as Anjaneya, one of the most important figures in the Indian epic poem, the Ramayana. In India there are many temples in honor of Hanuman, because it is believed that their presence banishes evil spirits in the vicinity. Little statues of Hanuman are also found on poorly lit streets, because it is said that they protect people against accidents. Our temple was part of a larger project that included office buildings and g reen spaces for the steel mill complex of Mumbai. The operations required for its foundation were identical to those in other, similar situations. We had to prepare the land that would receive the sacred fire that would then be transformed into the temple. The series of c e remonies is very long and complex, but it corresponds to logical, linear thinking, regarding the representation of the universe and its laws. All the phases of the construction process of a Hindu temple unwind like a religious ritual, or at least have religious overtones. First of all, the yajamàna (the sacrificer, in this case the financer and the builder) chooses the Sthapaka or Acharya to guide and supervise the construction. The Acharya, in particular, must be a pious Brahmin, who lives a life without sin. He should be an expert on art , architecture and rituals. The Acharya chooses the sthapati, the chief architect, responsible for the construction of the temple. The sutragrahin (geometer), taksaka (sculptor) and va rdhakin (mason and painter) help with the construction. After the day of ‘sankalpa’ (consecration), the yajamàna and the Acharya take some specific religious vows, and will then have to lead a very rigorous life to keep those vows. (Italo Rota)]]> 2009-11-30 11:33:46 Interni n°599 Dubai, Firenze, Cavalli Club http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,827,intItemID,834,intLangID,2.html Studio Rota & Partners, SGP Copyright photos courtesy Studio Rota & Partners, SGP Copyright The Cavalli Clubs are spaces that mix functions as restaurants, piano bars and nightclubs in a new formula of architecture for entertainment & nightlife, in which the seductive and emotional factor is connected with the magical-narrative approach in a dense threedimensional expre s s i ve synthesis. In Dubai, in a two-storey space inside the Fairmont Hotel, the Cavalli Club is like a world apart, transforming from day to night to become a star map, a Milky Way composed of 452,864 Sw a rovski crystals, that stands out against a dark ceiling, like the night sky in the desert. Inside the apparently boundless space float cascades of sparkling light, artificial stars flanked by three large suspended ‘atolls’ – the main one cove red in white mink – for a sushi bar, a wine bar and the exclusive VIP lounge. A box in which the architect becomes a skillful alchemist capable of orienting luxury, taken to extre m e s , tow a rd the construction of a dream. The Cavalli Club in Fl o rence, located in a former Anglican church, plays with the relationship between history and symbol, with the neighboring Renaissance Brancacci Chapel and its frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, completed by Filippino Lippi. The entrance to the Club, in a game of the sacred and the profane, is next to that of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, while the new, sinuous, imposing steel counter – conceived as a temporary, re m ovable installation, to respect the original structure – develops ‘behind’ the frescoed wall, which contains a depiction of the banishment from Eden of Adam and Eve by Masaccio. ‘Through the looking-glass’ one discovers, as in Lewis Carro l l’s fable, another parallel world, which responds to the complexity of the frescoed Renaissance space with an installation that is open to dialogue. Through the use of materials like steel and glass, emphasizing their properties of refraction and spatial deformation, an enveloping interior machine is developed, overlaid on the host architecture. In an effort of construction of a different, altered perception of the original space, the design solution moves tow a rd the dimension of the imagination, rather than that of deception. ( M. V.)]]> 2009-11-30 11:30:10 Interni n°599 Total wood http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,70,intIssueID,827,intItemID,833,intLangID,2.html Katrin Cosseta by Katrin Cosseta From the surface to the object, the lamp to the cabinet. Timeless material, but in constant e volution, wood is going through a new expre s s i ve phase with patchworks, transpare n c y, 3D textures, exaggerated grain, inlays of different materials. And with an eye on ecoglamour, re c ycled wood becomes more precious than exotic varieties, while laser technology coexists with oils rubbed in by hand, and details by highly skilled craftsmen.]]> 2009-11-30 12:27:30 Interni n°599 The process is the message http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,827,intItemID,832,intLangID,2.html Stefano Caggiano, Maddalena Padovani and Laura Traldi by Stefano Caggiano, Maddalena Padovani and Laura Traldi Objects in progress, interactive, interchangeable. That contaminate construction techniques, functional meanings, levels of perception and meaning. The proposals of seven young international designers, expression of new design thinking that focuses not so much on finished products as on the generative itinerary behind them.In our splendidly h e t e rogeneous times, the aura of novelty can often suffice, on its own, to justify everything and its opposite. Whether an object is designed well or not seems to count less than the fact that it appears, correctly or incorre c t l y, to be ‘n ew’. This phenomenon, widely criticize d on multiple fronts, actually indicates a new design spec that makes the start of the 21st century different from the past. While it may be true that objects seem to hatch with a ‘best before’ date already etched on their character, apart from the ephemeral focus of human vanity, designers are also forced to explore a new ‘density’ of meaning, in which p recisely the object trapped in a single ‘identity’ (the condition of something that does not change and always remains ‘identical’ to itself ) is perc e i ved as a phantasmatic presence , deprived of any depth. Mo re than in the design of space, which fixes and arrests, the new ‘weak and diffused’ design displays its physiognomy in temporal evolution, shifting the role of the process from its traditional role of something that serves to achieve a result (the ‘product’) to the element that is the intrinsic vehicle of meaning, which can exist prior to the work, as a stratification of depth, or a posteriori, as a path of emancipation of the object from the control of the project. In Greek a ‘work’ was an ‘ergon’, hence the term energheia, the human ‘energy’ involved in the making of the work. Today, in the generalize d liquefaction of contemporary signs, ‘finished’ works tend to lose ground with respect to a new cre a t i ve energy that wants to free up forms, liberating their fluid core of living meaning, making them available for other processes, other generative paths. Alongside the design that is familiar to us, a matter of works and aesthetics, another design appears, made of p rocesses and energy, in which the object becomes more ‘dense’ when its stages of identity a re diversified, and can be glimpsed from one to the next, defining the product not just for what it is, but also for what it was, and what it will be.

Alessia Giardino
Through the photocatalytic process (which consists in using UV rays to oxidize the molecules of pollutants, transforming them into carbon dioxide and water), lichens and corals can change form, giving rise to patterns. Fascinated by this process, the yo u n g designer Alessia Gi a rdino has decided to transfer it to building materials for use in a rc h i t e c t u re. Using photocatalytic sprays and paints, but also patterns on sheets of wood, cut by lasers, or embossed on cement, the designer has created tiles whose decorations change in a way determined by man and by nature, breaking up and leaving permanent traces on their surfaces.

Elisa Strozyk
The Wooden Textiles project by Elisa St rozyk starts with the re i n vention of the identity of a material to create a pro d u c t with a changeable meaning and image. In an old woodworking shop in London, the young designer from Berlin saw wood scrap used to make furniture veneers. She decided to use this technique to cut out many little geometric parts and put them back together in a fabric. The result is an apparently rigid surface capable of taking on different threedimensional configurations and uses – carpet, blanket, finish for furniture – that bre a k d own the boundaries between furnishings and fabrics, and the traditional identity of wood as a material.

Anthony Roussel
An award-winning artist and designer, after training in the field of metal jewe l ry design Anthony Roussel met a luthier, who introduced him to working with (and loving) wood. From that moment on his passion for the English coasts and modern arc h i t e c t u re has found sculptural form in intricate jewelry - s c u l p t u res in birch, characterized by ample, delicate lines obtained by meticulous l a yering of sheets of wood, whose technical gesture (Roussel is not above making use of 3D design software) reflects a fascination with fossil formations and the rocky shapes formed by geological time.

Eunsuk Hur
A system of textile elements for various combinations is transformed into objects of different kinds: from garments to furnishing complements. The idea comes from Eunsuk Hur, a designer trained in London, who with an eye on sustainability attempts to get people invo l ved in design processes. Interaction, play, multifunctionalism, interchangeability are elements that lead users to attribute greater value to products, extending the time frame of consumption. As in the p roject Nomadic Wonderland, based on processes of growth of natural things, and done with different materials and techniques of cutting and printing: an amusing constru c t i ve principle, with theatrical results, expressing the idea of a hybrid design in evolution that expands the possibilities of use and meaning of products.

Charlotte Dumoncel d’Argence
She is ve ry young, but her work communicates the desire to a p p reciate physical decay as a fundamental part of life. This is why the objects created by Charlotte Dumoncel d’Argence (French, residing in Holland, where she recently showed her works during Dutch Design Week) are already ‘born old’. Ceramic cups, glazed and re - f i red to obtain a wrinkled surface effect. Carpets made with layers of felt in which to i n s e rt tiny vitreous parts that appear, like little jewels, when the surface begins to separate due to use. And a light bulb hung from an intentionally frayed copper wire. “My pro j e c t s celebrate life through meditation on its fragility”.

Gareth Neal
In his precise, careful work the young London-based designer Ga reth Neal invo l ves techniques of craftsmanship in highly innova t i ve operative programs to generate forms that engage the observer in a game of perception on multiple levels. His objects display a sort of hyperidentity, meaning that they are not just what they are, but in the moment of their observation they already become something else, multiple wavering presences, in a state of constant cognitive vibration that gives them “depth” and optical persistence, as the gaze returns again and again to seek the elusive missing link.

Ikuko Iwamoto
The ceramics of Ikuko Iwamoto, who studied first in Japan and then in London, where she now lives and works, “suggest the eve ryday, the ordinary, though they are actually extra - ordinary”. Generated by an ironic complicity with a material as old as mankind, the works of Ikuko materialize a world in which organic and inorganic are fused, triggering the forms of a rocky material that grows like a plant, giving rise to “e xquisite cups and other objects for a bizarre tea cere m o n y” in which the spirit of order mixes with the aesthetic of chaos, making the invisible visible, and viceversa .]]> 2009-11-30 12:25:56 Interni n°599 Milano, Exedra Boscolo Hotel http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,827,intItemID,831,intLangID,2.html Leo Torri photos by  Leo Torri This is the first hotellerie project by Italo Rota, done in the re c o rd time of one ye a r. “I commissioned him to do this work after seeing a spaceship inside a church. Amazing. I said to myself: this is the right man to leave the mark of an artist, something that will last in time, considering the fact that after Gio Ponti a long, prestigious tradition of modernity was interrupted, and that the path to the Milan of Expo 2015 will be long and arduous”, Angelo Boscolo, president of the Boscolo Hotels chain, re m a rks. For its first five-star urban hotel in Milan, which aims at becoming a re f e rence point for the city and its territory, Boscolo has chosen the exclusive setting of Corso Matteotti, and a building that was the headquarters of the IMI bank, in which the facade has been almost completely conserved, along with the original curved design of the architecture, that shapes the interiors as well. This is why, in the nine above-ground floors of the hotel and the two basements, none of the spaces are exactly the same, though they are all ample. All the ‘ingre d i e n t s’ of the image, from the sculptural forms of the lights to the materials and color, make the place a metaphor, dense with figurative, cultural and historical references, capable of prompting reflection on a new type of relationship between man and space. Two big ‘aquariums’ on the public stre e t offer hurried pedestrians a view of a fluid, pale but colorful world. These are the two windows that enclose the space of the hall and underline the concept of an arc h i t e c t u re that becomes a place of identity in the city. The first spectacular immersion. Because the hall is actually a multifunctional pole, on three levels, like a dynamic film set, a sequence of collective zones that reveals micro-worlds, open to the city, to the dimension of encounters, socializing and artistic communication (with exhibitions), with 24-hour dining and a Lambruscheria that is a prelude to other sensory voyages. The entrance features white Carrara marble, installed with open grain, from a quarry in Tuscany. The floor of the museum hall is in black Indian granite. The floor, walls and ceiling of the restaurant specialized in seafood are in mink marble from Tu rk e y. These concrete, lasting, timeless materials combine to form a narrative f r a m ew o rk, with an effect of spatial suspension; as if the red of excellence used for the entrance portal were an explicit reference to the velvet of the large 1960s armchairs and the curtain of the nearby Teatro alla Scala, the red of Valentino and Ferrari, the ideal contrast to the metropolitan gray of the reception counter. This regal, symbolic color is seldom missing in Ro t a’s project, nor is light, skillfully orchestrated in mutable scenarios with LEDs and special ‘c a s c a d e s’. To emphasize the intention to “thrill and engage the guests, transporting them into a surreal, seductive, penetrating dimension, capable of transforming experience into active memory”. The second spectacular immersion relies on the catalyst of the staircase, a large helicoidal structure wrapped in the metal ribbons of a sort of aviary, centered on a column-sculpture 15 meters high, clad with harlequin decorations, colored triangles and LEDs, leading to the lower level that contains other refreshment and lounge zones. In an area of passage to the private spaces, another poetic ‘a v i a ry’ with a skylight stages an allegorical representation of fecundation, with its random tangle of metal wires and lights. It is a reminder that the special effects are far from over. Although the spectacular content is attenuated in the hotel rooms (154, including 3 presidential suites), for a closer focus on function, using selected products Made in Italy, with lycra lamps and canopy beds, custom made, that go beyond the dimension of the design object to approach that of a space capsule. ( A. B.)]]> 2009-11-30 11:26:36 Interni n°599 Italo Rota, when attitude becomes form http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,104,intIssueID,827,intItemID,830,intLangID,2.html Antonella Boisi
with the collaboration of  Francesca Grassi/studio Rota
introduction by Matteo Vercelloni edited by Antonella Boisi
with the collaboration of  Francesca Grassi/studio Rota
introduction by Matteo Vercelloni Milanese, born in 1953, Italo Rota started his career as an architectural outsider in the ye a r s of student protests, where instead of demonstrating in the streets he pre f e r red to take a hike in the mountains in search of minerals.In the early 1970s he worked with Franco Albini, from whom he learned a concept that would become a constant in his work: to guarantee the expression of minorities, also of an exclusive type and, to some extent, clearly snobbish, in the positive sense of the term; to set oneself apart thanks to an approach to the theme, and the cre a t i ve quality of the whole. With Vittorio Gregotti he worked on the competition for the University of Calabria (1972-73), his first project of Land architecture, leading to awareness of the ‘territorial’ scale. His work with Pierluigi Nicolin on the magazine Lotus International (1976-81) underscores how, among the working tools of the architect, printed matter can play a leading, programmatic role, along with books, also in terms of their status as objects. In fact, over time Rota has compiled an exceptional collection of typographical works of the modern era (art, architecture and graphics). In 1981 he moved to Paris, where he stayed for about 20 years, including work on the winning project in the competition for the aménagement intérieur of the Musée d’Orsay, won together with Gae Aulenti and Pi e ro Castiglioni. With Aulenti he organized the spaces of the National Museum of Modern Art at Centre Pompidou (1984-86), and worked on the project for the Hall of the Kings at the Museum of Cluny (1985). The museum as a place of expression of a re n ewed culture , successfully extended to a wider audience, remained a fertile area of work, continuing in 1985 with the invitational competition for the new spaces of the French School at the Cour Carré of the Louvre (opened in 1992), another winning project. In parallel with this period of projects for museums, exhibitions and cultural events, Rota also focused on the world of theater.With the director Patrice Chéreau he designed and completed the restructuring of the Théâtre des Amandiers (1982-83) and a center of film production, with a set design atelier, in Nanterre (1982-86), with workshops that traveled to Paris, Berlin and London. The passion for theater and set design, seen as ‘architecture of narration’, continued with the director Bernard Sobel (1984-88). The design episodes and professional commitments we re also taken as opportunities for experimentation, whether for domestic interiors, museum spaces or buildings, but also on the scale of urban space and the territory. Every design adventure activates mechanisms that produce strong engagement of the user, a sort of stated or unconscious relationship, esoteric at times, operating on multiple levels. A ‘seduction’ marked by a complex of figures, materials and colors, as in the example of the various places, clubs and boutiques designed for his friend Roberto Cavalli, or the recent Hotel Boscolo in Milan, or a process of ‘activation’ of new collective awareness in the decadelong experience of redefinition of public spaces in Nantes, begun with Bruno Fo rtier in 1992. This was an exe m p l a ry pro j e c t - l a b o r a t o ry conducted in long phases, an effort to bring urban center and banlieue closer to each other, taking the ‘void’ of the city, or indeterminate public space, as the terrain for the redemption of arc h i t e c t u re. We can see a rejection of architecture in ‘muscular’ terms; of the ‘volumetric-formal spot’ that only in a ve ry few cases manages to emerge as a real landmark. Urban space is seen as a programmed and programmable void in which to activate new modes of use of the city, new behaviors and relationships of identity. So a transparent, ultraluminous streetcar that runs often after 8 in the evening takes on the value of an object-symbol, which together with the suburban stations, also transparent and lit, forms a network of new identities and possible aggregations in the continuing exchange between center and periphery, in a city where the automobile was still the only real means of movement. Architectural design is connected to wide-ranging social action, including renovation of public buildings and their facades, or the reworking of parks and gardens, approached on all scales: from the public park to the small neighborhood garden, flowering plots, ‘residual’ green spaces in road networks, embracing the theories of the ‘garden in movement’ and the ‘third landscape’ of Gilles Clément. The same intensity and complexity of urban design can be seen in Paris, in the lighting project for the Seine (2002-2005), where the ‘urban void’ – the river – becomes a protagonist at night, thanks to the sum of episodes that invo l ve bridges, first of all, banks, but also monuments, buildings, perspectives. The river is transformed into a ‘c e n t e r’ distributed through the city, a plural place from which to observe the cityscape in different ways. At the end of the 1990s, in a gradual way, Rota returned to Italy, almost like a wager, with the conviction that ethics and aesthetics are closely linked (the lesson of the collapse of socialism is also a defeat of an aesthetic world, as well as a political system; the end of the ‘ugly’ coincides with the end of that system) and that architecture does not necessarily have to seek the consensus of all, but also provide a mode of expression for minorities. As opposed to globalized, iconic, self-referential architecture, it is possible to pursue architecture ‘for adults’, as Rota puts it: “children don’t have to like it”. Striving for consensus can lead to a loss of complexity. In a process in which the architectural design becomes a sort of montage, a narrative sequence of overlapping plot lines, waiting to be discovered, a relationship of complicity is established with the observer. If the observer is also the client, the project is transformed into a sort of three-dimensional psychoanalytic practice that attempts to improve quality of life through the configuration of ad personam spaces, ‘made to measure’, but more mental than physical in nature. If the observer is a user, as in public spaces, hotels, bars and exc l u s i ve clubs, then the design activates processes of seduction, the use of interiors in terms of ‘penetration’ rather than simple ‘entry’. As in sex, what is required is ‘giving’, responding forcefully to those who ‘a r r i ve’, making the relationship between those who experience spaces and the environment more sensual, a two-way process. The architecture ‘for adults’ of Italo Rota thus becomes an act in favor of complexity, not limited in its linguistic dimensions, not limited to one ‘style’, to more or less convincing formalisms; it is a montage of narrative systems on multiple levels, organized in different scales and types (museum and church, auditorium and mediatheque, casino and grand hotel, temple and house, urban space) offered to the end user who will be engaged, but free to interpret what he sees in his own personal way. An arc h i t e c t u re of fragments that allows the project to accept new contributions, creating an ‘open system’, but one that also displays formal closure . An architecture where symbolic references, the game of history, decoration conceived as a message, materic and chromatic contrasts become tools not so much to define a pre - s e t d ream as to permit eve ry visitor to ‘c o n s t ru c t’ his own dream, in a personal relationship b e t ween body and space, imagination and reality.]]> 2009-11-30 11:23:52 Interni n°599 Summary http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,129,intIssueID,827,intItemID,829,intLangID,2.html  
 

NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNERS
Eco-vita

IN PRODUCTION
Alessi, Arazzo, Cesar, De Castelli
Architecture and transparency
Lines of light

IN FAIRS
Helsinki Design Week
Istanbul Design Weekend
MADE expo a Milano

ANNIVERSARIES
Bonaldo: 70 years and beyond
60 years of bulthaup
60 years of Kartell

COMMEMORATIONS
Adelaide Acerbi

COMMUNICATION
Bombay Sapphire Competition in London

PROJECT
Technological skin
Organic light
1000 kg of design
Windowshopping al Design Supermarket

COMPETITIONS
Constructing Green Life
MINI Clubman Photo Award

SHOWROOM
Antonio Lupi a Chicago, Camper a Tokyo,
Ligne Roset da Miami a Roma,
Meridiani ad Anversa, Sicis a Parigi

INFO & TECH

CONTRACT & OFFICE

SUSTAINABILITY

IN LIBRARY

IN EXHIBITION

CINEMA
Roma: Festival Internazionale del Film
Sicily at the movies

TRANSLATIONS



 EDITORIAL

MONOGRAPH ITALO ROTA
edited by Antonella Boisi
with the collaboration by Francesca Grassi

introduction: architecture for adults
When attitude becomes form
photos by Giovanna Silva, Fabio Fornasari, Giovanni Chiaramonte
text by Matteo Vercelloni e Italo Rota

ornament and crime
Milano, Exedra Boscolo Hotel
photos by Leo Torri - test by Antonella Boisi

Dubai, Firenze, Cavalli Club
 courtesy photos by Studio Rota & Partners, Agenzia SGP
text by Matteo Vercelloni

museum
Milano, Triennale Agorà
photos by Giovanni Chiaramonte
text by  Matteo Vercelloni

in • out
Nantes, S.O.S. City
photos by Valery Joncheray, Gérard

Dufresne
text by Matteo Vercelloni

Dolvi, Temple of Hanuman
photos by Italo Rota, Davor Popovic
text by Italo Rota

Zaragoza, Ciudades de Agua
photos by Giovanni Chiaramonte
text by Antonella Boisi

Firenze, Cavalli House
photos by Italo Rota
text by Antonella Boisi

Milano, Levi’s and Virgin Active Buildings
photos by Studio Rota & Partners
text by Matteo Vercelloni

worksites
Milano, Arengario, Museo del Novecento
photos by Gabriele Basilico and Giovanni Chiaramonte










TIMELY TOPICS
New York High Line
di Antonella Galli

Experimenta Design in Lisbona
photos by Guido Papa
by Cristina Morozzi

The age of languages
photos by Santi Caleca
text by Vanni Pasca

THE ENCOUNTER
Germano Celant e Frank O. Gehry
interview by Matteo Vercelloni

THE CENTRAL THEME
360° Ceramic
by Nadia Lionello

Africa here
by Nadia Lionello

Good news
by Maddalena Padovani
photos by Carlo Lavatori

DESIGN PROJECT
The process is the message
project by Alessia Giardino,
Elisa Strozyk, Anthony Roussel, Eunsuk Hur,
Charlotte Dumoncel D’Argence,
Gareth Neal, Ikuko Iwamoto
by Stefano Caggiano, Maddalena Padovani, Laura Traldi

REPERTORY
Total wood
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY
by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATION

On the cover:
an imaginary fluid space covered with period newspapers
and magazines sums up the narrative approach to design of Italo Rota,
at the center. Photo portrait by Pasquale Abbattista; background photo
by George Marks, from the Retrofile RF collection of Getty Images.

 ]]> 2009-12-28 15:01:00 Interni n°599 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,827,intItemID,828,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi ...the projects we illustrate in this issue share the telling of a story, that in some cases becomes a dream.What do the erudite architectural visions of Italo Rota have in common with the pursuit of the new on the part of the young people who are now entering the world of design? Nothing, apparently, but actually lots, if we approach the work of these personalities from a strictly narrative viewpoint. Mo re and more often design, especially in the area of technological and industrial products, is making use of storytelling techniques to find its operative path. We might even say that projects themselves are conceived today as tools for the construction of a story, an experience, a path of evolution. Something that is no longer an object-product based on precise, final aesthetic and functional parameters, but a process in which the user-actor plays an active role, developing the story that is best suited to his own habits and needs. Some say that after the age of information, which made maximum use of the left, rational side of the brain, the time has come to balance things, exploring the right side, the part that associates, draws, dreams. So the projects we illustrate in this issue share the telling of a story, that in some cases becomes a dream. Starting with those of Italo Rota, the sole protagonist of the pages on interior architecture: he describes his spaces as montages of overlapping narratives that engage the user, who is free to interpret what he sees in keeping with his own personal sensibilities. Then we look at new furnishing products, like the ones selected on the theme of Africa, where the story behind a project plays a p redominant role with respect to the individual formal results. Finally, the proposals of c e rtain young designers who have made a name for themselves this year on the international scene, represented by objects in progress, interactive, interchangeable. Their projects focus not so much on the finished product as on a generative path behind it, which becomes an open system ready to welcome new contributions. The designer suggests the story, and the user chooses the ending that suits him best.]]> 2009-11-30 11:19:29 Interni n°599 Barvikha Hotel<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,800,intItemID,825,intLangID,2.html Antonio Citterio and Partners
Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel
photos Yuri Palmin/courtesy Barvikha Hotel 
text Matteo Vercelloni

 project Antonio Citterio and Partners
Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel
photos Yuri Palmin/courtesy Barvikha Hotel 
text Matteo Vercelloni

  In the exclusive suburb of Barvikha, east of Moscow, a new resort hotel with spa, the first segment of the Mercury Luxury Village, a project that calls for a new commercial zone, marked by wooden volumes with a contemporary look, capable of offering the villas scattered in birch groves a sort of ‘luxury strip’ of European brands.
In this context, the new hotel is like a perspective terminal, a landmark in a neighborhood that doesn’t yet exist. Barvikha is a suburb characterized by a lack of urban design, the sum of exclusive villas scattered in the woods, cases of radical eclecticism, where the fine tradition of the wooden dacha combines with historicist pastiches aimed at creating a fragile monumentalism, mixing styles, dictated by the tastes of the owners. In the middle of this episode of burgeoning development, the Mercury Luxury Village operation follows the path of ‘city making’, to give a center to a zone that has none, an area that has grown up as the sum of its separate episodes. The opulence of the villas and the high profile of their owners have led to the idea of offering luxury, expressed in contemporary architectural models, organized on avenues, with a high-end retail drive that concludes in a multifunctional exhibition space and the resort hotel shown here. From the Russian tradition of wooden architecture the hotel, like the future constructions that will form the luxury street, conserves only the material, used to offer a convincing solution for the entire image of the building, while openly rejecting any stylistic temptations or nostalgic imitation. Thanks to the arrangement of the parallel planks in a dense pattern, or with completely enclosed parts, the hotel appears as a clear, distinct volume, on three levels plus a basement, organized around a garden court. The overall volume has a rectangular form, like that of a European city block, with one inclined side to vary the compositional solution. The single material used for the ‘skin’ is joined by the green glazings of the winter garden, marking the  street level of the entrance facade. The entrance leads to an initial reception zone with large circular divans and an imposing suspended geometric fireplace, clad with metal plates, that descends from the ceiling to meet its complementary element, a large slate slab raised off the ground, holding the firewood. The strong, essential volume, repeated on a different scale in the adjacent hall, is seen against the light from the glazing on the internal courtyard-garden, underscoring its size and figure. Wood continues inside, after the facades, for the floors, portions of the ceilings, and segments of curved walls, beside those faced in stone. The welcoming atmosphere of the big spaces of the hall is enclosed by two landscape episodes: the greenery of the central outdoor core of the building, and the invention of the winter garden screening the entrance facade. The glass continues, in a lower version, on the side, suspending the wooden facade with a slight overhang, giving it greater emphasis, and then connects to the glass of the spa with an indoor pool, containing squared hydromassage tubs organized as small architectural islands. The spa in the basement faces a stone wall, detached from the building and created by means of a vertical opening to host the intriguing earthworks, planted as lawns, in which a staircase is inserted, clad with the same stone. The hotel rooms – all quite large (an average of about 65 sq meters) with bed and living zones, cabins for massages and treatments – guarantee maximum privacy, also thanks to the facade solution, with wooden planks arranged like rhythmic blades, screening out external gazes from the private terraces conceived as direct extensions of the interior space.
]]> 2009-10-28 18:05:49 Interni n°599 Mamilla Hotel<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,800,intItemID,824,intLangID,2.html Moshe Safdie
interior design by Lissoni Associati-Graphx
design team Piero Lissoni with Lorenza Marenco
photos courtesy Lissoni Associati
text Antonella Boisi
 architectural design by Moshe Safdie
interior design by Lissoni Associati-Graphx
design team Piero Lissoni with Lorenza Marenco
photos courtesy Lissoni Associati
text Antonella Boisi
  In Jerusalem, near the port of Jaffa, the first luxury five-star hotel of the Alrov Group is born under the best of signs: that of dialogue between the genius loci and international design. Because the architecture is by the Israeli architect Moshe Safdie (designer of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem), while the interiors are by the Italian designer Piero Lissoni, art director for many leading design brands, and the man behind prestigious works like the Hotel Monaco e Grand Canal in Venice, and the recent restructuring of the Teatro Nazionale in Milan.
An Italian in Jerusalem, not for religious tourism, but to design the interiors of the Mamilla Hotel, the city’s first ‘luxury five-star’ facility: the ‘film’ is demanding, though the actor is named Piero Lissoni, with a talent for making places, spaces and atmospheres coexist in a versatile way, grafting modern images onto ancient settings. But when the people involved are special, anything is possible, including a project that began in April 2006 and won’t be completed until 2010. “Alfred Akirov, the president of the Alrov Group”, Lissoni explains, “for whom we had already designed some private homes, asked me to bring a European quality into his system of hotels, designing an hotel open to shared gazes”. Akirov is one of the big private developers in Israel, already the owner of a more ‘traditional’ hotel, sponsor of urban renewal in a zone near the old city, a far-sighted entrepreneur-manager (he will open a hotel in Amsterdam soon, also designed by Lissoni, and one in London by David Chipperfield). The Mamilla, the collaboration between the studio of Israeli architect Moshe Safdie – who designed the new building and the renovation of the original structure protected by the local heritage authorities – has allowed Lissoni to explore the grammar of a dialogue that has benefited from perseverance. The choices for the interiors seem to balance, with a new, precise, rigorous compositional arrangement, the Jerusalem stone architecture developed by Safdie, that ‘radiates’ in the interiors, creating true urban landscapes. “I gave the interior the sensorial mood of a city made of walls”, Lissoni explains, “but without making fakes or playing with imitation, to surprise at all costs. I chose the stones in four different quarries, because each one has its own luminous shading and color, and I have added the rhythm of a series of niches, punctuated with decorative pieces. The result is interesting because it enhances a work of architecture that could only exist in an almost white city, made of very pale stones, with a blinding, unique light. Without forgetting the other fundamental aspect: over 50% of the local hotel industry thrives on religious tourism, especially of Jews who want to visit the Holy Land. So my ‘religiosity’ is a matter of respect, because in the Mamilla two characters coexist, in spite of the difficulties involved in reconciling different ways of thinking. When we designed the restaurants, everything had to be monitored for compliance with the rules of kosher cooking, with the supervision of a rabbi”. Fortunately, this place welcomes everyone, and the Mamilla Hotel puts down its roots and extends its branches, with eight above-ground floors, one half-basement and one basement, like a sort of fluid ‘labyrinth’ where careful technical lighting design adds theatrical touches, accentuating  characteristics of lightness and transparency, paths without visual fragmentation, passages offering views of the landscape outside. The large entrance hall, on street level, is entirely clad in local stone, cut in different sizes, while the facade has three large transparent glazings, with the graft of a cantilevered canopy in perforated black sheet metal. The latter becomes the ordering figure, because its decorative motifs, that form ramages on the external paving and on the windows, reflecting on the two-storey ceilings of the common area, suggest ‘games’ that are not only poetic frescoes, but also indicate the internal path: carefully balanced proportions, precise study of details, subtraction of weight, special attention to light, with a skylight that emphasizes the forceful visual and tactile qualities of the surfaces and furnishings, mitigated by a homogenous dark color range, or brightened by accents of intense green, orange and violet. The lounges are like a cluster of relaxation islands. “I tried to find a good balance in this area, too”, Lissoni explains, “selecting the best of Italian furniture design, with a few digressions into Swiss classics by Vitra, making an effort not to be self-referential”. In fact, as Lorenza Marenco, an architect on the Lissoni team who supervised the project on site, “it was a true work of total design, from the choice of glasses to the custom furnishings, or those selected from production catalogues, or adapted to meet the needs of the client, all the way to the corridors, decorated with old maps of the city, as graphics, in a grand yet convivial whole”. Against the backdrop of the entrance stands a three-storey volume with a glass ceiling, offering access to a series of restaurants that open onto the panoramic terrace overlooking Mamilla Street. Here the outstanding architectural feature is a staircase in rough sheet metal, bent like a sculpture or a gigantic origami. The staircase displays its welding, holes, the cuts for reinforcement of the material, and connects the three levels – reception  dining and mezzanine – with the bar, while functioning as a connection between the new and old buildings. The contrast between black sheet metal and Jerusalem stone, interpreted in a contemporary way, is found in most of the public spaces, including the reception area with its metal counter, the lobby bar, the dining room with a conversation space featuring “the round table of the knights”, with seats that are all different from one another. Other spaces include the Mirror Bar with its counter 18 meters long, in steel and alabaster, the Wine Bar with racks in burnished brass, the conference center, two restaurants, including one for 300 guests that can be converted into a ballroom or screening room, an indoor, underground pool, a sundeck... and much more, though the spa and fitness center will not be opened until next April. The 210 rooms and suites are placed from the ground floor to the eighth. With 19 different types, wooden floors and walls in plaster or stone, they feature “priva-lite glass” panels that offer the possibility of transparency or opacity at the touch of a button. These wonders of modern technology divide the bath from the bedroom, guaranteeing maximum spatial flexibility and visual continuity between wet zones and those devoted to sleep, reading and work. “In the end”, Lissoni concludes, “above all we tried to make the machine function at its best, to meet the needs of the clientele, with the Shabbat starting on sundown on Friday and lasting until sundown the next day. They can use independent, extra-territorial elevators that function with pre-set electronic systems, and we have developed a custom kitchen equipped with ‘special ovens’ that keep food prepared the previous day warm”. The outdoor brasserie on the Mamilla rooftop offers great views of the old city, the port of Jaffa and the tower of David
]]> 2009-10-28 18:04:13 Interni n°599 Missoni Hotel <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,800,intItemID,823,intLangID,2.html Allan Murray Architects
interior design Matteo Thun & Partners
photos Paolo Riolzi
text Rosa Tessa
 architectural design Allan Murray Architects
interior design Matteo Thun & Partners
photos Paolo Riolzi
text Rosa Tessa  In the heart of Edinburgh, Scotland, the first hotel of the Radizor chair, with interiors by Rosita Missoni and Matteo Thun. The latest of a series of fashion&design signature hotels.
Invented in Scotland, at Edinburgh, by a creative duo, a fashion designer and an architect, the first Hotel Missoni of the Radizor chain certainly isn’t anonymous. Its interiors are by the architect Matteo Thun, while Rosita Missoni has tailored a series of interior decoration garments for the facility, based on the style of the brand. Opened a few months ago, the hotel nevertheless has a long history. The building was erected in the 1800s, and has now been grafted with an original architectural concept created by Allan Murray Architects, and completed over the last two years. Matteo Thun likes the building a lot: “It has been reinterpreted by a very talented architect”, he says, “with  references halfway between Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright, but in a very modern way. In thirty years it will be seen as a modern, not a nostalgic, message”. The hotel is located in the historical center of Edinburgh, near the castle renowned for its Shakespeare festival, which always attracts a large audience. Thun, in the design of the interiors, started precisely with this building that already had a strong personality. He also worked within a series of indispensable constraints. First: this is a business hotel, mostly for clients who are traveling for work. Therefore the interiors are designed to create a sense of privacy and domestic intimacy to soothe the frustrations of those forced to spend lots of time far from home. Second: the limitations set by scrupulous heritage authorities. Third: the main rule of any hotel, especially when it’s part of a chain, is to generate income, which leads to budget restrictions on interior design. Especially in the more important zones, namely the 129 rooms and 8 suites, the restaurant, bar and conference rooms. So there wasn’t much elbow room for ‘free inspiration’. Instead, the business plan offered Thun very narrow margins. So the architect’s job was to provide the most for the least, in terms of technical and aesthetic outfitting. Thun’s main design effort went into reducing the complexity of vertical connections to a minimum. “For example”, he explains, “the staircase leading to the first floor can often be a deterrent when it comes to eating at the restaurant. So I have shortened the routes and reduced the climb to a minimum”. Thun took all the freedoms he could. The floor, for example, to convey the idea of an ‘urban salon’, is done in wood, although hotel managers usually prefer something less delicate. “The difficulty in doing hotels that belong to big chains lies precisely in dialogue”, Thun says, “which always takes place between the investor and the management. The third party, the architect, can seldom come out a winner unless he finds a way to get completely in tune with the situation”. But we can see Thun’s touch already, in the hall. “The calling card of any hotel, like any home, is the entrance. So I gave a lot of space to that zone, even if it doesn’t produce income, and I have tried to be convincing, to show those who enter that this is a zone of passage leading from the street to a completely different situation”. Light is equally important, which in the areas without windows is shaped by natural effects. The materials are durable, as required by hotels, but in this case they are connected with age-old crafts traditions, like the coccio pesto used in Venetian palaces in the 1500s. The final touch: prints and colors from the fashion house, and design pieces, inserted by Rosita Missoni. A collaboration that guarantees that in the heart of Edinburgh there is one hotel with a very Mediterranean soul.
]]> 2009-10-28 18:02:28 Interni n°599 Crowne Plaza Hotel <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,800,intItemID,822,intLangID,2.html WOHA Architects 
photos Patrick Bingham-Hall 
text Virginio Briatore

 design WOHA Architects 
photos Patrick Bingham-Hall 
text Virginio Briatore  Built in the anonymous vicinity of Changi Airport in Singapore, a spectacular oasis of flowers, plants, wind and water. An attempt to offer travelers a healthful plunge into the exotic atmosphere of equatorial Asia. In 1994 Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell, two young architects, one from Singapore, of Chinese origin, the other from Australia, decided to work together and to open a studio in Singapore, on Hong Kong Street.
This beginning with fabulous places and names is the start of a design studio summed up in the initials Wo Ha, now one of the most important in Asia. Their cosmopolitan, pondered approach is already clear at their headquarters, with a gallery on the ground floor and a large kitchen with terrace on the fourth, where the forty members of the Woha team can gather, eat and relax. The most impressive part, for us Europeans, is that in 1999, at the tender age of 35, they had already built 30-story towers, one of which – the Moulmein Rise Residential Tower – won the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture, thanks to its brilliant system of casements, based on tradition and known as ‘monsoon cool’, that lets air enter, but keeps out rain. Outstanding recent works include a new subway station, the Genexis theater and the prize-winning Newton residential tower, in Singapore, and a perforated tower of 50 storeys including a hotel, swimming pools, gardens and common areas every ten floors, in Bangkok. But the studio’s calling card of the moment is the Crown Plaza Hotel and its sculpted walls of flowers that immediately meet the gaze of all those who fly into Changi Airport. Built in just 18 months, near Terminal 3, the new hotel cost 38 million euros, and has overall floorspace of 31,300 sq meters. The problem, as Richard Hassell explains, was to invent a pleasant habitat in a depressing place: “How can you build a place of peace and rest in a forgotten zone in the middle of parking lots, highways, railroads, ramps, industrial structures? Our solution was to make a cage of flowers that filters out the surroundings, creating a tropical environment inside. The rooms seem to float on a green carpet, with palms, water, shade, light. The enclosure of the hotel, modular and organic, light and complex, communicates the idea of a sensual node in the midst of planetary traffic. Inside, guests in their private gardens can watch the world through an abstract web of orchids”. The interior design is based on the materials and fabrics of Southeast Asia. The filigree facade is a traditional batik shifted into three dimensions, which also operates as a sunscreen. The corridors are have natural lighting and ventilation, with horizontal bands of color that establish a dialogue with the vertical colored aluminium panels. The common areas are wrapped in different types of wood, Thai ceramics, Indonesian batiks, Chinese metal mesh. Outside, an anonymous world of asphalt; inside, a breath of refined Asian culture.
]]> 2009-10-28 18:00:46 Interni n°599 Birds<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,800,intItemID,821,intLangID,2.html Olivia Cremascoli
 by Olivia Cremascoli In ancient times, they were among the most reliable means of communication (carrier pigeons), or melodious company for courtesans during hours of solitude (nightingales). Birds, beautiful creatures often condemned to a cruel fate, have suddenly become international design icons in the age of the electronic virtual.
]]> 2009-10-28 17:57:32 Interni n°599 Contents<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,800,intItemID,820,intLangID,2.html  Interni 596 - November 2009
 NEWS

IN PRODUCTION
GeD, Blowing by the wind,

The triumph of fire,

The stone age

IN FAIRS
Ambiente Italia a Roma

Living&Design a Osaka

Eire a Milano

ANNIVERSARIES
60 years of Caimi Brevetti

50 years of Febal

COMMEMORATIONS
Guido Canella

PROJECT
Architeture for light

ACQUISITIONS
Sambonet and Rosenthal: development strategies

SHOWROOM
Arclinea a Barcellona

Artemide a Zurigo

Emu a Trapani

Kvadrat a Copenhagen

Seves a Saragozza

IN EXHIBITION

IN LIBRARY

INFO & TECH

CONTRACT & OFFICE

CITY PROJECT

SUSTAINABILITY

FASHION FILE

CINEMA

TRANSLATIONS

EDITORIAL

ARCHITECTURE
Boutique hotel edited by Antonella Boisi

Moskow, Barvikha hotel
design by Antonio Citterio and Partners
Antonio Citterio e Patricia Viel
photos by Yuri Palmin - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Jerusalem, Mamilla hotel
architectonic project by Moshe Safdie
interior project by Lissoni Associati - Graphx
courtesy photos by Lissoni Associati - text by Antonella Boisi

Edinburgh, Missoni hotel
architectonic project by Allan Murray Architects
interior project by Matteo Thun & Partners
photos by Paolo Riolzi - text by Rosa Tessa

Singapore, Crowne Plaza hotel
design by WOHA Architects
photos by Patrick Bingham Hall - text by Virginio Briatore

Athens, The Breeder gallery
design by Aris Zambikos/GR 405 - Architects
project architect Poulcheria Tzova
photos by Cathy Cunliffe - text by Lilia Melissa

Japan Architecture, Sundown in the land of the rising sun
photos and introduction by Sergio Pirrone

Karuizawa, Nagano, Stage House
design by Makoto Takei + Chie Nabeshima/TNA
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone

Ibaraki Prefecture, Skew House
design by Tomomasa Ueda/OCTOBER
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone

Rosario, Argentina, View House
design by Johnston MarkLee/
Diego Arraigada Arquitecto 
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone

TIMELY TOPICS
Birds
by Olivia Cremascoli

THE OPINION
For whom does the bell toll?
text by Andrea Branzi

THE CENTRAL THEME
Divan refuges
by Nadia Lionello
photos by Efrem Raimondi

Design & Toys
by Antonella Boisi e/and Nadia Lionello
photos by Simone Barberis

PORTRAIT
Ross Lovegrove
by Cristina Morozzi

DESIGN PROJECT
The system, act 3
design by Antonio Citterio
by Maddalena Padovani

I shrunk the closet
design by Judith Seng
by Odoardo Fioravanti

The colored thread of the project
projects by Nicoletta Morozzi
by Carla Dosio
photos by Giacomo Giannini

ART
No illusions: Mona Hatoum
by Germano Celant

OBSERVATORY
Atomic objects
by Stefano Caggiano

REPERTORY
Weaves and tricots
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY
by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

]]> 2009-10-28 17:36:30 Interni n°599 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,800,intItemID,819,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi
 by Gilda Bojardi The adrenalin rush of creative energy surges through our November issue, starting with an overview of the latest design hotels built around the world. Homes away from home in Moscow, with Antonio Citterio, Jerusalem with Piero Lissoni, Edinburgh with Matteo Thun, Singapore with WOHA. The quality of Italian design in the international hotellerie system says a lot about the state of health of the discipline. The positive surprises then continue, looking at the work of young creative talents in Japan, at how emerging Japanese architects establish a dynamic, productive dialogue with landscapes and contexts that may be complex and daunting at times. Evidence that even though ‘big architecture’ may be in a state of decline in that country (new building regulations seem to have made experimentation more difficult, apart from the promotional architecture of the major fashion trademarks), but there are other paths for filling the homes and cities of the 2000s with contents and value. The glossary of the most innovative new design research includes three key words: freedom, flexibility, play. So design can also be explosive, as suggested in our Observatory, on ‘Atomic Objects’: “no longer definite forms, but free aggregations of particles that seem to be ready to change their state in any given moment”. It’s a sign of freedom. Just as the pattern of a fabric, but also of other materials (glass, plastic or metal) can indicate a new trend toward manual craftsmanship. A focus on flexibility. While the colored threads of hobbyists’ lanyards can give rise to objects that are thoughts and poetry, in the work of Nicoletta Morozzi, birds and their virtuoso feats can also become an international design icon. Signs of playfulness. Like Ozzy, a curious teddybear who accompanies us as we discover the newest, most comfortable divans. Or the little toys selected as photographic punctuation to ‘refresh’ the images of limited editions and other products. Looking at things, for a moment, with the enchanted gaze of a child may just be helpful at times like this. At least to get back into a good mood.
Gilda Bojardi

]]> 2009-10-28 17:58:49 Interni n°599 Atomic objects http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,83,intIssueID,800,intItemID,813,intLangID,2.html Stefano Caggiano by Stefano Caggiano No longer definite forms, but free groupings of particles that seem ready to change their look at any time. These are products of ‘liquid design’, the contemporary expression of a new sensibility that makes instability a true design reference point.There are two ways to generate forms: by definition from outside, or expansion from inside. The first is the way of the sign, that congeals and circumscribes the formless pulsation of matter. The second is the mode of pre-aesthetic forces that do not attempt to contain, but allow inner contradictions to emerge. And in our liquid era, without any stable, recognizable stylistic sign, the latter approach seems to be more fertile for design research. So it is no surprise to find a designer of proven brilliance like Richard Hutten working along these lines. In his recent works like the Air Spheres Bench – a ‘molecular’ bench covered with foam rubber, designed for the Plusdesign gallery in Milan – and the Cloud Chair – a die-cast nickelplated aluminium seat made for the Ormond gallery in Geneva – he delves into the “grace of nature born” (Leopardi), in an original encounter between poetry and design. But Hutten is not alone. Other projects are moving in this direction, like the BB Chair by Asif Khan, and can rightfully be dubbed ‘atomic objects’, because they do not appear as ‘forms’, but as free groupings of atoms or, as in the case of the Brick chair by Pepe Heykoop for Dutch Individuals, as aesthetic ‘quanta’ that break the object down into blocks of figures and colors. The atom is composed of a nucleus surrounded by electrons that spin at a speed close to that of light, and like all quantum-mechanical particles they behave like both waves and bodies. Consider the blades of a fan that seem to be in multiple points at the same moment as they spin; the electron that orbits around the nucleus really is in multiple points in the same moment. In fact, were we to enlarge an atom to the size of a football field, the nucleus would be as big as a dime, at the center, and the rest of the space would be filled only with the orbits of the electrons. This means that the ‘solidity’ of matter, that indefinable property thanks to which we can touch reality, and not sink through the floor when we are upstairs, is nothing more than the sum of a great many ‘voids’. This is nicely represented in the elusive aesthetic of a project like the Sliced Lamp by Studio Mango, a lamp that intertwines its presence with its absence, taking on the same consistency as the light it emits. The volumes of the Grove-Revolving Trees of Studio Raw-Edges are also in tune with this approach. These are small ‘domestic trees’ in Fabriano paper and plywood, whose fuzzy density is similar to what atoms would be like if we could see them. But we cannot see atoms, just as we cannot see any quantum-mechanical particles. We can, however, observe their effects in everyday life, including the fusion between the web and the real world, made perceptible by objects like Chairpixels by Vittorio Venezia (prototype made by Meritalia), a real, not virtual seat that breaks down into its constituent atom-pixels, spiky in appearance but soft to the touch. A similar ploy is behind the Pixelated Chair by Studio Makkink & Bey, where the same idea of ‘electronic’ dismantling is applied to a traditional material like wood. Great conceptual elegance shapes the Soundplotter project by Johannes Tsopanides and Johanna Spath, where the dance of particles is associated with sound waves, thanks to a rapid prototyping machine that translates the sound of an instrument or a voice into true three-dimensional objects. Many things can be imagined thanks to this new approach to matter, including ‘physical-chemical’ design experiments, like Matteo Manenti’s Insomnia seat for the group Dorothy Gray, where the Aristotelian hierarchy of form and matter is inverted, turning the logical structure of the object insideout: “In practice – Manenti says – it is as if the cushion on the chair had exploded, or been absorbed in a mutation. Or maybe I just forgot to trim my chair so it became like this”. This reference to biological growth, like hair, is no coincidence. In Greek the term that indicated “form”, morphé, also meant “corpse”, because form becomes stable only in rigor mortis. Material, on the other hand, is rebellious and vital, so instead of ‘signs’, i.e. design phenotypes, in all these experiences we can see the impact of design genotypes, the emotional-conceptual impulses that arise from the depths of the anthropological situation to urge the appearance of what, for convenience’s sake, we continue to call ‘objects’, though they are actually temporary aggregations of post-forms in the fluid state, “always ready and willing to change form” (Bauman). It must have been such phenomena, like the blossoming of a flower, that Nietzsche had in mind when he suggested that we can think of nature as an entity based on laws, but by virtue of the same evidence, we can also think of the course of nature as necessary and calculable “not because it is dominated by laws, but because the laws are absolutely lacking, and every power, in every moment, reaches its extreme consequence”. The form emanated by matter may be the wavefront of an amorphous energy that gives substance to the nebulous physical character of things. And that calls on design to free the hot magma of possibility trapped beneath the frozen crust of solidity. Not to reach an end, but to get further away from the end in which all things that cannot dream must fall.]]> 2009-10-28 11:29:43 Interni n°599 Judith Seng. I shrank the closet http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,800,intItemID,810,intLangID,2.html Odoardo Fioravanti by Odoardo Fioravanti Hide & Show are two wardrobes that partially conceal the clothes they contain, with a colorful, mutable image that becomes an integral part of the interior design.We are all a bit designers, though perhaps unconsciously. We are designers because we have the capacity to transform the things around us, perhaps by chance. Everyone has had the experience of shrinking a garment by washing it the wrong way. It’s a situation that gets you involved in a typical design process: the altering of proportions. To imagine a story behind the prototypes Hide & Show by Judith Seng, we could try this one. In order to give a new form to the wardrobe, the German designer seems to have washed a couple of them on a heavy-duty cycle, making them fuzzy and smaller. When they dried, the walls and doors no longer closed to hide the contents, and became too short to cover them completely. People usually put clothes away in closets. Their beauty, which prompted us to choose them carefully and buy them, winds up being hidden, in the name of order and minimalist discipline, that recommends that homes hide all traces of life. Seng challenges all this with two projects that erase the timid concealment of our clothes behind the scenes, putting them right out on stage. In one of the two proposed containers the form of the parallelepiped is shortened, making like a house on stilts: the hems of dresses peek out from below, like a frothy textile explosion. In the second wardrobe the doors separate, leaving glimpses of the natural pattern formed by the contents: the traditional decorative and chromatic finish is replaced by a view of this sort of ‘inner beauty’. The clothes and their containers form a system of mutual enhancement. Rather like a bookcase that doesn’t bother to protect books from dust, preferring to show them off and keep them in easy reach, displaying at least their colors and forms, as well as indications of their cultural contents. In a historical moment when design seems often the require a verbal accompaniment, a caption that explains what can’t be seen, we have an understandable desire for clear, self-evident works like these. Beauty is still the most revolutionary message.]]> 2009-10-28 11:09:09 Interni n°599 Antonio Citterio. The system, act 3 http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,800,intItemID,809,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani by Maddalena Padovani A reflection on the evolution and present meaning of the wall system, the product typology that has taken furniture to its highest levels of industrialization. With Flat.C by B&B Italia it becomes a new architectural and structural concept.Let’s be honest. In a period of crisis in which the word change is buzzing through every creative and productive sector, talking about ‘wall systems’ – a concept that belongs to the modern era of design – isn’t easy. Even for Antonio Citterio, who knows a lot about it, having created a well-known bestseller like the Metropolis system by Tisettanta, which hit the market in 1984. But precisely because homes, the industry and whole society are changing, it is worth thinking about what’s left of the rationalist idea of a ‘warehouse of parts’ capable of generating any type of configuration of living space. The clearly architectural character of the system, which at the end of the 1960s gave concrete form to the dream of a home with open spaces, introducing the democratic, playful principle of infinite combinations, has nearly vanished in the many versions of such products today. The intensive industrialization of these solutions has made them into constructive systems capable of giving rise to very different morphological results, at times so clearly defined that they become autonomous furnishing elements, veritable cabinets, often penalized by a very heavy image. “The real reason the wall system is still a timely design theme”, Antonio Citterio says, “is connected with its nature as an industrial product, namely a logic of big numbers, the only logic that can give meaning to the design and realization of a new product right now. Today there is no middle ground: you either opt for crafts or for industry, but industrial products have to offer real advantages in terms of cost and performance”. Where wall systems are concerned, this means making a product that adds new functions that respond to changing residential models, while finding a way to stand out, in aesthetic terms, from the infinity of proven offerings found on the market. These are the premises behind Flat.C, the wall system presented last year by B&B Italia – and updated this year with new home-office solutions – representing a new chapter in the extensive design research of Antonio Citterio on this product typology. On the other hand, this is the first time B&B has approached this theme. The solution developed in over three years of work is effectively different from what already existed. “The objects that populate contemporary domestic space”, says the architect-designer who has worked by now for thirty years with B&B Italia, “are moving in the direction of a continuous, rapid process of miniaturization. So I think it is important to adapt furnishing components to new sizing standards, setting new proportions between space and furnishings. Flat.C, as the name says, is flat, just like the screens on which we watch images”. The idea is a compact modular grid that is nevertheless capable of holding storage elements of standard depth, while allowing for an almost infinite variety of configurations, whose proportions are regulated by the grid itself. The extreme lightness of the parts of the system, based on horizontal development, comes from the innovative choice of abandoning the technology of chipboard panels and using aluminium parts instead, which are much more slender. In this way, the structure tends to vanish, in visual terms, in the space, to better display the books and the storage modules that form a sort of graphic layout with the shelves. Clean lines are guaranteed, from a technological viewpoint, thanks to a system of backs and channels, to resolve the problem of ugly tangles of wires. “Though it is lived in an increasingly versatile, flexible and mobile way”, Citterio concludes, “the house is still a space that stores and contains things. This is why the wall system conserves its functional meaning. It is the evolved product of the furniture industry, the result of a complex process, but also a service developed to meet the needs of different individuals. In this sense, it is a sophisticated work of craftsmanship, but made by industry”.]]> 2009-10-28 17:38:01 Interni n°599 Ross Lovegrove http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,800,intItemID,808,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi by Cristina Morozzi He’s a visionary of our time, an evolutionary designer capable of humanizing the abstract forces of technology. His products reflect the value of our civilization and celebrate the emerging scientific potential of the present era.As a journalist, it is hard to provide a profile of Ross Lovegrove, because he distrusts the media. There is such vital engagement in his work that it is hard to convey an idea of the generative process of his products, of the passionate and constantly evolving research involved in his design method (50% of the work in his London studio is research). To talk about him it might be better to only use the future tense: every project has to do with the development and possibilities of improving human conditions: from wind and solar power to mountain refuges, like the recent Alpine Capsule presented in December 2008 in Val Badia, like a shiny raindrop, run by wind and solar energy; the solar vehicles, transparent bubbles with a hydraulic lifting system that allows parked cars t become streetlights; the solar lamps (his Solar Bud for Luceplan, on sale since 1998, was one of the first); all the way to the carbon fiber suitcase made by Globetrotter (2008), weighing just 1300 grams. His forms that might rather hastily be described as organic, stealing daring morphologies from nature, are the result of complex digital processing. “My studio”, he says, “is 100% digital. I always think in 3D”. It’s hard to find images and words to document the genesis of a visionary design path, directed toward non-negotiable objectives. Ross uses all his undeniable charisma, his gift of gab, to convince clients to do something incredible. “You have to always be something more than a designer”, he says, “a politician, a writer, an anthropologist, a philosopher, a scientist... Many different interests have to converge. You have to make contacts, be available, find the chemistry”. Seeing him at work with students, listening to him explain his projects, you realize how he distributes ‘enzymes’ generously, without paying attention to the clock, willing to take questions, and to take the time to answer them well. If he puts even a small percentage of the attention he pays to his students into his works, his demanding approach to clients, not only in financial terms but also when it comes to freedom of expression and involvement in processes of production and communication, should come as no surprise. “I have to be the art director of everything”, he explains. “For my book I chose and paid the photographer, I wrote the texts... The object you have created cannot be left in the hands of an ad agency that doesn’t understand its philosophy, and photographs it in the wrong way. It would be something like giving your own child away”. Designers should be involved in all aspects of the life of a product, and have an overall view of the company with which they are working. This is why he distrusts the press, and is reluctant to supply images. It might seem like arrogance, but instead it is just the fear of being misunderstood: the finished product, especially in standard pictures, seldom manages to convey all the complexity of the process. The fluid forms and light structures that seem to blossom naturally are actually the result of long hours of work of the whole studio, almost like an artist’s atelier, which costs time and, therefore, money. “For every one of my products”, he says, “about 15 people work for an average of five years. How can a page in a magazine showing several products convey any idea of this effort?”. This difficulty in being represented by commercial companies has led to the gradual transformation of the designer into a trademark, with the temptations of the one-off, or the limited edition, to be sold only in galleries. Finding companies with which to establish a dialogue and a ‘chemistry’ is demanding work, and there are no breaks, not even at Christmas: he is always traveling, at different latitudes, often in Italy, a country where things get done. “You have to fly, talk, write, handle business relationships, manage money, draw and spend time in factories”, he says. “Like a cat, you have to have nine lives”. Ross plans on keeping the stakes high. He doesn’t want to end up making superficial stuff for clients with whom “there is no chemistry”. He has built a reputation and intends to conserve it. He is demanding, because he invests lots of passion in his work, because he is honest and avoids doing projects with competing firms. For some companies, like the Turkish firm VitrA, a maker of bath fixtures, he is also a kind of ambassador of the brand. “I am the designer, so I don’t talk nonsense and I know how to talk about the company with great conviction”. When he presents his work he uses a screen that functions as the sum of a range of images: his works, nature (a seashell, a butterfly), and more. There is also the photograph of a Samurai, whose armor of silk and bamboo can stop arrows: an effective metaphor for the concepts of lightness and strength. And a way of underlining the importance of historical values. “There is no form of knowledge”, Ross says, “that does not come from the past”. But then he confesses that he also works with instinct. He cares about producing beautiful forms: he would like to give his solar lamps the beauty of the sun. He wants to create an alternative, light, biological and technological aesthetic, connected with nature. But above all, with his projects, he wants to educate, producing higher levels of quality, and teaching the language of survival one learns from nature. An urgent need to communicate, to explain that one can travel by train, enjoying the landscape; so he shows a futuristic image of a train with cars furnished like the hall of a hotel. He wants to explain that in urban centers it is possible to use electric cars that are like transparent bubbles, that you can live at an altitude of 2000 meters, protected and cuddled as if in a shell, without consuming electricity (Alpine Capsule, Moritz Craffonara), or that it is possible to light cities with solar lamps with the form of a tree (Solar lamp, Artemide 2008). Listening to him narrate these visions to the students of the Polytechnic Design School in Milan, where he conducted a workshop on solar urban lighting (September 2009), with the fervor of a missionary in spite of the fact that he just got in from a trip to Mumbai – where he did a conference and met with a group of local businessmen – one realizes that he really does have nine lives. Let’s hope he continues to use them to keep the ethical value of his projects at the highest levels.]]> 2009-10-28 11:57:52 Interni n°599 Design & Toys http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,800,intItemID,806,intLangID,2.html Simone Barberis
by Antonella Boisi and Nadia Lionello photos Simone Barberis
by Antonella Boisi and Nadia Lionello Not ‘wannabe toys’ created to soothe the egos of designers or entrepreneurs, but limited editions of real products will innovative design content, the results of formal, materic and technological research that, with the photographic punctuation of a little toy, take on a poetic, ironic image. Because toys are traces of everyday life composed of playful moments, full of freshness and creative energy, an added value in combination with anything else.]]> 2009-10-28 11:48:08 Interni n°599 Divan refuges http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,800,intItemID,803,intLangID,2.html Efrem Raimondi
editing Nadia Lionello photos Efrem Raimondi
editing Nadia Lionello Ozzy, a curious teddybear, is our guide to the discovery, among the new offerings, of divans. A disarming fellow, the ideal metaphor to narrate the continuing changes in the home’s most comfortable piece of furniture.]]> 2009-10-28 11:34:04 Interni Onboard n°4 Summary<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,106,intIssueID,790,intItemID,799,intLangID,2.html  INTERNI OnBoard n° 4
 NEWS

DESIGN
Surfing the long wave
Full-circuit

IN PRODUCTION
Variations on black
Outdoor seaview
Magic lanterns

COMMUNICATION
Mediterranean mixture
Raw atmospheres
Made in Italy for cruising

INFO & TECH
High-seas partners

SUSTAINABILITY
Slow tour

CINEMA
The tortoise epic

FASHION FILE
For seadogs
Original materials

SHIPYARDS
Record-setting spectacle

PROJECTS
Floating saunas
First time on the water
The Floating City of Anthony Lau
All for living

IN FAIRS
Festival International de la Plaisance, Abitare il Tempo

IN BOOKSTORE

TRANSLATIONS

EDITORIAL

ARCHITECTURE FOR THE SEA

Pieds dans l’eau
projects by Odile Decq
text by Matteo Vercelloni

Arçores, waterfront renewal
design by Manuel Salgado, Marino Frei, Tomás Salgado
photos by FG + SG
text by Matteo Vercelloni

On the Iseo Lake, the headquarters of the Sarnico Group
design by Marco Vigo
photos by Alberto Ferrero
text by Matteo Vercelloni

Flying Dagger
design by Andre Bacigalupo/Ivana Porfiri
photos by Giovanni Malgarini
text by Decio Carugati

Chrisco
design by Luca Brenta & C. Yacht Design/Wetzels Brown Partners
photos by Nicolas Claris
text by Michelangelo Giombini

Canados 86
design by Canados/Salvagni Architetti
text by Simona Spriano

Mathisse
design by Massimo Verme/Joel Bretecher/A-Lab
text by Marianna Aprile

Aria
progetto di/design by Mauro Corvisieri/Mauro Mortola
testo di/text by Marianna Aprile

THE ENCOUNTER
Carlotta de Bevilacqua
intervista di/interview by Gilda Bojardi
foto di/photos by Federico Villa

TIMELY TOPICS

Boats and houses: a look at the plans
di/by Silvia Piardi

THE CENTRAL THEME
Ups and downs
di/by Simona Spriano

DESIGN PROJECT
Motorboat clinic
di/by Decio Carugati

Falcon 7X
progetto di/design by Norman Foster
testo di/text by Antonella Boisi

Instant classics
di/by Michelangelo Giombini

SCHOOLS
How and where boat design is taught
testo di/text by Rosa Tessa

FIRMS DIRECTORY
di/by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

On the cover: the sea reflects on the side of the Chrisco, the 30-meter sloop built by the CNB shipyard of Bordeaux, with naval design by Luca Brenta & C. Yacht Design and interiors by Wetzels Brown Partners. The distinctive feature of this innovative sailing yacht is the faceted deckhouse, made with 75 panels of black glass, whose transparency permits an unusual dialogue between the internal space of the boat and the external environment. photo by Nicolas Claris

]]> 2009-10-19 15:06:43 Interni Onboard n°4 Ups and downs<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,77,intIssueID,790,intItemID,798,intLangID,2.html  by Simona Spriano
 Since interior design has climbed on board, staircases have gained a central role in nautical design, influencing the lines and layouts of yachts, and becoming true design creations. Thanks to the technology of materials, which permits airy structures, and lighting, which brings out theatrical effects. Usually concealed in companionways, not visible from the entrance, conceived in utilitarian terms as a way of getting from one deck to another, on-board steps are now part of the decor, places to experience, not just narrow ladders. For the cruising catch Nirvana by the Vitters shipyard, for example, the stairs connecting the saloon and the fly bridge are the part that sums up the project concept. Supported by two glass panels, the staircase has lower steps built into the cabinet below, like shelves. A truly refined, almost invisible piece. Lots of glass, and a sensation of lightness, are also used by Giugiaro for the double staircase at the entrance of the Tankoa S65, for which he designed the interiors. “The organization of spaces on a yacht is very difficult, and staircases always have the problem of being positioned in leftover spaces, so their configuration is restricted”, says the architect Ivana Porfiri, who also did the interiors of the Codecasa Flying Dagger. “Now that interior design with a residential tone has entered the nautical world with a design language, a choice of materials and compositional rules closer to architecture than to decorating, new signs and new solutions have developed. In my experience with yacht design the staircase is fundamental, because the element of circulation should not be squeezed into marginal zones. It becomes a design component that goes beyond function, to also convey a sense of the quality of passages, of where you are going and where you are coming from. Boats have important external and internal vertical connections. In the Codecasa Flying Dagger I could not use a central staircase; for layout reasons, I made it lateral. This shift became complete, and the staircase volume is totally against the side; openings have been made in the hull to guarantee very natural, diffused light. In spite of this lateral position, in fact, the staircase seems very open”. In this way, at the landing the architect obtained the open effect of a two-storey space, a roomy sensation not normally felt on boats, due to the obvious height limitations of the levels. “The staircase is a hole, so you have the possibility of increasing the height”, she says. Arch. Porfiri points out that on yachts the relationship between steps surfaces and uprights is different, again for spatial reasons, and that the materials should be warm, because users are often barefoot. The habit of having the external ladder between the fly bridge and the well deck, and the internal staircase between the main and lower decks, has been changed by the architect Carlo Paladini, the designer – together with Arch. Galeazzi – of the Akhir 135 by Cantieri di Pisa. “The idea of combining them and putting them outside is really quite original”, says Galeazzi. “The ladder is the vertical path par excellence, and this is a trendy ladder. In the rather boring overlaying of decks, it is the element that adds dynamism and connects, at times also offering lighting from above, as on the Akhir 153 that is now under construction”. The same connection effect has been achieved by Ken Freivokh for the Maltese Falcon by Perini Navi, where a large spiral staircase winds from the fly to the cabins, a solution the same shipyard did not use for the Selene, where the internal and external ladders are separate. External ladders have also appeared leading from the sun deck to the beach deck; the best example is undoubtedly the double lateral  ladder of the ISA 480 Alexandar V. Interrupted at each deck, for practical reasons, but above all for safety, it frames the entire height of the stern. Another theatrical aft staircase is found on the Ocean Emerald by Norman Foster, made by the Rodriguez shipyard; this one crosses the whole width, though it too is interrupted at every deck. “The external ladder follows the curves of the superstructure, maximizing the available space of the decks and emphasizing the curved forms of the yacht”, says Lord Foster. On the same boat, and also external, the descent at the prow to the service zone is surprising. Instead of the two classic lateral ladders, the Fashion 116’ features a full-width staircase, for a sensation of width and openness. Staircases to show off, then, opportunities to bring in light and air, to accentuate lines, to experiment with materials. Never again to be hidden in companionways.

]]> 2009-10-16 16:55:55 Interni Onboard n°4 Boats and houses: <br /> a look at the plans<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,75,intIssueID,790,intItemID,797,intLangID,2.html  by Silvia Piardi
 Study of the general plans of yachts sheds light on similarities between works of architecture for the land and for the sea. Yachts, in fact, bear an increasing resemblance to big floating villas. Looking at the plans and sections of a work of architecture can reveal a lot of information, not only about aspects of composition and technique, but also about the relationships between people, their way of living and existing in a place. The plan of a villa – the typology with the greatest freedom in terms of regulations and economics – narrates the culture of the designer and that of the client, and describes a lifestyle that is to be ‘staged’. Compositional research has evolved from the Roman villa to contemporary types, and moves very freely, defining its boundaries in relation to the poetics of the designer, embodying in architectural principles and using, as material for study, the natural context, the form of the surroundings, the topography, the panorama, as well as the techniques and materials. The temptation to compare contemporary yachts, with their increasing size, to landlocked works of architecture is unavoidable, for a number of reasons: it is clear that these boats, while on the one hand they tend to resemble large ships, also have strong affinities with residential architecture, and in particular with the villa typology. It is also true that they are increasingly stable, and that their designers, in many cases, have academic training in the field of architecture. So there is a tendency to make use of the tools of this discipline. Ernst Neufert, in 1936, for his famous handbook of architecture, summed up the typologies of residential spaces in relation to the activities that take place inside them, describing a range from the studio apartment, where every activity happens in the same space, to the rooms and facilities of a castle, from the stables to the pantries to the ladies’ dressing rooms. Neufert’s logic of classification reflects a certain spirit of the age, attempting to reduce complexity and to trigger a topological relationship between activities and spaces. With due caution, and a bit of irony, we can apply his system to the plans of a yacht, revealing the growing specialization of spaces and the complex organization of functions, from the fitness zone to the stables, which no longer contain thoroughbred horses (at least for the moment), but vehicles, from jetskis and helicopters. At the opposite extreme, small sailboats concentrate all functions in a single space, both for living and for navigation. If the yacht is for racing the living space becomes a cockpit, and its form, made to measure, reduces its dimensions, getting closer and closer to that of a garment. In our comparison of boats and houses we should not forget that architecture for the sea has severe constraints, a priori boundaries, technical and structural characteristics that are mostly givens, like the obligatory symmetry of the hull: the position of the technical systems, the distribution of weight, the form of the hull all represent strict, interdependent limitations. The external context tends to change, there is no topography to use as inspiration, nor are there criteria of orientation or views, as in houses. In yachts the propulsion system, with sails or motors, can take up a lot of space, especially as a percentage of total available volume. Engines, tanks and physical plant elements define the characteristics of inhabitable objects gifted with autonomy, free, never rooted to a specific site. But a reading of general plans still reveals some similarities, rather obvious ones if we consider the fact that yachts and houses are both containers of life. The villa, like the yacht, has three types of spaces: public, for socializing and self-representation, private, and service. Inside the residential nucleus there are three main spatial spheres, that of the owner(s) of the house, that of the guests, and that of the servants. Careful study of layout and circulation, their possible interferences, and of proxemics, has to go into a correct design, especially because spaces, in any case, are limited. Starting with these constraints, the design research proceeds, paying close attention to sensorial aspects. The smaller volumes and low ceilings of boats require sensitivity in the use of visual devices to ‘widen’ and lighten interiors; visual and bodily vicinity requires the use of tactile materials, pleasing to the touch, with enjoyable aromas, attention to detail. The miniaturization of technology is an indispensable aid, in tune with research on lighting fixtures and techniques. The design of boats finds its space inside a highly structured shell, which only in recent years seems to be opening to offer more room for independence; the design of houses finds its references in a system of compositional, cultural and regulatory rules, always closely linked to the external context. As yachts evolve toward greater energy autonomy, buildings are moving in the direction urged by Jeremy Rifkin, becoming organisms capable of producing energy instead of just consuming it. Perhaps houses and boats will tend to resemble each other more and more, like capsules in movement, free of the restraints of pipes and wires, that may be concealed, but still tie earthly architecture to the earth.

]]> 2009-10-16 16:54:11 Interni Onboard n°4 Carlotta de Bevilacqua<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,80,intIssueID,790,intItemID,796,intLangID,2.html photos Federico Villa
 interview Gilda Bojardi
photos Federico Villa
 Inseparable seagoing companions, they always travel as a pair: Carlotta de Bevilacqua on a Dutch motorboat, and her husband, Ernesto Gismondi, on a sailboat. A woman of business, architecture and the sea, the owner of the historic Danese brand narrates her life on board Smooth Operators, the skiff built in 1961 at the Feadship de Vries shipyard. Carlotta de Bevilacqua’s passion for boats is almost historical. Until a few years ago it found expression only on the Edimetra, the yacht of her husband, Ernesto Gismondi. But for some time now, seeking a less unstable spatial situation, the entrepreneur-architect has discovered the world of the skiff, populated by family, lots of friends and dogs. She chose a Dutch boat, renovated it and installed new furnishings, but without disrupting its original image.
What does a yacht mean to you: a floating house or a way of living on the sea, maybe with the pleasure of speed as well?
“First of all, the yacht offers the experience of the voyage, and it is often a home, at times a sort of convent. You find yourself truly in absolute silence, or together with dear friends for intelligent chats. In another sense, it is the emotion of discovery and of direct contact with the rhythms of nature. Ernesto too, with his passion for sailing, has discovered this dimension unexpectedly, though he is still very fond of his Edimetra (an anagram of Artemide, our family’s lighting company)”.
Two worlds that may be distant, but through respect for their respective differences can also coexist in tranquility.
“Of course, both sailing and the skiff can give you a ‘slow’ experience of the sea. Sailing is the most extraordinary experience you can have, from this viewpoint, but at times it can involve problems of vicinity, due to the size of the spaces and the sailing conditions. The skiff is much more ample and comfortable, both inside and outside, and it gives you greater freedom to organize your time. And then…”
And then what?
“It is nice to have special places to meet, to exchange feelings and knowledge. For me the boat is one of those places. A place of hospitality and communication”.
Tell us about your boat.
“It was made in Holland in 1961, in one of the country’s most important shipyards, Feadship de Vries. She’s a lady of a certain age, and she has had a rather adventurous life. Just think… she has had 12 owners and 12 different names. The last name is Smooth Operators, given her by Luciano Benetton. Now I would like to change it to Eutopia, the good place, but that won’t be easy: its very complicated to change the name of a boat”.
What’s she like? Have you made extensive changes?
“I didn’t want to change the ‘Dutch’ look very much, because it is a nautical design that is still quite timely, and of great quality. I believe the boat should keep its original identity, so I have tried not to disrupt it”.
Did you personally work on the furnishings and the renovation? Is this your only experience, as an architect, with boats?
“Actually I did not act as an architect, in this case, because in the nautical field you need specific expertise that I don’t have. Let’s put it like this: I have simply tried to make our family’s boats comfortable, respecting their structure, but also brining in contaminations from other worlds”.
What’s the style?
“As Le Corbusier said, “styles are a lie”, and I don’t like to talk about style. The idea was to make objects live together, even very different ones, but ones that somehow belong to our story. On the skiff there’s room for everything: some lamps I’ve designed for Artemide and Danese, a painting by Boetti, photographs by Luigi Ghirri and Peter Beard, prints by Mimmo Paladino, the Putrella and the silver pieces by Enzo Mari, a family heirloom from the 1950s my sister painted in harlequin colors, and everything you need for solitude, like a good library and films, accompanied by all the latest technology for communication. I don’t make a big deal out of it if the bed, the paneling and other features of the boat don’t exactly match my tastes. Who cares? I’m not obsessed by style, but by the quality of the experience you have on the boat, and the fact that it was created by great engineers, people who designed it with the main objective of going to sea with the maximum safety, so style was not their main goal”.
In short, more than style, you are interested in the quality of seagoing experience…
“Traveling on a boat is extraordinary, because you see everything from a different viewpoint than you do on land. You have a greater awareness of silence, listening, shadows, darkness. You rediscover sensations you had forgotten, situations you are not usually aware of. Life on a boat is completely different from life on land, because it is narrower, you are closer to others so you have to be more tolerant, more independent, and everyone gets involved in the journey. For these and other reasons I think going to sea is always an extraordinary experience. Having said this, I must admit that over time, the choice of alternating the more adventurous experience of sailing with the more comfortable experience of a displacement boat is a perfect solution”.
How many people can travel on Smooth Operators?
“There are five cabins, for a total of ten persons.”
Architect, designer, entrepreneur, professor. Your commitment in the field of design covers several fronts. Which of these roles emerges in your life on board? 
“I would say design, where perspective is very important, remains central in my work, like traveling at sea. You cannot navigate without a destination. The voyage is always the metaphor of a project, with an eye on the future, on utopia. I believe that today there is still a need to bring the culture of the project back to the center of the profession, and this is true for architects and designers alike”.
If you had to choose just one of your roles, which one would it be?
“I’d be an architect, for me that is really a calling, a passion. At that point, though, I would teach by being an architect, design by being an architect, write by being an architect.”
Have you restructured Smooth Operators?
“It was in the shipyard for structural and mechanical renovation, but without modifying the external design. The 35-meter boat retains a great sense of unity, so it is still quite sober”.
In the midst of the traditional furnishings of your boat, certain design pieces stand out, from your company, Danese, and lamps by Artemide. What were the criteria behind these choices?
“The Danese collection is very versatile, it works perfectly on a boat, starting with the tables and chairs by Paolo Rizzatto, the Smith multiuse table-cabinets by Jonathan Olivares, the Livorno bookcases by Marco Ferreri or the Leti bookend-lamps by Matteo Ragni, all the way to the gorgeous glasses by Achille Castiglioni. But there are also lights by Artemide, with their capacity to create emotional scenarios, while responding to functional needs, like the classics Tolomeo, Tizio and Castore, as well as designs of the latest generation, like Yang and Altrove”.
Today contemporary design is finding room inside yachts, which until a short time ago were very traditional spaces, filled with brass and dark wood. Boats have become floating homes. What do you think about this phenomenon?
“I think it is a very positive development, that design culture is making inroads in the nautical sector. The boats that try to replicate a villa from the early 1900s are now quite out of place. But I don’t think design is interesting when it is seen as only a contemporary aesthetic gesture, or as the fascination with big-name designers. The world of yachts should be an area for experimentation with new design ideas. For example, I like the projects for sailboats that focus on the use of renewable resources”.
In short, it’s important to avoid the idea of style as an end in itself...
“Projects should be a pretext to activate reflections on the central themes of our existence: energy resources, the environment, and a human, vital space that teaches new generations respect for the sea, a culture, an aesthetic and a life that involve a return to more important values. In boats – we should remember – there are also our children, and we have the duty to teach them a positive experience. When I see enormous yachts with kids who travel closed up behind windows, and dozens of sailors who help them play with jet skis, I’m shocked... I don’t like the idea of a five-year-old thinking that the sea is like a film, a place of fast motors and huge luxurious floating lodgings. It would be better for him to learn how to listen to the wind, to enter the true dimension of the sea and discover another part of the universe...”
It’s also a matter of education, and upbringing…
“Yes, but also of how you interpret life on board. The spaces can be designed to make you experience on lifestyle, as opposed to another, and this influences the vision and character of each and every one of us. Smooth Operators is full of books and magazines, and when my daughter comes with her friends I see that they at least pick them up and have a look, before taking a swim in the sea”.
Both yachts and design are considered sectors of excellence of Made in Italy. How are they reacting to the crisis, in your view?
“The crisis is real, and unfortunately the situation has not yet been resolved. How? By limiting useless expenditures, but absolutely not slowing down investment in research and innovation. The world has changed its key. At this point I think everything needs to be rethought, including design and yachts”.
How should boats be redesigned?
“In such a way as to limit their environmental impact and to reduce energy costs, through the use of renewable resources, paying attention to harmful emissions. Today having a new idea, doing something innovative, pays off more than anything else. This is true for both design and the nautical field. At the latest Salone del mobile, on the other hand, I did not see anything that was particularly new, though I imagined that to meet the crisis entrepreneurs would be pulling out new visions for the future”.
The nautical industry is also discovering all the themes of sustainability.
“True. But they are themes that need to be addressed in a more serious way that has been done up to now. This is not a problem that can be easily solved with labels, we need to work on it, to develop new solutions, and to raise the awareness of the world to new issues. To use the terms of William McDonough and Michael Braungart, we have to work on the three ‘E’s: economy, equity and ecology. Legendary Italian design was just that, managing to produce wealth with a series of ethical and project values that translated into innovative solutions that could be afforded by everyone. The famous 1960s-70s of the plastic of Artemide and Kartell produced objects of great quality at reasonable prices that changed the domestic landscape in all the senses of the term, based on research and the discovery of new materials. In short, we need to have ideas, and intelligent, courageous companies, to design our future”.
]]> 2009-10-16 16:52:32 Interni Onboard n°4 Chrisco<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,790,intItemID,795,intLangID,2.html photos Nicolas Claris
text Michelangelo Giombini
 project Luca Brenta & C. Yacht Design/Wetzels Brown Partners
photos Nicolas Claris
text Michelangelo Giombini

CNB 100 Chrisco:
Length over all 30.48 m, Max width 26.82 m,
Motors QSB5.9 x 350 hp at 2800 rpm, Total sail surface 521 m2, Max motor speed 14 knots,
Naval design Luca Brenta & C. Yacht Design, Hull carbon-balsa-vinylester sandwich,
Interiors Wetzels Brown Partners, Shipyard CNB - Construction Navale Bordeaux.

 The elegant, decisive lines of the new CNB Chrisco make this 100-foot a new model of reference for the design of modern sailing superyachts. The complex geometry of the deckhouse is a combination of the naval design of Luca Brenta & C. and the interior design by Wetzels Brown Partners. The Chrisco is an impressive 30-meter sloop the CNB shipyard of Bordeaux launched in May after two years of intense work. Its fluid, incisive external lines were designed by Luca Brenta & C. Yacht Design: they wrap around the volume of the deckhouse, made with 75 planar panels of black glass that form a faceted, continuous surface. Inset like a precious stone on the teak deck of the sailboat, the geometric volume of the deckhouse seems to vanish below the cladding of the deck, thanks to a refined detail that resolves the deck-deckhouse connection. A design solution that reappears in the zones were non-planar surfaces meet, along the slender top of the bulwarks or at the stern, which completes the taut design of the body. The ultralight hull in carbon fiber, balsa and vinylester forms the basis for the powerful sailboat architecture, designed to respond to the expectations of the owner, who wanted a modern, fast sailing yacht, but without compromises in terms of on-board comfort. The complete transparency of the deckhouse favors interaction between the naval design and that of the interiors, done by Wetzels Brown Partners, an international studio based in Holland, specialized in the design of villas, yachts (interiors of the Wallypower 70, styling of the Wallypower 64) and private jets. The clean look of the deck, without clutter, continues below, starting with the saloon with a 360-degree panoramic view: the light hues of the furnishings and the volumes stand out against the dark floors and the carbon bulkheads, emphasizing the lines of the body from the inside as well. All the furnishings were designed by Wetzels Brown Partners and made with light materials to respond to dimensioning and blockage requirements. The layout is symmetrical, with a substantially free plan that gives the internal volume long perspectives and a sensation of airy space, enhanced by shiny, reflecting surfaces. A sophisticated LED system adds atmosphere, alternating cool light that imitates natural light with warmer tones for the evening. The three cabins are designed for flexible use and can be converted from private lounges to double staterooms, transforming the big divans into beds. The forward zone is set aside for the owner: two double beds, a bath, a closet, and a private spa with color therapy.
]]> 2009-10-16 16:49:06 Interni Onboard n°4 Flying Dagger<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,790,intItemID,794,intLangID,2.html photos Giovanni Malgarini
text Decio G. R. Carugati
 project Andre Bacigalupo/Ivana Porfiri 
photos Giovanni Malgarini
text Decio G. R. Carugati

FLYING DAGGER:
Length over all 41 m, Max width 8 m,
Motors 3 MTU 16 V 2000M93 Hp. 2400 each., Cruising speed 30 knots, Max speed 34 knots,
External lines Andre Bacigalupo,
Interiors Ivana Porfiri, Shipyard Codecasa.


 Flying Dagger, 2009, from Cantieri Navali Codecasa, is a 41-meter open from the S range, like the twin Family Day built in 2007. The well-proportioned, soft but speedy exterior lines of both boats are by Andre Bacigalupo, but the specimen in question is a true one-off, thanks to the original design of its interiors. Ivana Porfiri, who created them, explains: “The hull of the 41S is wide and high, so the midship beam is very wide, and the superstructure is low and narrow. These factors cannot be altered, they are particular features of the Codecasa S-range boats, which are planing, sporty, with high motor performance. I decided to put the staircase on the side, with the aim of taking full advantage of the spacious effect created by the zone connecting the first deck and below, to increase the height in a central gravitational point. The staircase descends in the atrium and the circulation corridor indicates the owner’s suite at the stern, the VIP suite at the prow, and the guest cabins at the center. The doors to all the cabins do not open in front of the beds. The geometric design permitted a more discreet, lateral alignment. The owner’s suite has two twin baths that extend along opposite bulwarks, visually accentuated the midship width. The wardrobes are under the staircase, with another at the side, freeing up more space. The VIP stateroom is quite unusual, as it uses the ‘cross-ship dimension’ for a more striking and comfortable design, giving the sensation of having more available space. At the prow the crew zone, with four cabins, a landing, laundry and dining room, is connected with an upper mezzanine under the bridge, where the main galley is also open to the owner and his guests. Going back up to the first deck, the service openings that communicate with the gangways permit the crew to reach the wheelhouse from outside, descend to the galley and further below, to their lodgings. The very large stern area also includes a large sundeck and a table for outdoor dining. Behind it, to the side, a circular staircase leads to the flying bridge. Thus the central entrance. The living and dining zones are inside, without separations. I decided to do white walls, an absolute masonry white. A structural support composed of an aluminium frame separates the walls from the hull, rising along the sides at an angle of 7.5 degrees. This generates the first distinctive feature, the off-kilter angles, a contradiction, perhaps, a sort of desire for tension with the lines of the boat, that are so well-rounded and soft. The portholes, which seem to have been cut into the sides, correspond to splayed windows on the inside, with sloping sills, like those of castles, to increase the flow of light. The effect is surprising… from dawn to dusk, the entire boat can do without artificial lighting. The prismatic form, the polygon, are the distinctive features of my design. The choice of color, for me, is never a conceptual pretext: white, in fact, is texture, weight, surface temperature. Thus the decision, for the floors of the entire boat, except for the teak outer decks, to use fir planks with big knots, of 18, 16, 8, 4 cm, in random order, finished with thick coats of white paint. The central portion of the saloon and the staircase have a different texture, like reeds with insets of prisms, covered with glass on which you can walk. The curtains are in white metal screen, in the owner’s suite, with a platinum color in the VIP and guest cabins. Heavier than common fabric curtains, and quite high, they descend to the floor producing folds similar to those of the garments of Greek statues, for a striking sculptural effect. Mother-of-pearl and pearly mosaic are used for the textures of the bathrooms. Every part of the boat features the whiteness of different materials, with different reactions to light, forming the basic setting. The furnishings inserted in the spaces – a chair, a carpet, a lamp, a divan – become chromatic presences, bringing individual connotations, never influencing or modifying the overall atmosphere. The wall at the back of the saloon is in palladium leaf, a tribute to Yves Klein who applied gold leaf in the same free way. The dining table is a console against the wall. With the spaces broken up, introducing angles and off-kilter elements, the whole boat works like an optical prism. The light diffracts and splits off in different directions, creating unexpected effects on the white surfaces of walls and floors. The colors of the doors of the hanging cabinets in the galley, made with a composite material recycled from mobile phone covers, are fascinating, but even more when they change, day and night, due to the effects of diffraction of natural or artificial light…”. Like a garment made to measure, stitched onto the user (in this case, the owner), the Flying Dagger is utterly unique.
]]> 2009-10-16 16:47:08 Interni Onboard n°4 Pieds dans l’eau<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,790,intItemID,793,intLangID,2.html text Matteo Vercelloni
 project Odile Decq and Benoit Cornette
text Matteo Vercelloni
 A radical design path, hard to classify, a reflection of contemporary complexity, combining the dreams of Archigram, high-tech structuralism, but also overtones of rock music. A dynamic compositional process that emphasizes relations with the city and the territory through fluid spaces capable of constructing connections and relations between interior space and the urban landscape. This, in short, is the research conducted by Odile Decq – together with Benoit Cornette until 1998 – to approach the theme of the water-architecture relationship, from the scale of the boat to that of major port infrastructures. Born in 1955, Leone d’Oro at the Venice Architecture Biennial in 1996, an outsider who works with Paul Virilio in the practice of teaching, Odile Decq has a constructively contradictory role on the contemporary architecture scene. She proposes an incisive, sensual architecture that questions the future and challenges everyday life: “Space does not have just one center, perspectives are tangential and always different. I work on the architectural section, because it reveals the non-visible, and I make it three-dimensional, to create Sensual Territories”. At the center of every project, also in conceptual terms, she places the theme of space related not only to its functional and compositional articulations, but also to its expressions in terms of relations. In this sense dynamism, the movement of the parts and the synthesis of each project, move toward experimental solutions, far from preconceived truths and poetic norms of architectural form. It is precisely in the dynamism of the constructed object, and thus in its variability, that the work of Odile Decq and the late Benoit Cornette finds the basis for the organization of its parts, the essence of the architecture. An ‘oblique’ procedure, open to listening and hybrids with other disciplines – art and cinema, first of all – and to exploring ‘marginal’ territories, working on ‘urban fragments’ on different scales, as part of the design of the overall city. In this multilinear path that reflects the complexity of the contemporary world, Odile Decq has often explored the relationship between water and architecture, where the design theme is always resolved in terms of relationships with the territory and the city, with interior spaces or areas reinvented in collective terms, that dynamically seek a new connection with the surroundings, avoiding the iconic self-representation of the work in itself, and putting down constructive roots in the environment. Whether it is the renewal of a waterfront zone (the industrial port of Genevilliers in France, 1994); an urban bridge conceived as a new, floating territory (the competition for the ‘Third Bridge’ of Rotterdam, 1998-2000); an exclusive yacht (the Esense for Wally, 2003-2006); a large passenger terminal (the new structure for the port of Tangiers, 2007); or new floating urban architecture (the VNF Headquarters in Paris in 2008, the Archipel restaurant at the Docks Quai Rambaud in Lyon, 2007), all the floating or waterfront projects by Odile Decq stand out for the idea of ‘taking back the water’, as announced in the work program for the redesign project of the port of Genevilliers, near Paris. Here, what had been transformed into a banal industrial zone was brought back to its original image, with the system of the river port and the docks that enter the city, ‘activated’ by new green areas and public activities, alongside the existing industrial facilities. The idea is to make the port a zone of interface between the city and the water, and to work on this eccentric zone in the light of general urban renewal and reutilization. An approach that was repeated in a more radical way in the project that won the competition for the ‘Third Bridge’ of Rotterdam, where the aim was to “think of new relationships between the city and the river, orienting the city toward the river”. A new island, with five office towers, like a stone ship with five great masts, functions as the support point for the main pylon of the bridge, and becomes an element capable of activating a process of extensive renewal for the waterfront and the city as a whole. A work of “land architecture” that expands the city limits eastward, in a design approach that modifies the landscape to create a multifunctional bridge, rather than simply imposing an architectural infrastructure over existing patterns. An effort to root the project in the landscape can also be seen in the passenger terminal for the port of Tangiers, another competition winner, where the sculptural solution of the construction tends to unite sea and mountains in an architectural path, sinuous and welcoming, that like a large seashell extends from the pier inland, embracing the railroad and integrating with the existing circulation structures with the creation of new zones. More recently, two projects created for two French cities, Lyon and Paris, suggest the idea of extending construction out over the water in an innovative way, balanced between architecture and ship building, in keeping with the architect’s constant practice of interdisciplinary hybrids. The Archipel restaurant is located at the foot of an office building and appears to be a sort of architectural shoreline, at the edge of a canal. Composed of a series of translucent bubbles with a structural grid similar to the pattern of dried seaweed on the shore, the Archipel is conceived as ‘a system’, with a series of specially designed vessels (individual, taxi and bus) deployed as mobile islands, motorized architectural outcroppings of the building, of which they are an integral part. “A building that can expand, multiply, scatter”. The barges of the Seine, on the other hand, are the reference for the Paris headquarters of the company Voies Navigables de France. Here, a fluid, continuous ribbon forms what has been defined by the designer herself as a “spatial dilation that forms a repulsion and a contraction at the same time”, to compose a dynamic sum of two divisible volumes clad with reflecting and transparent glass, connected like two ships docked side-by-side, with access to the Quai des Invalides by means of two long gangplanks.

]]> 2009-10-16 16:44:18 Interni Onboard n°4 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,59,intIssueID,790,intItemID,792,intLangID,2.html  by Gilda Bojardi “The boat is a boat, not a house”. This is how Ivana Porfiri, designer of the interiors of the new Codecasa featured in this issue, sums up her design position, in an in-depth interview for Interni OnBoard (no.1, March 2008). It might seem banal, but it isn’t, especially in this moment of great transformation in the field of yacht design. More and more often, the protagonists of design on dry land are getting involved in nautical design, to give a new aesthetic and functional identity to boat interiors. And the habitat concept of yachts is evolving in a revolutionary way. This is undoubtedly a positive phenomenon, because it frees an important production sector – one in which Italy can boast of clear leadership – from an overly technical, specialized, obsolete language and vision. But it also brings the risk of going to an opposite extreme: that of treating contemporary design as a ‘style’ to be slavishly applied, simply replacing the styles of the past. The suggestions and stimuli life on board offer to architects and designers go beyond such formal exercises. Above all, there is the dimension of total freedom offered by the sea, the possibility of establishing a symbiotic relationship with water and sky, the commitment to give meaning and reference points to an architecture that, by nature, is mobile and decontextualized. For example, by introducing new materials capable of multiplying reflections and sensations, as happens in the Flying Dagger by Ivana Porfiri. Or by utilizing the most advanced technologies to free up the space of the boat and make it more livable, as on the Mathisse designed by A-Lab. This is the challenge posed for contemporary designers by the yacht-as-object. One of them, Carlotta de Bevilacqua, the protagonist of the Encounter in this issue, talks about her Dutch skiff: “More than style, for me it is important to design the quality of the experience you have at sea. Which is completely different from experience on land, and should teach us to observe the darkness, to listen to the wind and the silence, to rediscover situations we are not usually aware of...”.
Gilda Bojardi
]]> 2009-10-16 16:23:40 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,784,intItemID,789,intLangID,2.html 2009-10-07 15:07:11 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,784,intItemID,786,intLangID,2.html 2009-10-07 15:01:36 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,784,intItemID,785,intLangID,2.html 2009-10-07 15:02:02 Interni n°599 Perfect white http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,761,intItemID,783,intLangID,2.html photos and image processing Simone Barberis by Nadia Lionello
photos and image processing Simone Barberis The achromatic, luminous, versatile color, with almost absent tones, to encourage simple forms, revealing the essence of the design.]]> 2009-10-01 11:35:36 Interni n°599 Blue http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,761,intItemID,782,intLangID,2.html photos and image processing Simone Barberis by Nadia Lionello
photos and image processing Simone Barberis One of the three primary colors, considered the hue that brings serenity and calm. In the past it was a classic color, but today it is seen in new shadings, to interpret the new forms of design, with completely unexpected charm.]]> 2009-10-01 10:46:27 Interni n°599 Slim design http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,781,intLangID,2.html  
 From ceramic sheets, with minimum thickness thanks to technology, to faucets as thin as blades, to washstands that seem to erase the dimension of depth. Slimmed-down projects but with high design calories, a skinny aesthetic for a new, very sustainable lightness of creation.]]> 2009-09-30 18:28:34 Interni n°599 The bath squared http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,779,intLangID,2.html  
 Clear, decisive lines, sharp edges, faceted surfaces, volumes of great architectural rigor. Beyond the organic bath and natural forms.]]> 2009-09-30 17:56:12 Interni n°599 Color Mix http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,778,intLangID,2.html  
 For those who see color as an indispensable design element for the furnishing of a home, many bath furnishings manufacturers provide series of products featuring soft, relaxing hues, or bright, lively tones. Tiles, mosaics, washstands and radiators, for a surprising, original chromatic range.]]> 2009-09-30 17:43:41 Interni n°599 Total white http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,777,intLangID,2.html  
 Always the most traditional color for bath fixtures of all shapes and sizes, white can be utilized in a surprising range of shades. Nuances that can also be diversified in an imperceptible way, adding an aura of luminous purity to the most intimate space in the home.]]> 2009-09-30 12:52:05 Interni n°599 Back to earth http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,776,intLangID,2.html  
 Graphic stone grain, earthy chromatic depth: material becomes the decorative motif. The technological excellence achieved by the ceramics industry generates a perfect synthesis of nature and artifice in porcelainized gres. Even washstands rediscover the beauty of stone or the antique warmth of terracotta.]]> 2009-09-30 12:32:09 Interni n°599 Everyone in the tub http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,775,intLangID,2.html  
 Tubs as sculptures for the center of the room, compact but sophisticated multifunctional volumes or theatrical recessed pools. Between a sense of intimacy that still clings to nostalgic references, or the desire to astonish and to share a collective ritual of wellbeing in a domestic mini-spa]]> 2009-09-30 12:18:49 Interni n°599 Red & Black http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,774,intLangID,2.html  
 The absolute bath. The two strongest colors of the spectrum, associated with forceful lines, for a trendy environment where everything communicates energy and personality. From facings to fixtures, tubs to radiators.]]> 2009-09-30 11:40:56 Interni n°599 Green Beauty http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,773,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-30 10:39:40 Interni n°599 Ceramic Architecture http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,122,intIssueID,761,intItemID,772,intLangID,2.html  A.B. “Ceramic material comes from Mother Earth; I wanted to remind people of that, with this image, that evokes a space like a maternal womb wrapped by ceramics, from which we came… but also where we are going: the future is already here”. This is how Mario Botta, one of the masters of contemporary architecture, explains his poster for the 27th edition of Cersaie, the International Fair on Ceramics for Architecture and Bath Furnishings, in Bologna, 29 Sept – 3 Oct 2009, with 176,000 sq meters of display space, over 900 exhibitors from 30 countries, including 707 Italian companies. This year the event has a very prestigious prelude: the Lectio Magistralis “Making Architecture” by Renzo Piano (1 Oct, Palazzo dei Congressi, 11.00). This is a continuation of Cersaie’s focus on great architecture, as confirmed by Franco Manfredini, president of Confindustria Ceramica: “The fact that we have Renzo Piano as a guest this year, and in the past we have hosted architects like Botta, Mayne, Decq or Fuksas, creates and reinforces the connection with ‘high’ design, not only in terms of communication, but also in terms of substance. Today, our products are widely used, especially in non-residential building”. For the first time this year, the fair involves architects and interior designer in a dedicated space: the Architecture Gallery. The area (500 m2 on the first floor of the Centro Servizi) hosts conferences and seminars on the theme Building, Dwelling, Thinking, a title borrowed from the philosopher Martin Heidegger, an invitation to reflect on applications and expressions, trends, renewal, habitat and prospects for ceramic materials in architecture. The program (seen online at www.cersaie.it, in the Events section) offers a wealth of appointments, a series of events featuring over 50 highprofile speakers, from Stefano Boeri to Giuliano Gresleri, Michael P. Johnson to Fulvio Irace, Franco La Cecla to Marco Mulazzani, among others. “Ceramics, protagonist of the habitat, new trends in design” is the first architecture conference. It is followed by “Retrofit: energy renewal of existing buildings”. Sustainability for ceramic tiles is the subject of the conference “Abitare il Verde” and the encounter “S-tiles: communicating sustainability”. “Abitare il deserto” presents projects of minimal architecture in the American landscape made with Italian ceramic tiles. “Abitare l’emergenza” approaches the topic of living in temporary, emergency conditions. “Man and the city” analyzes the theme of the multiethnic dimension. “Abitare il futuro” reflects on needs and challenges of the coming generations. “Understanding the modern. Protection of modern architecture as a premise for contemporary design” and “Abitare la Rete” conclude the cycle of encounters on ceramics in architecture.]]> 2009-09-30 10:38:05 Interni n°599 Urban Film Fest http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,121,intIssueID,761,intItemID,771,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-29 18:12:42 Interni n°599 Matteo Thun http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,761,intItemID,769,intLangID,2.html This gentle, respectful beauty for which he strives seems like a far cry from the explosive beauty of Memphis, with its bursts of forms and colors that changed the history of design. Yet in 1981 he was one of the founders of that group. It comes naturally to ask him what has remained of that experience, and the collaboration with the studio of Ettore Sottsass, which continued until 1994. “The habit of always taking things further”, he responds, “as in flying”. He gave up hang-gliding after ten years on the national team, with a final flight at Stromboli, because Ettore told him: “you can either work or you can fly”. “Memphis and flight, in the end, are similar. Memphis also taught me that to progress in a creative field you need to work nights, too. The spaces of freedom and research can only be found at night. In the group, the moments of evaluation always came from midnight to three in the morning, often with violent debate. Those nocturnal fights, full of adrenaline, were moments of confrontation and investigation of borderlines: on feasibility, materials, projects...”. Hang-gliding requires precise calculations. You have to be a bit of an engineer. And to know materials, to investigate their original nature, you also have to be something of an engineer. Semantic simplification, dictated by the need to respect materials, is also imposed by the need to reduce costs, in these times of recession. Reduction of complexity doesn’t mean reduction of quality, it means the invention of a new poetics connected to different qualities, far from appearances and ostentation. Qualities connected with silence and slowness. In 2002 he began design work on the slow food chain Vapiano. Today there are already 30 outlets in Germany. Diners sit in the midst of basil, rosemary and sage plants, and instead of rapidly swallowing sandwiches, they can have a nicely prepared dish of pasta for just 10 euros. “It was a challenge”, he says, “to demonstrate that you can make al dente spaghetti in Hamburg, too. We were successful thanks to a device for cooking developed by Electrolux”. Thun has produced many projects of architecture and design. And he has won many prizes, including one for the use of steel combined with wood in the Hugo Boss headquarters (2007), or the latest honor, the Ischia Architecture Prize for the Career. But his favorite project is always the next one: the ‘Scatola’, a wooden module that can be transported by truck to make a hotel room, a student’s house, a hospital room, an emergency lodging in situations of natural disaster. This is the gentle, respectful, simple beauty that helps us to live better, in a more natural way.]]> 2009-09-29 17:29:45 Interni n°599 Burle Marx centennial, between the forest and the garden http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,761,intItemID,768,intLangID,2.html text Matteo Vercelloni project Andrés Otero
text Matteo Vercelloni The centennial of the birth of Burle Marx (1909-1994), one of the leading landscape architects of the 20th century and the Modern Movement, is an opportunity to think about the timeliness of a method and an approach to the design of landscape, which can still indicate a fertile path of botanical knowledge and artistic sensibility, figurative impact and controlled composition, open to experimentation, with solutions aimed at comprehension of their sites. Like Luis Barragán (1902-1988) and Isamu Noguchi (1904- 1988), Roberto Burle Marx created a great wealth of gardens, parks and urban features, avoiding ideological prejudice, capturing contaminations of colors, figures and materials, mixing disciplines and methods, and opening the way for the research and the languages now found on the variegated international landscape scene. For these reasons and more, a look back at the work of the great Brazilian master is very interesting; over the years his projects remain timely, thanks to a method that adapted to each new place, full of multidisciplinary stimuli that are increasingly important for operation in the present. This is why an international conference was held on Burle Marx in May at the IUAV University of Venice, with the title “A project for the landscape”, to reinterpret the work in a programmatic way, rather than just as a memorial. This article presents, from the very prolific output of Burle Marx (over 2500 projects), the Sitio (estate) of Santo Antonio da Bica, 40 km from Rio de Janeiro, which in 1949 Burle Marx, together with his brother Sigfrid, purchased and chose as his laboratory, residence and nursery, which now seems like a living museum of Brazilian flora, as well as a ‘landscape self-portrait’ of its maker. Here Burle Marx constructed his home, assembling the remains of an abandoned urban building, along with a pool, again composed with fragments of the old buildings constructed by the Portuguese in previous centuries, transformed into the parts of an amazing collage in a personal artificial forest. Two of the main characteristics of the work of Burle Marx are clearly evident here: the compositional montage and the idea of the forest. An idea that is not so much that of a place that expresses a romantic relationship with nature, as an environment seen in its botanical and chromatic exuberance as ‘artistic material’ to be utilized, to take the forest, through design, to the scale of the garden and the urban park. The discovery of the sculptural splendor of the Brazilian forest did not happen, for Burle Marx, in his own country, where the forest-jungle was a synonym for fear, the refuge of savage natives and ferocious wild animals, and where public and private gardens were paradoxically filed with figurative motifs, plants and flowers from Europe.
It was precisely in Europe, in Berlin (the birthplace of his mother), that the young Burle Marx ‘discovered’ the aesthetic value of the forest, looking at a greenhouse of Brazilian tropical plants in that city’s botanical gardens. This revelation that would always influence his path of research, also enriching it with ethical values and national pride, was joined by the impact of the revolutionary new developments of the artistic avant-gardes of Europe in the second half of the 1920s. Not just the verve of the Futurists, the fragmented planes of the Cubists, the expressions of abstract painting, but also the colors of Van Gogh, the geometric approach to nature of Cézanne, the study of the works of Picasso, Miró, Klee, the passion for the wave motifs of Matisse, which return in the design of the paving for the waterfront in Rio, the abstraction of Kandinsky and, in a more incisive way, the soft forms of the work of Hans Arp, all combine to define the aesthetic and formal, chromatic and compositional approach to the nature of the Brazilian forest. Thus the forest, almost in a Dada-like way, in a new, explosive relationship of art, nature and design, is combined with modern architecture (villas and public buildings) and inserted, in a surreal way, in the urban context, through a procedure of montage that has correctly been defined as “the only complete work the Modern Movement produced with greenery” (Manolo De Giorgi, Giardini del Moderno, Domus n°705, 1989). A compositional procedure paced by vegetation, taken as the horizontal fabric of connection on which to insert a second level of trees and vertical features, then concluding with vegetation conceived as tectonic decoration. This method was open to continuous variations, and the forest as artifice could be translated into a programmatic synthesis of multimateric design, in which an artistic sensibility (“I paint my gardens”, Burle Marx said) is always joined by profound knowledge of nature.]]> 2009-10-02 14:30:35 Interni n°599 Singapore, Klapsons hotel http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,761,intItemID,767,intLangID,2.html William Sawaya
project development Sawaya & Moroni Architecture
and Design Studio
local architect RSP
photos Santi Caleca
text Matteo Vercelloni project William Sawaya
project development Sawaya & Moroni Architecture
and Design Studio
local architect RSP
photos Santi Caleca
text Matteo Vercelloni In Singapore, in the very central business district, the flagship hotel of the Klapson’s chain. A ‘boutique hotel’ in a four-storey building destined to grow into a small urban tower, with interiors based on an idea of contemporary luxury, also conceived as a place to meet, with a spectacular hall that can also be used by a nearby skyscraper. In the effervescent cityscape of Singapore, the island city-state where skyscrapers compete to be the best landmark of the moment, but where flourishing vegetation also forms a connective tissue mixed with architecture of all scales, this new building designed by William Sawaya (only on four levels, for the moment, but destined to grow in height) has been conceived, above all, to offer an interior space connected to the city, capable of becoming an attraction and a meeting place. Far from the image of ‘globalized luxury’ that gets repeated in every city of the East and West, in keeping with more or less understated languages, wavering between minimalist memories and reassuring references to tradition, the Klapson’s is intentionally projected toward a dynamic idea of unique flair. A precise architectural approach, seen above all in the interiors, that reflects the new identity of the Klapson’s group, for which the Singapore facility represents the flagship project. The hotel is in the business district, facing an office tower and directly connecting with it, as the hall of the hotel becomes a sort of multifunctional space, used as the entrance for the guests, but also as a small sheltered plaza. An ‘urban interior’ connected to the public portico of the new building, but also protected from the city, in a situation of colorful, well-balanced comfort generated by the sum of many distinct elements that construct a new, pulsating interior landscape. The hall has the task of offering an immediate glimpse, based on its architectural solution, of the philosophy and character of Klapson’s; the two-storey height underscores the character as an indoor plaza, enhanced here by the seductive design of the ceiling, with its pattern of overlapping layers of plaster, perforated with amoeba-like forms, inside which an LED system makes it possible to vary the tones of the background, to match the different moods of different hours of the day. Over the red quartzite flooring, in a central position between two steelclad pillars transformed into imposing cylindrical columns, a shiny chrome sphere functions as a reception capsule, whose geometric perfection and independent role in the overall scene are emphasized by the radius of white quartzite of the approach path, also extending outside, with bush-hammered finish, entering the black slate of the portico. Around the mirrorfinish nucleus of the reception, other architectural episodes appear like ‘characters’: the helicoidal staircase contained in a portal of Macassar wood, leading to the music bar on the first level, and then the volume of the elevators, clad with steel screens. Behind it, facing a long glazing toward the portico, the restaurant alternates traditional tables with chairs and an evocative series of fixed, linear seating, created with ‘architectural furnishings’, like upholstered divanettes with high backs that work like partitions. The various episodes are united by the furnishings, almost a point-by-point compositional connector; design pieces of forceful character that alternate forms, materials and colors to determine spaces for different functions. Once past the engaging entrance scenario, the same design flair is found in the rooms, placed on long, shady, soft corridors, in which the profiles of light indicate the doors, as silhouettes. Here, the idea of luxury is based on optimal use of space. To obtain the largest possible number of rooms, the spaces have limited width, extending in depth and bringing part of the bathroom into the room itself, closing just the toilet and the washstand in a separate block. The shower thus becomes a protagonist, a glass cylinder with helicoidal forms, with bright red lacquered boxes, set aside by the owners for the Ferrari team during the Formula 1 race that, since 2008, takes place on the streets of the city itself, as in the case of Monte Carlo. The bathtubs, in certain rooms, are displayed in small living rooms, while in many cases a relationship is established with greenery, setting the rooms next to garden-terraces with outdoor hydromassage tubs, wooden decks and cots for relaxing. Custom furnishings and padded walls covered with leather alternate with capitonné velvet sofas, colored lamps, hidden accent lights, in a controlled compositional narrative.]]> 2009-10-02 14:27:21 Interni n°599 Prague, a teahouse under a Bohemian spell http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,761,intItemID,766,intLangID,2.html David Mastálka/A1ARCHITECTS
photos Ester Havlova
text Alessandro Rocca project David Mastálka/A1ARCHITECTS
photos Ester Havlova
text Alessandro Rocca Near Prague, amidst apple and cherry trees in a small, wild garden, a secret room for tea and meditation mixes references to the Japanese tradition with perfect fusion in the natural environment. The Prague-based studio A1Architects, founded in 2004 by David Mastálka, Jakub Filip Novák and Lenka Kremenová, is the type of partnership among creative talents that is spreading ever more widely in Europe and the United States, for an approach to all branches and opportunities of the design field, combining different types of expertise and experience with the greatest nonchalance. Professional and geographical borderlines are erased, the integration between architecture and communication, graphics and web design grow in a series of crossovers and systematic interferences that permit navigation in the sea of X-design (industrial, architectural, landscape, web, food, body, etc.) that is increasingly pervasive and interconnected. The latest project of A1Architects is the result of the collaboration between David Mastálka and the Slovenian sculptor Vojtech Bilisic, who took 35 days to build, with their own hands, a small tea house immersed in the midst of apple and cherry trees in a small, rather wild garden near Prague. The tea house is not exclusively an oriental tradition, but clearly the Japanese tea house, the chashitsu, is an explicit point of reference in this project. We should also remember that the Japanese tea house is a little temple of love, a place set aside, in its nude, essential design, for the tea ceremony accompanied by the erotic ministrations of a geisha. We don’t know if David had just such a scene in mind, but in any case his small pavilion is a superb invention that skillfully blends elements of a faraway culture in a perfect fusion with the environment of this small Bohemian garden. David says he imagined “a small, secret world in which time follows its own natural rhythm: and environment that gives meaning and measure to emptiness, that describes the idea of a space”. Based on these suggestions, David has made a circular construction topped by a semitransparent dome, in paper, on which the light of the sky is projected, offering a glimpse of the clouds in motion. The walls literally return to the Japanese tradition of very light sliding rice paper panels, to permit contemplation of the garden from a slightly raised vantage point. The other side of the room, which is a perfect circle with the addition of a tiny entrance compartment, is formed by a wall in stucco-finish clay, for a very light, elegant materic effect, creating a lightly engraved surface, a texture that is almost an abstract landscape. The tatami mats and the burnished steel burner in the center of the room complete the magic of a place set aside for a single, minimal function, and above all dedicated to the time that passes in meditation, in tune with the rhythms, sounds, odors and colors of nature, represented here by the small garden. The structure in oak rests on a base of stones gathered on the shores of a nearby pond, while the cladding is in larch wood, darkened by fire, a treatment that brings colors and tones to the exterior of the pavilion that are very similar to those of the surrounding trees, increasing the contrast, the effect of surprise, with the warm, soft luminosity of the interior.]]> 2009-10-02 14:26:34 Interni n°599 Mumbai, Indian cocoon http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,761,intItemID,765,intLangID,2.html KNS Architects Pvt.Ltd & Sonali Shah
design team Kanhai Gandhi, Neemesh Shah, Shresht Kashyap and Sonali Shah
photos Alan Abrahim & Rahul Pawar
text Antonella Boisi
 project KNS Architects Pvt.Ltd & Sonali Shah
design team Kanhai Gandhi, Neemesh Shah, Shresht Kashyap and Sonali Shah
photos Alan Abrahim & Rahul Pawar
text Antonella Boisi An international design apartment in Mumbai, an example of organic architecture ideally based on the references and precepts of Vastu, the ancient Indian science of organizing spaces and furnishings in a harmonious, healthy way, to live in tune with nature and to increase vital energy.We’re in Juhu, the elegant, worldly part of Mumbai, that of the peaceful suburbs, near the sea, where Indian talents coexist with international stars for the creation of homes, often filled with timely design pieces, veritable works of architecture with a strong identity and spectacular effects. They say that Mumbai is the most democratic place in India, where it doesn’t matter what caste you come from, because the west remains the direction of possibility, and dynamism invests in art, culture, design, fashion. Mumbai is the metropolis-locomotive of India, and plans to boost its role as the main center of the economy, reaching the levels of international capitals thanks to its port, its textile industry and Bollywood, its film industry; but it is also a megalopolis, with over 18 million inhabitants, marked by profound contrasts, shiny skyscrapers and crumbling buildings, luxury and poverty, international boutiques and washerwomen who beat garments in little tubs of soap and water and then hang them out to dry on long, colorful lines… In the end, in spite of the current rage of films and novels set here, India remains a faraway place, complicated for us to explore. But this house has two features that make it interesting for us. First, it proposes an international lifestyle based on local factors, bringing out the Indian culture matrices while going beyond the limits of globalized standardization. Second, it offers an optimistic prospect for the Italian design firms that are jostling for a strategic position on the Indian luxury market. After all, this is the home of a couple of Indian architects, Neemesh and Sonali Shah, who work in the studio KNS Architects together with their partners Kanhai Gandhi and Shresht Kashyap, creating outstanding residential projects that have received honors from the IIID (Institute of Indian Interior Designers), like the Award for Residential Spaces 2009. “For the private home of our dreams”, they explain, “we wanted a welcoming, sheltering cocoon, purged of the sensory overstimulation of the outside world, made with dynamic lines, curved and sinuous, linear and essential, capable of reformulating the grids of a regular rectangular plan in an organic-futuristic way; a reassuring shell, also in terms of the colors, from a range of whites and bright yellows to touches of orange”. With an eye on the creation of fluid communication among the spaces, flexible openings have been utilized – absolute in the spaces for socializing, partial in the zones set aside for concentration, study and meditation – that do not disturb the homogeneity and transparency of the whole, reassembled in three contiguous spatial areas: the central zone with the entrance, dining-kitchen and living area, directly communicating with the terrace; and on the opposite sides, the master bedroom and guestroom zones, organized like iridescent stages, enlivened by laser-cut surfaces in materials like leather, Corian and aluminium, with color variations for the lighting to create different moods, in keeping with the suggestions of color therapy. Furnishings by well-known Italian design companies complete the setting, though close observation reveals an utterly, profoundly Indian character, the most interesting, authentic plus in this relationship with international design. Behind every compositional choice, the designers explain, “there is a concept of integrated architecture, in which the home is seen as a ‘therapeutic environment’, a sort of mandala constructed and organized by arranging spaces and furnishings in the closest possible harmony with the universal laws of nature and the human body, which is protected, as in a large womb”.
In other words, there are ideal references to the ancient science of Vastu, which provides the rules for the creation of a house in which to utilize human resources for spiritual growth. The main principle of the ancient Indian philosophy of dwelling, which dates back to about 5000 years ago, is the perfect integration of the energies expressed by the five elements (air, water, earth, fire and aether). According to these precepts, the earth is crossed by lines of energy that move on north-south and east-west axes. Orienting living spaces along these lines has a direct influence on the well-being of their inhabitants. These are ‘tricks of the trade’ that were apparently also familiar to architectural masters like Andrea Palladio or Vitruvius. Because “a dwelling built without considering the influences of nature”, we read in the Vedic texts, “is the cause of failures, difficult journeys and frustrations. But a dwelling built according to the laws of Vastu attracts happiness, wealth, health and serenity”. In this modern apartment, too, spaces and furnishings are organized to permit correct energy flow, starting from the center of the room, seen as the ‘sacred heart’ from which energy spreads in the form of electromagnetic waves and gravitational forces allowed to flow as freely as possible. To the east, the favorable compass point because it is connected with the rising of the sun, for the concentration of positive energies, favoring concentration and intellectual activity, the entrance and the meditation room have been positioned. The southeast side, which is more problematic because it faces the sun at its zenith, and is thus related to fire, contains the kitchen and the dining area. On the northern side, which facilitates knowledge, stands the studio, while to the southwest the main bedroom features the unusual solution of a cantilevered bed and a freestanding wardrobe with rounded borders that opens and closes like an old steamer trunk. All the rest depends on the interior design sensibilities of Sonali Shah.]]> 2009-10-02 14:28:49 Interni n°599 Hiroshima, Otake house http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,761,intItemID,764,intLangID,2.html Suppose Design Office/Makoto Tanijiri
photos and text Sergio Pirrone project Suppose Design Office/Makoto Tanijiri
photos and text Sergio Pirrone House in Otake is a panoramic dwelling on the hills around Hiroshima, in Japan, created by Suppose Design Office as a private space, totally open to the surrounding landscape. From Hiroshima the undulating road rises, crosses a bridge, bends through wooded slopes, embraces a rocky promontory and glides toward Otake. A few houses resting on a ramp of reddish earth, smiling at the green Kamei Park and the remains of its castle. Here life is a north-south sentinel, with breathtaking views of the Seto Inland Sea, the island of Miyajima and the mountain that slopes to the east, all the way to the industrial city. From the street, House in Otake is like an almost perfect, polished black cube, over a plan that is an almost perfect white square. The white and black have clear features, setting back, framing and reflecting the colors of the constant cycles of nature. Hope and life, seen from above, seated on a black divan in the living area on the second level. In only apparent contrast with the surprise, if we lower our gaze, of a view of vertical stems of gray marble, resting on gray concrete, covering the entire steep wall at the foot of the custodian’s lodgings. From this small cemetery, from below, the profile of the architecture doesn’t lend itself to interpretation, resembling the gaze of a watchful father, or the hard features of a sniper. Japan is not afraid of its dead, they often surround houses or punctuate cities, in their pale marble islands of silent prayer. Makoto Tanijiri is just 35 years old, but in less than ten years of work he has racked up some impressive numbers. About sixty completed works of architecture, most of them residential, made with his Suppose Design Office based in Hiroshima. As if, in the end, there were no threshold between white and black, beginning and end, this young architect designs a private space for a couple with three children, without subtractions, without additions. He skips the concept of indoors and outdoors, the borderlines vanish over the glossy paint usually used for naval constructions, like the mist over asphalt on a sunny morning. The horizontal planes of the living area float in the black, pure, solitary furnishings, while the white track slides with equally black frames and natural color glass. The panoramic view expands freely downhill, protected from behind by a framework structure that supports all the loads, including the 6-meter cantilever of the slab on which the living area is positioned. The skeleton has the profile of a clamp, its northern half enclosing the bedrooms on ground level, the kitchen and dining area on the second floor. From here, an opening watches the gulf, while a few meters lower the bathroom clings to the ground like a bubble of air, white, uninhibited. Above, the open terrace is caressed by pleasant breezes.]]> 2009-10-02 14:29:34 Interni n°599 Summary http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,761,intItemID,763,intLangID,2.html NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNERS
Spatial Tyrol

IN PRODUCTION
Alu, Astec, De Castelli, Dorelan, Antonio Frattini, Opinion Ciatti,
Philips Lighting, Roca, VitrA

COMMUNICATION
Love design

PRIZES
Mini Design Award 2009

IN FAIRS
ICFF New York
Designers Days Paris
Sidim Montréal
Marmomacc in Verona

SHOWROOM
Kerakoll Design Gallery in Milano
Stone Italiana in Milano

INFO & TECH
Conditioning colors
A transparent dream
The automated daycare center

TECHNOLOGY
Monumental comfort

LANDSCAPE

IN EXHIBITION

SUSTAINABILITY

CITY PROJECT

FASHION FILE

FESTIVAL
International Film Festival of Rome

TENDENZE CERSAIE
Architecture&Ceramics
Green Beauty
The Red and the Black
Everyone in the tub
Back to Earth, Total White, Color Mix,
Bath Squared, Graphic Effects, Slim Design

TRANSLATIONS



EDITORIAL

ARCHITECTURE
In the world, habitat mood compared
In the world, habitat mood compared
edited by Antonella Boisi

Singapore, Klapsons hotel
design by  William Sawaya
with Studio Architettura and
Design Sawaya & Moroni
photos by Santi Caleca
text by  Matteo Vercelloni

Prague, a teahouse under a Bohemian spell
design by David Mastálka/A1ARCHITECTSECTS
photos by Ester Havlova
text by Alessandro Rocca

Seoul, South Korea, Island house
design by Kim Hyo Man/Iroje KHM Architects
photos by Alan Abrahim & Rahul Pawar
text by Antonella Boisi

Mumbai, Indian cocoon
design by KNS Architects & Sonali Shah
photos by Alan Abrahim & Rahul Pawar
text by Antonella Boisi

Hiroshima, Otake house
design by Suppose Design Office/Makoto Tanijiri
photos e text by Sergio Pirrone

Wilton, Connecticut, designer poolhouse
design by Hariri & Hariri - Architecture
photos by Paul Warchol
text by Alessandro Rocca


THE ENCOUNTER
Amartya Sen, the priority of reason
by Virginio Briatore










TIMELY TOPICS
Burle Marx centennial, between the forest and the garden
photos by Andrés Otero
text by Matteo Vercelloni

THE OPINION
Innovation in the globalized society
text by Andrea Branzi

THE CENTRAL THEME
Blue
by Nadia Lionello
photos and images processing by Simone Barberis

Perfect white
by Nadia Lionello
photos and images processing by Simone Barberis

PORTRAIT
Matteo Thun
by Cristina Morozzi

DESIGN PROJECT
Design before the archetype
projects by Massimo Iosa Ghini,
Brodie Neill, Luca Nichetto
by Stefano Caggiano


SistemA
design by Studio Dal Lago Associati
by Matteo Vercelloni

ART
53rd Biennial of Visual Arts, Venice
by Germano Celant

OBSERVATORY
It’s just an illusion
by Laura Traldi

REPERTORY
Furniture transformers
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY
by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

]]> 2009-09-29 14:56:55 Interni n°599 Editorial http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,761,intItemID,762,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi Our conclusion is that today true luxury, from the spoon to the city, lies in formal reduction and in the talent of the designer who is able to express himself through intelligent use of materials and resources.In this issue: in Singapore, an international design hotel, but far from the image of globalized luxury; at Wilton, a poolhouse on the water; in Seoul, a house on the river that embraces a complex nature; in Hiroshima, a villa totally open to the surrounding landscape, and also to dialogue with the ‘city of the dead’ seen through the windows of the living area; in Mumbai, an apartment that is a symbol of the dynamism of the metropolis that is the locomotive of India, but also of the ancient residential precepts based on the science of vastu; near Prague, a tea house amidst the trees of a wild garden, for meditation and perfect fusion with the natural environment. What do these different projects have in common? They are all spaces that, at different latitudes and in their own specific ways, offer places to meet, to understand different local characters, in a reflection on form. Because many forms of architecture come from far away, just like the inevitable, necessary objects that reside in them. Our conclusion is that today true luxury, from the spoon to the city, lies in formal reduction and in the talent of the designer who is able to express himself through intelligent use of materials and resources. A conviction shared by Amartya Sen, from India, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, who reminds us, in the Encounter: “Rich or poor, we all live on this earth and so we have to make a commitment to environmental sustainability, in the interest of all countries, including the developing nations”. A way of underlining the fact that, among the arduous tasks that face today’s designers, there remains the need for concrete commitment capable of guaranteeing performance and requirements of ecosustainability. Parameters of reference that can be seen clearly in the career of Matteo Thun, the protagonist of the cover profile of this issue. Elective affinities that emerge when we look at transformer furnishings, capable of changing their form and function, while conserving the essence of their identity; or when we observe the innovative chromatic nuances of a plunge into total blue/total white, bringing out the design of forms and their essential impact.]]> 2009-09-29 12:25:24 Interni n°599 Summary http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,639,intItemID,759,intLangID,2.html NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNER

IN PRODUCTION
Barausse, Clei, Chelini, De Majo, Frag, Knoll, Koziol,
La Murrina, Movi, Slamp, Slide, Strato, Tabu

COMMUNICATION
The art of the aperitif
Image and design
Contemporary fairy-tales

IN FAIRS
Abitare il Tempo in Verona

SHOWROOM
Silvera in Paris
Molteni&C - Dada in London

ANNIVERSARIES
50 years of Ipe Cavalli
The Gervasoni generations

PRIZES
Premio internazionale Carlo Scarpa per il giardino
Medaglia d’oro all’architettura italiana 2009

TECHNOLOGY
A whisper in the night
Versatile surfaces
The new design of technology

PROJECT
Variations on Alcantara
The story goes on
Glass stories
Plastic with no secrets
A project of light
Green thinking

ECOLOGY
Diffusing ecology

IN MOTION

IN MOSTRA

PAESAGGIO

PROGETTO CITTA'

IN LIBRERIA

SOSTENIBILE

TRADUZIONI



 EDITORIAL

Design Thinking and Neo-Pragmatismo
by  Francesco Morace

Masters’ voices
by Cristina Morozzi

Interviews with entrepreneurs:
Nerio Alessandri; Alberto Alessi; Giulio Cappellini; Francesco Casoli;
Gabriele Centazzo; Piero Gandini; Roberto Gavazzi; Ernesto Gismondi;
Andrea Margaritelli; Paolo Moroni; Patrizia Moroso

Poor but cute
by Nadia Lionello
photos by Paolo Veclani

The made in Italy of today and of tomorrow
by Rosa Tessa

Generations of manufacturers exchange their ideas:
Silvio e Federico Fortuna; Giorgio e Massimiliano Busnelli;
Luigi e Paolo Bestetti; Sabrina e Alberto Bonaldo; Elisa Astori;
Matteo Galimberti; Rosario, Manuela e Massimiliano Messina;
Enzo e Francesco Fontanot; Luigi ed Eleonore Cavalli;
Claudio e Lorenza Luti; Carola Bestetti e Renata Pozzoli;
Riccardo e Alessandro Sarfatti; Andrea Lupi; Eugenio e Alberto Perazza;
Massimo Grassi; Vanna e Francesca Meroni;
Roberto, Alessio e Alessandro Minotti; Carlo e Giulia Molteni;
Ruben, Chiara e Marco Palazzetti; Nino e Laura Anzani;
Francesco e Davide Malberti; Paolo e/and Lorenzo Targetti

New classic
by Nadia Lionello
photos by Walter Gumiero










From the hornet to the spider
by Antonella Galli
introduction by Aldo Bonomi

Acquisition strategies:
Adolfo Urso; Giovanni Anzani; Elis Doimo; Adolfo Guzzini;
Carlo Molteni; Matteo Cordero di Montezemolo; Giampaolo Ristis;
Valter Scavolini; Edi Snaidero; Massimo Stella

Tables as sculptures
by Katrin Cosseta
photo and images processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino

Cogito ergo design
by Antonella Boisi and Maddalena Padovani

The designers’ thought from A to Z
Marco Acerbis; BarberOsgerby; Mario Bellini; Philippe Bestenheider;
Riccardo Blumer; Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec; Andrea Branzi;
Clino Trini Castelli; Aldo Cibic; Antonio Citterio; Claesson Koivisto Rune;
Carlo Colombo; Alberto Colonello; Lorenzo Damiani;
Michele De Lucchi; Rodolfo Dordoni; Odoardo Fioravanti;
Jacopo Foggini; Jozeph Forakis; Doriana e Massimiliano Fuksas;
Stefano Giovannoni; Diego Grandi; Gordon Guillaumier;
Giulio Iacchetti; Massimo Iosa Ghini; Alfredo Haeberli; Toshiyuki Kita;
Ferruccio Laviani; Lievore Altherr Molina; Piero Lissoni;
Ross Lovegrove; Ilaria Marelli; Enzo Mari; Stefano Marzano;
Jean-Marie Massaud; Alberto Meda; Alessandro Mendini;
Simone Micheli; Miriam Mirri; Massimo Morozzi; Jasper Morrison;
Mario Nanni; Paola Navone; Luca Nichetto; Fabio Novembre;
Matteo Nunziati; Roberto Palomba e Ludovica Serafini;
Gabriele Pezzini; Christophe Pillet; Marco Piva;
Matteo Ragni; Karim Rashid; Paolo Rizzatto; Marc Sadler;
Denis Santachiara; William Sawaya; Matteo Thun; Paolo Ulian;
Joe Velluto; Marcel Wanders

Net fever
by Katrin Cosseta
photo and images processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino

Led technology
by Andrea Pirruccio
photos by Maurizio Marcato

Retailing
by Rosa Tessa

Problems and solution for the distribution:
Federico Marchetti; Rosario Messina; Renato Preti; Vittorio Radice; Gianni Salvioni; Massimiliano Troja; Alberto Vignatelli

TRANSLATIONS

FIRMS DIRECTORY
by Adalisa Uboldi


In copertina: DESIGNthinking
Design as planning attitude
300 players of the design system. Strategies: innovations and challenges
for the future."Made in Italy", yesterday today and tomorrow. Enterprise
projects: acquisition policies.

]]> 2009-09-02 16:34:44 Interni n°599 Editorial http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,639,intItemID,758,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi Why did we call it “Design Thinking”?
Because we like to consider design as a widespread planning attitude, a method and forma mentis of an increasingly complex society, where roles and titles are gradually losing relevance in favour of the participation and sharing of tomorrow’s design.100 thoughts, 100 projects, 100 products. That’s the ‘slogan’ we chose for the September 2009 issue, a most special issue - aspiring to remain in the bookcases of our readers – that wants to highlight projects, strategies and innovations, which the players of the Italian design system are carrying out to face the great challenge of the ongoing change. Why did we call it “Design Thinking”? Because we like to consider design as a widespread planning attitude, a method and forma mentis of an increasingly complex society, where roles and titles are gradually losing relevance in favour of the participation and sharing of tomorrow’s design. In this perspective, no longer adjusted to today’s requirements but to a vision of medium and long-term future, we deemed it interesting to stop for a while, avoiding for once the review of new products usually presented in the September issue. Instead, we thought of a number of reflections, that could gather the thoughts of all members of the extended family of design – designers, business owners, distributors – on this occasion asked to express their opinion about the chief, contemporary themes. We approached all types of manufacturers: some are wellknown worldwide as opinion leaders and trend setters in the consumer market, soma are at the second or even third generation of family dynasties with great company histories behind, some chose the acquisition policy to expand their brands and the prestige of the “made in Italy” all over the world. The same applies to the designers, selected by country of origin, personal details, professional specificities and schools of thought. Obviously, we don’t expect this to be an exhaustive report of all the opinions of the Italian design community. We certainly left out the contribution of many other players, whom we apologize to in advance. However, we hope – and we are somewhat convinced – that we sowed a little seed for new discussions, new considerations and ideas, that we are going to publish soon in a special number, but that should also be expressed in the “everyday life” of design, reported by Interni every month.
Gilda Bojardi]]> 2009-09-02 16:38:12 Interni n°599 Marcel Wanders http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,756,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:29:13 Interni n°599 Joe Velluto http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,755,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:28:35 Interni n°599 Paolo Ulian http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,754,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:27:58 Interni n°599 Matteo Thun http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,753,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:27:28 Interni n°599 William Sawaya http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,752,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:23:55 Interni n°599 Denis Santachiara http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,751,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:26:37 Interni n°599 Marc Sadler http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,750,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:22:40 Interni n°599 Paolo Rizzatto http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,749,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:21:58 Interni n°599 Karim Rashid http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,748,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:21:24 Interni n°599 Matteo Ragni http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,747,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:20:53 Interni n°599 Marco Piva http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,746,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:20:13 Interni n°599 Christophe Pillet http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,745,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:19:40 Interni n°599 Gabriele Pezzini http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,744,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:19:07 Interni n°599 Ludovica+Roberto Palomba http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,743,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:18:28 Interni n°599 Matteo Nunziati http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,742,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:17:25 Interni n°599 Fabio Novembre http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,741,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:15:34 Interni n°599 Luca Nichetto http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,739,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:16:49 Interni n°599 Paola Navone http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,738,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:14:37 Interni n°599 Mario Nanni http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,737,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:14:00 Interni n°599 Jasper Morrison http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,736,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:13:19 Interni n°599 Massimo Morozzi http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,735,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:12:38 Interni n°599 Alessandro Mendini http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,734,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:11:53 Interni n°599 Miriam Mirri http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,733,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 10:11:12 Interni n°599 Simone Micheli http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,732,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:50:35 Interni n°599 Alberto Meda http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,731,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:49:53 Interni n°599 Jean-Marie Massaud http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,730,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:49:12 Interni n°599 Stefano Marzano http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,729,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:48:27 Interni n°599 Enzo Mari http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,728,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:47:08 Interni n°599 Ilaria Marelli http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,727,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:46:23 Interni n°599 Ross Lovegrove http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,726,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:45:41 Interni n°599 Piero Lissoni http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,725,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 09:44:32 Interni n°599 Lievore Altherr Molina http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,724,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:32:09 Interni n°599 Ferruccio Laviani http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,723,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:31:27 Interni n°599 Toshiyuki Kita http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,721,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:30:46 Interni n°599 Massimo Iosa Ghini http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,719,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:30:06 Interni n°599 Giulio Iacchetti http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,718,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 12:28:53 Interni n°599 Alfredo Häberli http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,717,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-03 12:36:55 Interni n°599 Gordon Guillaumier http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,716,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:27:24 Interni n°599 Diego Grandi http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,715,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:25:59 Interni n°599 Stefano Giovannoni http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,714,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:26:40 Interni n°599 Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,713,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:24:59 Interni n°599 Jozeph Forakis http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,712,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:23:56 Interni n°599 Jacopo Foggini http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,711,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:22:05 Interni n°599 Odoardo Fioravanti http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,710,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:21:19 Interni n°599 Michele De Lucchi http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,709,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:20:37 Interni n°599 Rodolfo Dordoni http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,708,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:19:41 Interni n°599 Lorenzo Damiani http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,707,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:18:58 Interni n°599 Alberto Colonello http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,706,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:18:22 Interni n°599 Felice Limosani, Contemporary fairy-tales<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,116,intIssueID,639,intItemID,705,intLangID,2.html  by Andrea Pirruccio
 Two different approaches to art. We might say, antithetic. The multimedia, excessively digital and hyper-technological one of Felice Limosani (who started as dj in the eighties, then video artist for names of calibre like Brian Eno, and later the author of installations ordered, among others, by Unesco, Sketch Gallery and companies like Nokia, Louis Vuitton and Tod’s), who came to art through the marketing and communication areas; the other approach is the concrete, proudly “poor” one of the Plasticiens Volants, the company of street artists founded in Paris in 1976, that combines huge aerostatic sculptures with the physicality of 30 performers able to enliven important international ceremonies, like the conclusion event of the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992 or the opening of the Sidney Paraolympic Games in the year 2000. The unexpected synergy between two artistic concepts will originate the opening event of the 4th International Film Festival in Rome, taking place from October 15 to 23. The fil rouge crossing all sections of the festival will be the global theme of the environment: films, meetings with the protagonists delegated to the protection of our planet, shows and special events related to climate change will enliven the Focus by Gaia Morrione, involving artists with different education and background (like Limosani and Plasticiens Volants), but also environmentalists, entrepreneurs and architects. The opening show of the Festival (still by Gaia Morrione) will feature a dreaming and phantasmal interpretation of themes related to the environment and nature, and will take place in the historical gardens of the Academy of France at Villa Medici. So the synthesis between the artistic-conceptual universe of Limosani and that of the Plasticiens Volants underlies the staging of a fairy-tale from an old Berber legend telling the birth of the human being. A real oneiric ‘trip’, about the conflict between two worlds apart, the birds of the desert and the animals of the forest, which is supposed to have produced the fragile, volatile and sensitive human nature. Excited about working with artists bearing a form of art opposite to his, here is how Felice Limosani explains the event: “The performance I’m going to stage together with the Plasticiens Volants is a fairy-tale permeated by magic, addressed to the audience only. A fairy-tale meant as narration, a story, divided into three acts. The Plasticiens Volants carry out some aerostatic, floating sculptures embodying mythological animals (like the Rare Bird) or extinct, floating near crows, ibis and little owls. I’ll carry out video installations to re-propose, yet as a digital cartoon, the sculptures formulated by the Plasticiens. Then the video installations are going to be projected on screens animated by mimes, lit up according to a prearranged pattern. I wanted to express the feeling of movement, but in an innovative manner: it’s not the audience, that has to “swing into action, to follow the performance, but these performers, who are taking the show amid the audience. My way of doing art combined with the art of the Plasticiens Volants’ has produced a fertile and amazing chemistry: each of us gave their contribution to an event to reveal the deep meaning of a fairy-table, the old pleasure one feels telling a story”. The off-stage voice of a great Italian narrator, David Riondino, will increase the pathos of the narration.]]> 2009-09-07 11:35:29 Interni n°599 Retailing<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,113,intIssueID,639,intItemID,703,intLangID,2.html  by Rosa Tessa
  Design should lose the snobbish look it has too often and needs a new dictionary to talk to common people, a vocabulary made out of words such as “affordable products”, “Think big”, “integrated distribution models”, “product quality”, “environmental worry”. If we want to assure a rosy future to Italian design, it is not enough to innovate retail business, we have to revolutionize it! Vittorio Radice, CEO of La Rinascente Group, has no doubts about it, and his twenty years in turning around renowned Department Stores in the international arena, like Habitat and Selfridge, confer an aura of authoritativeness to his words. According to Radice, design today should talk to a vast number of consumers, it cannot confine itself snobbishly to a restricted club of admirers, it is just a matter of survival. To talk to common people design should use a new distribution vocabulary that makes it immediately understandable. A very emotional language, based upon a confidential tone, which makes people curious, entertained and seduced. He reports interesting numbers to confirm what he thinks: today 74% of purchases are made for recreational purposes and, out of a vacation week, three days are spent looking at shop windows and shopping.
He makes an observation on Italian shops, sophisticated but not enough visited by the large public: “They lack direction, will, entrepreneurial ability, they lack an idea. On the distribution front we are at the Stone Age. Be it sufficient to think that Zara, present in Italy since no more than seven years, counts 150 shops, an enormous number if you compare it with the numbers of the national chains, by far distant in number of shops, especially in relation to the amount of time since they are active in this country”.
Talking about Italian design entrepreneurs and retail business he adds: “People like to be very sophisticated, very high class, open up a shop in a sophisticated street, and then? They just sell three items. I would like to know: in this way what kind of service are we giving to the community? What are we telling to people, to the world? Absolutely nothing. The shops stay there isolated and somebody now and then takes a look at it and that is all, three lines on a newspaper and that is it. The problem is that “on the top” you find very few people, whereas you have big consumers on the sidewalks of your cities”. Radice is trying to enlarge the public of potential design consumers from within La Rinascente, where he has inaugurated since a couple of months Design Supermarket, two thousand square meters of space where objects, furniture, lamps are at disposal for a potential public up to 13 million people at least (this is the number of people that pass through the Milanese Department store yearly).
“People need to feel that they can have, they can touch a product, even if of exclusive beauty. Then they might end up not buying it because they cannot afford it, however they are happy to be able to look at it in front of their nose. This is a quite rare feeling in Italian design stores, where, on the contrary, people are intimidated, because they are looked through up and down. A product is made to be sold. The more houses it gets into, the better. Starck, for instance, has succeeded in selling his squeezer to everybody. This is the goal: to get into the majority of houses”. For La Rinascente Radice has indeed thought about very beautiful products, still presented in a simple and straightforward manner. There will be also a beautiful restaurant and good music to draw inside most of the by-walkers from the entrance door that opens directly on the subway station.”Shopkeepers should have the guts to sell their own vision of design through a products selection”, he explains, “When I go to Moss or to Moma in New York I buy what they have and ask for nothing else. Today you have to think big to be present on the market

In the meanwhile in this period of crisis somebody has invented new selling formulas. Renato Preti, for instance, after his last experience in the Opera Fund, where he participated in the acquisition of important furniture brands like Unopiù, B&B Italia and Moooi, has invented his own brand Skitsch. It is a ‘distribution integrated model’ that uses three tools: the shop, the web, the catalogue. It is devoted to a medium-high level client that passes through the Milan shop (the first of eight shops that will be opened in the next four years in European capital cities) and looks at the products displayed, gets curious and can order them on the web, as soon as he gets home. Merchandise is then delivered in a few days. “The two systems, shop and web, feed each other – Preti explains – the shop without internet would not be sustainable, internet alone would look very cerebral, because the buyer of house complements needs to look and touch with his hands what he is buying. As a final element we have the catalogue, that will be distributed in 500 thousand copies starting in September with the aim to get to 2,5 million copies in the whole of Europe in five years time” Since the new luxury code is contemporaneity, Skitsch is a point of reference for traveling consumers, people that can speak foreign languages, very different among themselves as to objectives and lifestyle, but using evenly Internet and smart-phones , made similar by the same, new, aesthetical vision.

Federico Marchetti, who achieved success with Yoox, the first European portal selling fashion lines, has believed in “Blackberry generation” consumers since nine years ago, when he started his business. Strong with his seven million visitors per month, the CEO of Yoox would like to make with design what he made with fashion brands, passporting them into Internet and having them open their one-brand shops and virtual corners. “To tell the truth”, explains Marchetti, “we have design on Yoox since 2006. We were informed by a test we made that 50% of design buyers were also fashion products buyers. We started out and decided to push and invest mainly in logistics, given that to sell design objects and complements we need large spaces.” The twenty houses already on board on Yoox – among them Alessi, Kartell and Flos – will double next year. “Our work is much like the one we made for fashion, but not the same. We will close partnerships to open up onebrands and shop-in-shop, we will create small little shops ad hoc and temp stores, in short a new-wave of online shops”.

From virtual to real shops the road gets more slippery. “Some 30% of potential luxury customers have disappeared due to the financial crisis, and a good portion of the remaining 70% is scared” tells Alberto Vignatelli, CEO of Clubhouse, who, besides its own line, makes the ones of Fendi and Kenzo. “Only purchases dictated by a practical happening work, like marriages for instance. You can see it in the sector’s data: since January to June exports dwindled by 40%. This is the general situation, made worse by the liquidity shortage of our most important clients, due to the fact that the final customer does not buy what he ordered, at the cost of losing any down payment he made”. The anti-crisis recipe of Vignatelli lies in practical proposals he makes to consumers: brand is important, but it is not enough, you have to offer to the market what he needs, that as far as he is concerned “it is not a product, but a life style, keeping in mind that in the next years ‘contract’ will push the development of design firms, even though now it is decelerating, with a growth above 20%, while retail will grow by 5%”. In the meanwhile you have to help out the retail sector that is trailing.

Rosario Messina, President of Federlegno Arredo, has a cure to suggest: “Everybody should regain its role: industry has got to produce and retail to sell. In short, everybody has to stick to its own business. The wholesale sector should work on their own and project their selling spaces themselves; they should not have them decided by the producing firms that level out shop windows proposing the same exhibition layouts everywhere. Then shopkeepers should begin to sell furniture again, not discounts, because it was the very discount policy that undervalued brands. Wholesalers and shopkeepers should come back and explain customers the quality of their products”. Yes, quality is central in the Federation of the wood-furniture system. Not only that. “We have as benchmarks the environment and the commodity wood. Environmental worries begin to emerge in market demand and represent a plus for those who can guarantee it. It is a winning line for our production in itself and for the whole value chain that it represents. Wood is a totally renewable commodity that in its growth lifecycle betters the environment, bringing it back to a right equilibrium. We are the forefront of a revolution for the democracy of beauty, available to all consumers, not only to an élite, and our “made in Italy” is a project and a production system that introduces the world into this revolution”.

Even though, if we listen to Massimiliano Troja, passionate agent for the most well known design brands of Sicily and Calabria “beautiful products and business projects backed up by meaningful resources are confined to any single area”. The message concerning the story and the “DNA” of a product does not reach the final consumer. Retailers, not only in the South of Italy, do not have a product culture and a sufficient training to communicate with the discerning nowadays consumer. Even industry has its faults – continues Troja – it neglected the distribution problem leaving retailers alone. These ones, guided by their individualism, keep up sales with discount battles and with purposeless proposals. Solutions? “On their side leading firms should oblige wholesalers to focus their offer and to pay attention to the way they are exhibited in shop windows. Retailers should invest on personnel, specialize in certain kinds of segments, get rid of individualism and promote a dialogue with producing firms, train personnel properly and utilize the tools technology makes available”.

From the biggest wholesalers some encouraging notes are coming. Salvioni Arredamenti has become a school case, and it is not the classic small little furniture shop, but given its size is a full-fledged firm with three shops in Brianza selling in total 17 million Euro, with a 9.500 square meter space in Lugano, with 5.000 square meter warehouse and 80 employees. We feel the crisis but not so heavily. 2008 has been a year of growth with a +15% “ tells Gianni Salvioni. “Our strategy is to keep on investing in the shops on one side, and on the other to keep on always selling high-end brands, but working on the product mix to allow the consumer to spend less without shedding quality and functions. Not last, you have to reassure the client on price, with a transparent quote for everything he is buying, detailing item by item”.]]> 2009-08-31 13:10:29 Interni n°599 Antonio Citterio http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,702,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:17:04 Interni n°599 Carlo Colombo http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,701,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:16:15 Interni n°599 Aldo Cibic http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,699,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:13:17 Interni n°599 Clino Trini Castelli http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,698,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:12:17 Interni n°599 Massimo Stella<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,697,intLangID,2.html “Estel has seventy years of experience in the production of furniture for the house; in the eighties it has started the activity in the sector of office furniture with the Estel Office brand. Then, the production of the group leader covers the office and home (closets) sectors. During our path we understood that the medium and long run target is the growth in its widest meaning, and from here the choice of widening the product range and the sales network, through the acquisitions through external lines. In 2005 we acquired Frighetto (designed couches and beds), in 2006 Deko (technical seats for offices and communities), in 2008 Design d’Autore, a group of companies among whom stands out the Simon of Dino Gavina (and, besides Simon, Arte&Cuoio, Triangolo, Sica, Zeritalia, RSVP). The company broadening meets our need for more volume and more synergies: it is so that Frighetto produces also for the contract, and Deko supplies technical seats also for Estel Office. Another undeniable benefit derived from this business policy is the broadening of the customers portfolio sustaining a wide range of prestigious brands”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved and conducted?
“Our constant investment is in brand awareness. Estel is for everyone the parent company, the guarantee, the frame in which every single brand finds its autonomous place, its identity, its road. Estel Office is the most important brand and its mission is to make the people work better. For Estel Casa, historically focused on the production of closets, we propose the concept il Riguardaroba, that is the product and physical space where are kept the life objects. So, a piece of furniture that takes care of the dear things of those who chose it”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Estel adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“The set of prestigious brands allows us to propose values to carry on over time; furniture has an intrinsic value, which is to transmit. In this time of social crisis, we choose to promote products which could confer safety to those who buy them. Moreover, with a brand like Triangolo, the furniture is in natural wood and vegetal leathers and hits a target of customers interested and sensible to environmental themes. As Simon history demonstrates, profiled articles last over time. We invest in quality and in architectural products, that were able to keep their own market, and so we believe in the development of the research and a careful analysis on the target, to meet the needs of a conscious and sophisticated customer, that wants certainties. Investing in new brands has a cost in the short run, but allows a strategy of quality and wide breath in the mediumlong run”.]]> 2009-08-28 18:18:14 Interni n°599 Andrea Branzi http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,696,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:11:28 Interni n°599 Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,695,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:10:44 Interni n°599 Edi Snaidero<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,694,intLangID,2.html “The commercial opening to the international markets has been a pioneer choice started by my father, cav. Rino Snaidero, founder of the company, already in the 60’s. Looking at the group nowadays, the internationalization has followed paths tied to a consolidation of our specialty in producing and distributing kitchens, regarding three lines of business: the retail one, through an international brands portfolio on which the group constantly invests (beyond the Italian brand Snaidero, the French ones Arthur Bonnet and Comera, the German one Rational and the Austrian one Regina), with the target of increasing their fame, their distinctive positioning and their concepts uniqueness. Product, brand, but also the ability to guard the modern channels of qualified distribution, which are today increasing. This is the reason which lead the group to acquire in the last years three franchising chains, the French Cuisines Plus and Cuisines Références and the Belgian Ixina, specialized in the distribution of modular kitchens and household electrical appliances, and nowadays present as in national market as in foreign ones, like Spain or Morocco. A strategy of internationalization which brought to 260 shops (total sales around 350 millions of Euros) which makes the Snaidero Group leader in Europe in the franchising distribution of modular kitchen. Finally, the B2B segment: having a portfolio of international and characterized brands available, made the group a referential partner for the contract operators, in the most exclusive segments of the residential development. This brought the Snaidero brands, and above all the German Rational, to furnish in the United States, in China, in Korea, at Hong Kong, only to quote some of the countries, the most beautiful buildings of the world multi-housing market, with exclusive and designed kitchens, both made in Italy or made in Germany”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Snaidero adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
With Orange, the last born in the Snaidero family, we wanted to use the negative conjuncture as an opportunity to trigger a radical change. But without betraying our origins. Orange is the result of an innovative system of international co-design, which involved a very enlarged platform of subjects, inners and outsiders, trying to listen to all the main characters of the supply chain that from initial conception carries the product to homes. This allowed us to resolve in advance the complexity factors and to arrive to a product simple to understand, project, sell, produce and install. We rethought completely all the company processes from the industrialization to the orders management, from communication to a simplification of the assembling phase in the houses. A rethought of the internal processes that allowed us to elaborate an European product, a new system in the name of the function, of the simplicity, of the project innovation and of the attention to the environment. After all, the insistent demand is that products should incorporate bigger and bigger quantities of service, in terms of time and efforts savings”.]]> 2009-08-28 18:10:59 Interni n°599 Riccardo Blumer http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,693,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:10:09 Interni n°599 Philippe Bestenheider http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,692,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:08:52 Interni n°599 Valter Scavolini<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,691,intLangID,2.html “Scavolini has a forty-year-long history behind, but the Scavolini Group is young yet, since it has been created in 1996 with the launch of the Ernestomeda brand. Our objective was to satisfy the needs of a wider and wider public to increase and consolidate our market share. So we undertook the road of supply diversification: the range enlarged concentrically conquering new market segments”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved and conducted?
“Scavolini and Ernestomeda are in fact two independent companies, each one with its own plants, suppliers, designers, commercial/distributive and communication strategies. Certainly the Group allows us to enjoy important advantages in terms of economies of scale but the two brands are absolutely independent”.

What is the composition of the group and what the target?
“Scavolini positions itself in a medium/medium high market segment with an opening also to the high segments, with the last proposals like Scenery and Crystal texture, signed respectively by King&Miranda Design e Karim Rashid, well known names of international design. Ernestomeda is instead positioned in a medium high/high segment with a specially refined product, carefully designed at a very competitive price. Not only that: Scavolini Basic lines cover the medium/medium-low target, for those who, more price sensitive, do not want to forget our quality”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Scavolini adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“We are concentrated on the continuous launch of high quality products for an ever more evolved consumer. We operate on medium-long run logics and the strategy is rewarding us even in this hard moment: in April, for example, the quantity of the orders of Scavolini registered a +2,3% in comparison with the same month of 2008. One of our strength point is surely the 100% made in Italy production, a value which is more and more appreciated and looked after in the foreign markets, where in the last years we have grown a lot. Another preponderant factor is environmental respect. From this point of view we developed Scavolini Green Mind, an ambitious project that see us more and more committed to the preservation of environment and resources. From January 2009, we use for the structure of all of our kitchens the ecological panels Idroleb of Mauro Saviola group, waterproof and with the lowest levels of formaldehyde emissions in the world. Moreover, thanks to a deal with Lifegate, we adopted ZeroE, the first energy produced by renewable sources with no impact on the environment: all the CO2 emissions tied to the production and to the use of the energy are compensated with reforesting works in Italy and Costa Rica”.]]> 2009-08-28 18:05:07 Interni n°599 Mario Bellini http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,690,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:08:07 Interni n°599 Barber Osgerby http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,689,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:07:22 Interni n°599 Marco Acerbis http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,112,intIssueID,639,intItemID,688,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 18:06:44 Interni n°599 Giampaolo Ristits<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,687,intLangID,2.html “The group expansion process began after the acquisition by Alcedo Sgr (a private equity operator) of the FDV Group company, that gathered the brands I Tre, Murano Due, Aureliano Toso, Gallery e Alt Lucialternative. The target of acquisitions was the constitution of an aggregating pole for the lighting sector companies, and the covering of many segments. In 2007 took place the acquisition of Luxit, specialized in cutting edge integrated design systems (as Onda of Isao Hosoe, Compasso d’oro in 2004), that allowed us to cover the segment of the technical and architectural lighting. In 2008 FDV Group acquired Leucos, prestigious design brand of lighting for inner rooms; the target is to conquer the North American market also with all other brands, thanks to the commercial strength that Leucos has in that area”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved?
“FDV Group, even though uniting the directing functions, entrusts its recognizability to the characterizing factors of the seven brands: everyone has a precise stylistic philosophy. Distribution is distinct, in particular that of Luxit and Leucos, that kept also an autonomous company name. The brand-new website www.fdvgroup.com undescores corporate elements to communicate the advantages of the synergies, though keeping specific elements for the brands. The website will contain a database of all the products”.

What is the composition of the group and what the target?
“The group is nowadays constituted by seven different realities. I Tre privileges cutting edge technologic contents, with strong values of quality, illuminating engineering and design. Murano Due follows the line drawn by the century-old Murano glazier tradition. Aureliano Toso Illuminazione dal 1938 attracts a lower level consumer with a simple and agreeable taste. Gallery Vetri d’Arte addresses a wealthy consumer with a classical and elegant taste. Alt Lucialternative is the brand dedicated to the young, with a good culture but with little money. Luxit catalogue is made out of products of technical and architectural character, thought for public and private places. Leucos blends the most refined design with the Murano artisan glazier tradition”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which FDV adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“From a distributive and commercial point of view, FDV Group is reinforcing its presence on the territory, for a more and more penetrating distribution; moreover it is consolidating the direct relation with loyal customers, because it believes that, overcome the present phase, those companies that have managed to keep themselves in a strict relation with the market will be rewarded; from this relation, moreover, the company gathers continuous information useful to elaborate and propose products close to the customer. FDV is moreover investing in technical innovation and in collaborations with internationally famed designers”.]]> 2009-08-28 17:58:56 Interni n°599 Matteo Cordero di Montezemolo<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,686,intLangID,2.html “We analyzed one of the most important sectors of the made in Italy, that of the design furniture, and we observed that there is not a real leader as to size, position and presence on the international markets. So, we have tried to force to cohabit in one group brands that made the history of Italian design, very different among them, because our four principal brands have no common traits. The strategy that brought to the composition of the group is coherent with what we know to do: it is based on what pools those who operate in the high end sectors: i.e. customers. Those who buy a cashmere sweater, a beautiful watch, or a beautiful product for their house have the same profile; the approach to the customer-consumer is the same: attention to quality, to details and to the development of prototypes”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved?
“We do not want to do nothing different from what the above-quoted companies have done until today, There is respect for single brands and for their differences. You will never see a designer that in the same year will work for more brands inside the group, or in a sales point a brand will never overlap another. The strength of the group emerges in the industrial part, that is the organization (purchases, logistics, administrative and financial part). It is a diversity in brands and a group strength in industrial terms. Every company has a CEO. We have a very close relation with the management, but once the strategy is chosen there is a very young management team that follows the development”.

What is the composition of the group and what the reference target?
“About the main groups, Poltrona Frau is the history of the classical but contemporary. It has in leather its raw material and innovation is made in this direction. Cassina, which has in its catalogue the fathers of design and architecture, works on a more industrial innovation. When back in 1973 it made the Maralunga it was a revolution; and that is exactly the direction that Cassina has to follow. Cappellini is the innovation par excellence, above all in shapes and materials, tied to new designers. Alias has to have in the materials innovation its focal point, be they aluminium, crystal or steel, also developing an outdoor line”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Charme adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“High end products are fully in the crisis, so it is necessary to bet on the distinctive values: quality, research and innovation. We have to talk about real contents: this transparency is very important to us. We are moving also with international alliances, in the Arab Emirates (in particular Abu Dabhi) and in India: we made two deals that are fundamental for the group growth, in two Countries significant for the furniture market. In Abu Dabhi we constituted with Mubadala, the most important government company in Abu Dabhi, which is developing the whole construction plan, PF Emirates, where Poltrona Frau and Mubadala have each 50% of the shares. The second alliance is in India with Tata Group: we constituted another company named Casa Décor, owned at 50% by Poltrona Frau Group and at 50% by Tata Group, which has the purpose of favoring growth in the Indian market. Moreover, the first class of Singapore Airlines is made by Poltrona Frau, as the first class of Etihad Airways, as lounges Etihad is opening in airports . They are examples of international deals in which we believe, above all in times of stagnation of closer markets”.]]> 2009-08-28 17:50:42 Interni n°599 Carlo Molteni<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,685,intLangID,2.html “Molteni made the first acquisitions in the 70’s; in that period we imagined that there would have been a development in the office sector, so we acquired Unifor and bought a share of Citterio, which produced rigged mobile walls. In 1980 we acquired also Dada, which produced kitchens. The group kept this composition through the years and now the acquisition of new companies is out of our perspectives, also because, besides the lighting, we manage to cover the entire furniture production”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved and conducted?
“Molteni, Dada, Unifor and Citterio are four different companies, which produce in four factories born a long time ago. Everyone has its path, productive, commercial and organizational, even though nowadays our target is to create more and more synergies between the brands”.

What is the composition of the group and what the target?
“Molteni and Dada cover almost entirely the furnishing field (only the lighting, as I was saying, is not in our basket as know-how and production) with high-end product created by international designers. A good portion of sales comes from abroad and all firms in the group are active in the contract sector. Unifor offers a great design product, Citterio keeps the same quality level but caters to a more utility oriented customer”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Molteni adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“Our goal is to exploit at best the synergies along all the productive chain. In production, for instance, with an exchange of know-how and reciprocal support in the solution of problems and in answering to specific demands for the realization of new products (our technical offices dialogue continuously). All the production of the group is located in Italy, precisely in Brianza. We intend to obtain then the synergies between the four brands also in marketing and distribution, above all abroad, to approach new markets, like Australia”.]]> 2009-08-28 17:41:35 Interni n°599 TARGETTI POULSEN GROUP http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,684,intLangID,2.html Speedier than light
Paolo Targetti, born in 1937, President. He looks after product design.
Illumination is a sector passing through a great transformation for more than one reason. The first one is technology. Just getting out from a long minimalist season, this sector is influenced by new building techniques that affect production. A second datum bearing on the project is the social push towards more sustainable products, more environment-friendly, that cause less luminous pollution. Third, the use of led that allows to achieve our projects before unthinkable: to illuminate underwater riverbed for instance, as we as Targetti have done in the river Garonne in Toulouse, France. Well, on one side this crisis accelerates changes already on their way, but on the other subtracts resources to make investments. We are investing on what could change the future: it has been estimated that 25% of energy used in illumination is utilized during the day. Paradoxical ! Why do we not use solar light during the day ? It is a problem that has to be solved. Targetti group is working on new ‘entities’ that can ‘capture’ in a certain sense, daily light, shedding less CO2 in the environment. It is a totally unexplored area.


To be a group, in a period of low consumption
Lorenzo Targetti, 40, for the last ten years CEO of the group where he has been working for twenty years. Before entering the firm he worked in the United States in an advertising agency. He looks especially after foreign markets development. He floated his firm on the Milan Stock Exchange and in the last years has made the most important acquisitions. His sister Stella looks after marketing
A group like ours is a complex concern and in periods like this it represents an even bigger complexity to manage. On the other hand, though, it balances the risk of losses and revenues, just because it has a portfolio of companies very different among themselves and strongly specialized. In this situation of crisis you find opportunities only if you overthrow stones, but you can find them. From a geographical point of view, for instance, we are developing Nordic markets where one of our firms is strong, Louis Poulsen.

Follow the money
Slimming “diet” and much attention to cost/benefit analysis. We follow the dictum ‘follow the money’ trying to rapidly point to where development chances are. We have aggressive tactics in the short run and a vision for the long run. With my father we have a live dialogue and paradoxically it is me who has a more conservative vision than his.

The country system that does not exist
The foreword that he who has a good product and service wins is true. But ours is substantially a financial, a credit crisis. Liquidity needs to be re-circulated into the system. The state, to help out the business sector, should not back up some sectors instead of others, it would be sufficient that it pays, according to Basel II agreements, the 60 billion of debt it has towards private business. We Italians lack the country system that refuses even the word ‘crisis’. And while in Italy we have the paralysis, European governments are investing on sustainability and energy impact.]]> 2009-09-02 18:03:33 Interni n°599 Adolfo Guzzini<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,683,intLangID,2.html “Our history begins in 1912 when Enrico Guzzini starts the production of horn snuffboxes. The sons Pierino, Mariano and Silvio will join him and together they will give birth to the Fratelli Guzzini. In 1940 they start to work on Plexiglas. Between 1958 and 1959 the elder sons of Mariano Guzzini, my brothers Raimondo, Virgilio and Giovanni, start an external production: Harvey Creazioni, the present iGuzzini Illuminazione. Giuseppe, Giannunzio and I, the younger brothers, joined the project. In the 70’s, anticipating market demand, the company changed from the production of decorative lighting to the production of the architectural one. The gained know-how found then its third development channel with Teuco. The company specializes in acrylic bathroom fixtures of innovative shapes and functions: from the round shower unit designed by Fabio Lenci (in the New York MoMA collection), to the patent for the ultrasounds whirlpool bath Hydrosonic. In 1990 the differentiation path leads to Gitronica: controlled by Teuco, it operates in the field of electronic control of household electrical appliance, home automation and lighting plants”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved and conducted?
“There is a common matrix at the base of the Group companies. It is founded on values like “entrepreneurship, ethics, courage and vision”. They are values that we have always lived with and shared; a sort of life blood that continues to feed all the branches of our family. The consequences of this philosophy resulted in the family holding – Fimag, whose President has been my brother Giuseppe until July 2009. In this holding were merged the shares of the six branches of the family in the operating companies. A pact allows us to regulate internal competition, participation to the various company activities and the various generational inclusions. Moreover, Fimag works as a common container from which – besides the specific business – it is possible to draw from (and contribute to) the different ways of living and experimenting innovation, the company culture, the positioning of the brand, the synergies with scientific and cultural partners”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which the group adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“The economic crisis we are facing reached our group in a special time. 2007 had been a generous year: the market answered more than positively and that pushed us towards new investments. Facing a crisis of this size in a moment of expansion requires answers as quick as smart: we did the possible to contain costs and at the same time tried to protect investments, especially those that support Research and Innovation. And if on one side we downsize, on the other one we keep to give momentum to the internationalization process. And to new products. What are the consumers demanding now? To reduce consumption, to not pollute, to respect the environment. We are working from this point of view. After almost one hundred years from the foundation of the first company, we also have the experience to say that often hard times are carriers of great ideas, unexpected solutions, lucky synergies”.]]> 2009-08-28 17:35:29 Interni n°599 RIMADESIO http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,682,intLangID,2.html The made in Italy makes auto analysis
Francesco Malberti, President
The whole business has been analyzed to bring improvements in every field, not neglecting even the minimum detail. We look ‘inside ourselves’ to grow. Our principal target is to improve product quality, customizing it in sizes and finishes, as a tailor made suit.


Coherence above all
Davide Malberti, CEO
I have been in this firm for several years. My work is mostly about control and goes from production to marketing, sales and communication. I work with a team of fellow workers efficient and determined, predominantly made out of young people. The project that we have been carrying on for years regards the coherence of style, communication and distribution. This work has been very useful to the brand, which is increasingly well identified, and that brings, day by day, an improvement in our results. The love for the enterprise and the passion for working were transferred to me by the founder and are always very important to me. The tradition for the quality furniture and the culture of the design are added values exclusive of our Country, which many abroad envy us, and are always assimilated to my vision.]]> 2009-09-02 18:01:01 Interni n°599 Elis Doimo<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,681,intLangID,2.html  President of Casamania by Frezza, Doimo Group, which includes the following brands: Arrital Cucine, Casamania,
 The company acquisition strategy: what are the reasons which determined Doimo choices and the acquisition strategies?
“In the growth of Doimo Group acquisitions played a relevant role; the last one has been that of Dell’Agnese, a Friulian company that produces day and night furniture and has become part of the group in 2004. Acquisitions are never casual but always tied to a precise general project valid for both house and office, which is producing for more market segments, every type of furnishing: from the whole room to the little complement”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved and directed?
“Every company of the group has a precise market positioning and represents an autonomous and distinct reality, both from the managerial and the commercial and productive point of view. This a precise company choice because only this way we can guarantee to every company the necessary speed that allows it to fight at best in the commercial contest in which it operates”.

What is the composition of the group and what the target?
“Today Doimo Group is formed by roughly thirty companies (brands included) which cover the medium and medium-high market tier of house, office and contract sector. Among the house sector, Arrital Cucine, Casamania, Dall’Agnese, Doimo Design, Doimo Cityline, Doimo Cucine, Doimo Sofas, Doimo Salotti, Ennerev; among the office sector are Della Valentina Office, Emmegi, Frezza, IB Office, Meco, whereas in the contract sector we have Doimo contract and ED contract”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Doimo adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“The group attention for new technologies and for research of innovative materials represents a constant in its history and so it does in this particular time. This allows to increase productivity, to improve production and to guarantee a whole series of further advantages in quality of product and service. Fundamental above all it is the comprehensive improvement of general organization of the companies in every function, without ever renouncing to have people grow”.]]> 2009-09-03 11:26:35 Interni n°599 POLIFORM http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,680,intLangID,2.html We train entrepreneurs, not just good department-head
Nino Anzani, CEO of Poliform Group with the cousins Aldo and Alberto Spinelli
Everyone of us of Poliform second generation is working to introduce the third one, our children, in the business. The intergenerational passage is not easy, quite the opposite. International data on the subject point out that passing a business from father to son is not an automatic process: it seems that only 10% make it to keep the business. We are half way through this process. Four of our children are already introduced in the group. We are training them with the idea of giving them a global vision of the enterprise and not just of training good department-head.

We sell Italian lifestyles
It is about six months that we keep on talking about crisis, so that we are now getting used to handle the fear of it and in the meanwhile we are all trying to understand how we can defend ourselves. The principal news of this phenomenon is that for the first time it regards everyone without exception, it is global, and we as a group have a confirmation of it since we are exposed in 80 different Countries (we just acquired Poliform USA). We are thinking about the strategy to adopt. As to the product, we are making it more functional, with a strong attention to cost and innovation. The challenge we are carrying on as a group, though, is that of making us renders of various styles, of more segments of taste and price. We have to communicate worldwide that the best design is in Italy, meaning a lifestyle tied to the culture of our Country.


I grew up in the firm
Laura Anzani, just turned 29, is General Director of Poliform USA. She is working in the family group for the last four years.
The teaching of our parents is fundamental. It is a real school, and it is the best one. Our fathers make us understand that enterprises are not guided with the micromanagement, but with an open and long term view. The long range view is what makes an entrepreneur.

The American bet
We had for several years a partner which took care of selling our products in the States. Since last March we decided to take care of it ourselves, and we acquired, after long and quite heavy negotiations, the 100% of Poliform USA, which manages 5 owned stores and counts 30 independent dealers. What I am personally doing is in this first work phase is to transfer in the American branch the Poliform experience, since the Americans used to manage it in a way that had nothing to do with our business philosophy. I am organizing a team to which I try to transmit the passion for this firm and its products.]]> 2009-09-02 17:58:55 Interni n°599 Giovanni Anzani<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,679,intLangID,2.html  CEO of Poliform Group, which includes Poliform and Varenna Cucine brands.
 What are the reasons which determined Poliform choices and acquisition strategies?
“Poliform was founded in 1970 as an evolution of an artisan company born in 1942. Since the beginning the company expresses a strong industrial conception: its target is that of exploiting the potential of an engineered and serial production. Poliform collection includes systems and furnishing complements for every part of the house: libraries, closets, wardrobes, beds. In 1996 the Varenna brand, dedicated to the production of kitchens, was added to the company structure. The brand was a historical Milanese name of the 50-60’s, which had been an opinion leader. The company had collapsed and had no helmsman. The acquisition has been an important occasion because it allowed us to complete the offer of furnishing for the house. Now, with the upholstery business unit (the first collection has been presented in 2006) Poliform is able to furnish entirely a domestic environment”.

How is the identity of the single brands preserved and conducted?
“Varenna has grown a lot since we bought it; it maintains its profile of innovative and trend setter kitchen, but with all the Poliform know-how about materials, respect of European rules, tests, the use of quality pastes. Moreover, it offers a wide range of choices and personalization, short delivery times and a position of international leadership. In the United States Varenna is considered the benchmark for the luxury kitchens. Poliform production is entirely Italian and it is a standard-bearer of made in Italy: we verified it even in July 2009, when the Italian government asked us to furnish the residences of Obama, Sarkozy, Medvedev and Berlusconi for L’Aquila G8. We represented the Italian style, made of project and quality, not of useless ostentation”.

Related to the present economic scenario, what are the solutions which Poliform adopts, the investments, the innovations to bet on, in the short and medium run?
“Our first step has been to widen the range of supply with the upholstery division; then, with My Life we created segments of project for different taste areas, adapting them to our clients profile. But – what is fundamental – we worked on extending a range of prices, from medium to high level, passing through various degrees. Today Poliform offers the chance of furnishing entirely a 80 mq apartment spending no more than 30,000 Euro, kitchen included, with the same quality and service as ever. I find it necessary to respond to the current market, in which purchasing power has decreased. And to do this we also changed the type of communication: the brand was perceived in the high end; now we want to transfer all the possibilities of range that Poliform can offer also to a target of young people and with more affordable solutions”.]]> 2009-08-28 17:25:46 Interni n°599 Aldo Urso<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,678,intLangID,2.html “Furniture has represented in the last years one of the leading elements of the made in Italy because of two reasons: the first one is tied to the huge real estate boom happened in many Countries – let us think mostly about Russia and the East European Countries – which determined a growth in demand of furniture products. The second one is that Italian furniture means design, and so a way of living, of conceiving the space, directly related to the personal style that made in Italy managed to define and promote into the world. A style that expresses itself as much at table as in clothing and in caring for the working and living environment. They are three of the famous four A (food-farming [agroalimentare], clothing [abbigliamento], furnishing [arredamento], automation [automazione]) which are still promoting Italian style. It is undeniable, though, that nowadays we are going through a crisis of the real estate market, which originated in the United States and got spread in other Countries, more specifically in the two European areas that had grown too much compared to the real resources they put on the field: the Eastern Atlantic Coast (from Iceland to Great Britain, to Ireland, Spain and Portugal), where the crisis mostly assumes the traits of a real estate financial bubble, and the Central and Eastern Europe (Latvia, Ukraine, Romania, Czech Republic and Hungary), where, maybe more than in the United States, the financial and social crisis is substantial because it started from a real estate boom not supported by a real growth of the Country wealth. In this difficult situation, which obviously conditions the sale of furnishing products, Italian furniture resists better than others because it goes over the simple proposal of the product and positions itself in a medium-high segment of the market, which is the least affected by the global crisis”.

What are the international market areas which will grant the fastest recovery for Italian design firms?
“I think that Italian design has done the right thing betting in the last years on the new markets of the emerging Countries, which will continue to grow even during these months of serious global economic recession. Above all they will grow more in the next months or years of economic recovery. I am referring first of all to Russia, to the energy producing Countries as a whole, so to the Opec Countries. First energy cost grows, and then recovery comes. It will happen in many Arab Countries, so in that part of Middle East that goes from the south Mediterranean coast to the Arab Gulf, to Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, to Kuwait, I hope in a short time even to Iran, besides the Emirates that today are clearly slowing because of the real estate financial bubble. Let us add the other southern coast of Mediterranean, that of Maghreb, which has recently registered significant growth rates and more will register in the future, considering that the Libyan market will surely give us great satisfactions. The Italian design strong point will be its flexibility to the single markets taste. Clearly, the kitchen offered to the Russian or Arab market will be very different from the one designed for the Italian market. Tastes change, sizes change, materials change, colors change, and this ability of making a proposal which is identified as Italian but that models itself around the single peculiarities of each Country is the strength of our design”.

Do you believe that Russia will recover quickly from the present stop?
“Above all Italian entrepreneurs think so, and they have the best antennas and they recognize to Russia a skill in reacting better than other settings. Besides being the biggest world deposit of energy and raw materials, Russia is a Country that needs to renew completely its real estate, which dates back to Krusciov era and is composed mostly of four floor same size apartments of about 25-26 mq without an elevator. Clearly, these assets cannot just be restructured, they have to be rebuilt and then furnished. What has value for the furnishing industry, it has even more for the design. Russia has now a percentage of rich people, testified not only in Moscow, but also in other cities and development poles – even in Novosibirsk, Siberia -, who obviously likes the luxury product or the Italian excellence product anyway. It is a very receptive market for the made in Italy; as it was in recent times, it will be more in the future”.

As of today, what production sector is more developed abroad?
“Food and pharmaceuticals are historically the anti-cyclical sectors during heavy economic recession. In these situations, they grow more for reason tied to psychological factors. We know that the crisis will not be easy, it will be long and devious. That there will not be a V recovery, as in recent past, and not even a U recovery, as in the early eighties recession. It will probably be a roller coaster crisis, and so a crisis with moments of recovery and then new falls. We have to orientate better in this rough water, we can do it and above all it can
be done by the Italian companies which are able to understand the market moods and to head for the new markets. Furnishing will surely be able to overcome this crisis factor if it will bet even more on quality, innovation and new emerging markets”.

What are your expectations for recovery?
“This will be a hard year, marked by contraction of our exports. It will be though a smaller contraction than that of other big exporting Countries as Japan, Germany, United States and China. In the second part of the year there will already be some improvement signals related to some markets: those of the Far East, as China and India, but also those of some emerging Countries. In Latin America, for example, we got to pay attention to Brazil, a market that grows significantly. But above all I would look at the oil and energy producing markets, which will exactly be the first to recover. We have moreover to pay attention at resisting in the European Countries and in the United States, markets which are fundamental to us, but whose consumption levels will return to those of 2007 only in a few years. In the near future consumption will grow slower in those Countries where they grew faster before. They will become bigger, though, in the Countries that have a high birth-rate, in those that have huge energetic resources, in the Countries of the South East of the planet. We should direct our companies where a middle class is being born that today still sees as a dream Italian come quality products, a dream that is starting to come true, though”.

How can the made in Italy companies make a system, those of the furniture and fashion design in particular?
“I believe that all “four A” of Italian excellence should work together: furnishing that made its way with its style; clothing that has been for a long time the principal card of made in Italy; food, which is nowadays the field growing the most in the world; automation, which we should not forget it is the biggest item of our exports. Today, little FIAT is proving how world consumption is changing. Just four-five years ago it should have been acquired by General Motors because it was thought that it could not meet market needs. It was
fortunately considered a bad solution, self-defeating for the Italian productive system. The Agnelli family bet its resources, the banks believed in the project and above all they found a great manager who has been able to create new products in line with the market development. This year little FIAT acquired Chrysler without paying a single Euro. And it could get involved and take the lead in other meaningful international operations.
What is the moral ? That nowadays there is no need for huge sizes or huge resources. There is an extraordinary need though for new products attuned to the new world consumption. Americans will no more limitlessly buy big SUV and Limousines, they will turn for the first time toward cars more appropriate for their growth chances. City cars and motorcycles will be the New York vehicles in next months”.

Your experience as a traveler and globe-trotter does suggest you any practical advice to give to the furniture Italian design industrialists who want to reinforce their presence abroad?
“First of all I would advise them to work together in promoting the Italian brand, the specificity of Italian product, and to do it with the other three A, and so with food, clothing, adding perhaps also a Ferrari and 500 which are now and will be in the future symbols of the car sector. Working together is the main thing, promoting together Italian products and then insist more on product innovation in terms of design and materials. If the world we knew (which has finished with the crash of the real estate financial bubble) looked at size – of the car, of the house, of furniture - the one we have in front of us is a world that will lever on environmental needs. So I would insist on new materials, on innovative design, on environment-friendly products, because attention for the environment and for a dimension of consumption more caring for resources savings will be the flywheel for the future”.

(interview by Gilda Bojardi)
]]> 2009-08-28 17:07:26 Interni n°599 PALAZZETTI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,677,intLangID,2.html Functionality and energy saving
Ruben Palazzetti, CEO
The challenge is difficult and thrilling: to charm the consumer with something useful and functional, together with a great environment-compatibility content. We invested a lot on Choro, a multi-energy integrate system, which allows different types of energy – solar, wooden biomass, fossil fuels - to talk among themselves, in house, with the possibility of having an integrate heating plant, built in function of one’s own needs and lifestyle. It works autonomously, it is environmentally good and it saves a lot of money in comparison with traditional systems.


Co-marketing target
Chiara Palazzetti, Marketing Director
I’m responsible for communication and marketing, though in a family business as ours it is hard to be tied to a specific role. Our target is to keep the leadership in our field and promote innovative ideas, both from a technological and aesthetical point of view. To obtain it I have in mind the business model of a firm which distributes the products through qualified and affiliated resellers, making co-marketing projects with them.


My father is a “volcano”
Marco Palazzetti, Research & Development manager
I look after research and development, but I frequently follow also the production line and the management control. I’ve worked a lot on our last born, Choro, to simplify the management of the domestic plant, enhance at best the alternative energetic sources (sun, wood,…), reduce the consumption and save money on the bill. My father is a volcano of ideas and to follow him in everything would be necessary to reinvent and reorganize the business every day.]]> 2009-09-02 17:55:26 Interni n°599 MOLTENI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,676,intLangID,2.html ‘Green’ certifications to compete internationally
Carlo Molteni, CEO
We are in a difficult time where office furniture is a sector under water more than any other. Here is our anticrisis recipe: First: we make more versatile products. This year at Salone del Mobile we presented a bookshelf that can be more important or simpler, according to how you compose it. Second: Leed certification that comes from the US and Canada and will be widespread rapidly even in Italy. It concerns the building as a whole and gets issued on the basis of environmental compatibility of the building and of the furniture which is inside. From our side it means to guarantee that woods come from certified forests, that do not do harm to the environment and that they have zero emissions, that our production process is not provoking environmental damages and even that we, as a firm, have a low level of emissions. It is a problem that goes beyond the crisis, and that well dealt with, gives you an advantage over competition. Third: we are looking more and more to integrate our four companies through synergies, with the objective to diminish costs and to expand business.


First of all, the client
Giulia Molteni, 30, responsible for retail division of Molteni Group. She takes care especially of the flagship stores in Milan, New York, London (they opened last December) and Paris
I have been working for two years in my firm and I opened the division direct retail. I studied economics at Bocconi and as soon as I got out of it I worked as a retail manager at Loro Piana in the United States. My idea is to use the store as an integrated communication tool: to develop the brand, to acquire new customers and to have a privileged observatory in the market. Fundamental is the customer service. The client is at center stage of any kind of thoughts and I am setting up a more detailed post sale service that will provide us with a series of useful information.]]> 2009-09-02 17:52:31 Interni n°599 From the hornet to the spider http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,111,intIssueID,639,intItemID,674,intLangID,2.html introduction by Aldo Bonomi by Antonella Galli
introduction by Aldo Bonomi
 United shall we win ? Maybe. Certainly multi-brand groups that chose a strategy of acquisitions and product differentiation approach the market flexibly. Trying to position themselves in the center of a value-web. Hornets. This is like the pocket-size multinational companies of Italian design, that carried the made in Italy from the industrial districts to the world, were called. Little, manufacturing oriented, family-run, they flew high in the sky of globalization. Surprising and annoying all those economy scholars who thought that kind of capitalism - exactly like the hornet – couldn’t even take off. At the base of this lucky chemistry there was the company as a life-project, not only as a molecule of the capital. The ability to continuously innovate the objects sense and meaning, redefining and overcoming the very concept of mature product or field. The successful mix between tacit knowledge of the local artisans and the flow-knowledge of the Italian and international designers. And the Darwinian consciousness that not the biggest or the smartest survives, but only the one that better adapts itself. From this last point of view, anyway, we can read the recent tendency to create company-groups of Italian design. Adapting to the new post-fordist scenario that puts the consumerclient – with his needs and desires – at the centre of a complex value-web, the hornet tries to transform itself into a spider. Guarding the markets through the updating of its distribution network and of the channels of promotion. Improving concentrically its supply to answer adequately every question (“from the little complement of furniture to the whole room”, as one of the interviewed firms tells us). And aggregating a critical mass of capitals to better invest and cut costs. Beware, though. Because, if the global projection dilutes rootedness and territorial identity; if complex and cold structures substitute the life-project and its lucid adaptive folly; if the balance is lost in the subtle tension between the local stratified knowledge and the global network where boils the magma of the small and big names of design; if we renounce to the radical innovation of sense, being content of following fashions and trends canonized elsewhere (today green and durable, tomorrow who knows what?... ); if, in other words, the spider, in its metamorphosis, loses the memory of the hornet that it was, then it risks to find himself prisoner, not master of the value-web. And in time of crisis, nothing is worse than going to sleep as a spider and wake up as a fly. (A.B.)]]> 2009-08-28 16:56:02 Interni n°599 MINOTTI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,673,intLangID,2.html The product as assets
Roberto Minotti, CEO together with his brother Renato
The true change lays in the way consumers approach purchases; they will, from now on, pay a lot of attention and will have the sense that a purchase is an investment that has to last a long time. Since there is no money to ‘throw away’ the sense of the product as an element of your wealth is fundamental. The same is for quality, for brand importance, its history and the values of a family that passionately manages his business. Every industrial sector will be subject ever more to these sane and simple rules. Taste could adhere to forms and styles more reassuring that convey the feeling of a long last. Our collection for this year follows this objective.


We believe in our team
Alessio and Alessandro Minotti are the 33 years old children of Renato Minotti. The first one is engaged in Research and Development and procurement; the second one in the commercial sector and he is responsible of one-brand shops.
Our entrance into our firm took place when we left university and since then we luckily work with our fathers that are entrepreneurs able to communicate passion and knowledge. We believe a lot in our team and in daily discussion with others: it brings very good results. Market today has to be approached with ever greater knowledge and with products that can espouse design and traditional values.]]> 2009-09-02 17:49:53 Interni n°599 MERITALIA http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,672,intLangID,2.html The courage to invest on special products
Vanna Meroni, responsible for the commercial residential area, follows also projects and products. Giulio Meroni is President, responsible for the contract area, the son Stefano, 34, in the firm for seven years, is Vice-President and follows the contract sector
I wish the anxiety brought about by the crisis will not have design firms take wrong decisions, like the ones of changing their DNA and of not being consistent with their brand features. It is a difficult time. Retailers are full of goods, the crisis is there and people buy less. Firms should have the courage to invest on special products. We are following that path. We opened the shop in via Durini and now we want to enter the Japanese market. We are negotiating with a distributor to build a commercial organization in that area, and why not to make there small production lines. Japanese consumers are important for our future: they do not copy, love design and have culture to appreciate it. Secondly we will invest opening direct selling points, in Rome and London.


Knowing how to tell product stories
Francesca Meroni, 30, graduate in Communication Science at La Sapienza University in Rome has been in her firm for four years. She will follow marketing and communication but today she is responsible for the shop in via Durini, Milan
I manage the Milanese selling point with great personal involvement. I put into it all my time and passion. I believe it is essential to communicate to a client enthusiasm for our products, telling him their story. Beyond selling couches and chairs we also make custom complements and wooden panelling and I myself go to see customers, who very often want to be followed in person by me and have little time to spend. The relationship with a client is much more complex than it seems and what I try to convey to my colleagues and in my firm is the importance of giving a value added when you serve a customer.]]> 2009-09-02 17:46:41 Interni n°599 MATTEOGRASSI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,671,intLangID,2.html Stop with waste
Massimo Grassi, 48, CEO of Matteograssi. Together with him work two brothers and three sisters all in their forties
We are witnessing the crisis of the economic system as it has been conceived in the last sixty years. We are in front of an epic change. I hope everybody realizes it and takes adequate measures. This crisis will change the way of making purchases: it will have people spend money only for something that is really worthwhile, something more in respect of what they already have. After this period the distance between the offer of high and low products will be even wider. We are a historical firm, founded in 1880, strong with traditions even as artisans and we are distributed in the whole world. We are walking towards a right direction, but we are accelerating in respect of critical points we have to overcome. For instance in this period what we are doing is trying not to ‘waste’ beauty. What I mean is that we make too beautiful objects and it is useless have people pay a too sophisticated quality that is not even perceived. You have to make products calculating everything perfectly without any waste. Another thing: you have to make retailers loyal with more exclusive commercial policies.]]> 2009-09-02 17:44:06 Interni n°599 Renzo Rosso<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,670,intLangID,2.html A: As I always tell the people at my company, moments of crisis are also times of great challenges that should be met with courage. Companies with strong know-how and creativity have the possibility, precisely in these moments, of emerging and standing out even more, unlike those firms that have emerged only due to fashion, without professional capacities. For Diesel, which has created products that stand out for their know-how, quality and innovation for over 30 years, this is undoubtedly a moment of great potential.

Q: Are brand names still appealing for consumers who have gotten thriftier and spend less on appearances?
A: Brands are and will always be important points of reference, if they remain true to their consumers. In our case, Diesel fans all over the world love us precisely for what we represent: for the lifestyle we express at 360 degrees, which represents them. The good thing about today’s consumer is the capacity and desire to mix brands like Diesel with vintage clothes or stuff found at markets all over the world.

Q: Is it worthwhile to enhance the aura with collateral operations in the fields of art, architecture, advertising, or is it better to concentrate on products?
A: Both: consumers pay more attention to quality with the right price, but they also want to identify with a brand that goes beyond products, and has the same philosophy of life, interpreted in all areas.

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, the perceived value of the brand?
A: The right price is an increasingly crucial factor in people’s choices, and this is a matter of perceived value of the brand, so brands pay more attention to marketing and communication, besides making quality products. Diesel, in this sense, has been a pioneer, and its early ad campaigns already involved strong, irreverent communication, marking a major change in the approach to consumers.

Q: Does your diversification into the sector of design for the home depend on the difficulties of the fashion sector, or is it dictated by the desire to create a total look, to make consumers into complete Diesel addicts?
A: Diesel is a lifestyle brand. Consumers choose us not just for products, but also for what our brand represents: a lifestyle, values, an ironic, irreverent, creative approach. We began this adventure in the home sector to offer our customers the possibility of expressing themselves and their style through personalization of their homes, which today are increasingly also used as places for work and socializing, not just intimate living.

Q: What reasoning guided the choice of the partners for the Diesel home collection: shared geographical origins, reputation of the brands, industrial reliability, contacts with designers...?
A: For over two years we looked for the right partners, capable of meeting our needs in terms of quality and know-how; Moroso and Foscarini are two leaders in the design sector, the best there is in terms of quality and professionalism. But above all, they were chosen for the enthusiasm they have put into this new project.

Q: To thrill or to reassure the consumer?
A: Thrills are the foundation of our work.

Q: Are youthful cool hunters unleashed around the world sufficient to stay ahead of trends, or are the charisma and intuition of an entrepreneur also required?
A: Our creative team does a lot of travel for research around the world, but managerial intuition is also important, to condense all the input in a successful product. We are very lucky today: thanks to the Internet we can ‘travel’ anywhere, quickly, right from the sofa at home.

Q: Is it time to follow trends or to shuffle the deck and try to stay ahead, to amaze people?
A: Our DNA is still based on creativity and innovation, we like to amaze our fans with irony, irreverence and courage.
]]> 2009-08-28 16:22:35 Interni n°599 MAGIS http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,669,intLangID,2.html Liquid wood, the future of design
Eugenio Perazza, President
Our answer to the new consumption liturgy is an unedited generation of products that will certainly mark the future of our firm. We have invented something that before just did not exist, the illiquid wood, a material that confirms the beginning of a new kind of projecting. With this apparent paradox we answer to the needs of new consumption. Here is how: with wood and waste recycling, very finely ground, we get a sort of flour that is made into a dough and finally injected to obtain chairs or any other object we decide to make. Moral: using the same technologies we use to work with plastics we manage to make 100% bio-degradable products and recyclable to infinity. From this ‘invention’ springs out a new design language. An example. If, in the dictionary of solid wood a hole made in an object represents a cost because it is another operation to perform, in the language of liquid wood a hole is an economy under different points of view, in terms of material, given that you subtract, of energy saving and of production cycle. And then, with the new generation of industrial processes we succeed in making productions impossible with traditional technologies. A new generation of objects emerges and to project them we have put together a team of good designers like Stefano Giovannoni, Andrée Putman, Marcel Wanders. In short now that everybody is making plastic objects, Magis goes beyond and it is already working on other materials - like for instance plate and aluminium – but it is exactly on liquid wood that we will be able to say something truly original. It is just the beginning of a new path, in a short time we will be experimenting with ‘liquid leather’. We are happy to walk on a virgin path because the essence of our firm is just to be the first mover.

Alberto Perazza, Sales and Marketing Director
I have been working in my family firm for about 13 years and I am involved in sales and marketing, even if my job is not limited to that, but I follow the firm as a whole. In these days I am focusing my attention on a few foreign markets. First among them the United States, where we are building a warehouse to speed up distribution and lay the foundation to develop, in a second time, a Magis USA. Another focus we are working on is Japan, a quite young market for us, given that we just started with a branch one year ago. If my vision is different from the one of my father? Substantially no, but he is too product oriented, to me instead there are other important tools like communication and human resources.]]> 2009-09-02 17:42:21 Interni n°599 ANTONIO LUPI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,668,intLangID,2.html The ‘tailored’ design turns the crisis off
Andrea Lupi, one of the four brothers who manage the firm. He takes care of image and product
With us, the second generation managing our firm, the project of the bathroom has become ‘tailor made’ and to custom by 80 per cent. It is a vision of the bathroom that in this time works given that the market is paying for our artisanal ability : last year sales grew by 30 per cent and in a few months we made important investments, opening up one-brand shops around the world: in Milan, in Australia, in Vienna and Chicago. Next steps, in a year and a half: London and New York. As a model we became recognizable and rich of proposal. We brought the first fires in the bathroom. Instead of having the usual candles in the bathroom you can have a chimney that, framed into the wall, works with methanol.

When the shop is strategic
Retail should be much more strategic then it is in this period. Retailers should be quicker, richer of proposal and should make investments, make consumers curious with shop windows that often change products and image.]]> 2009-09-02 17:39:50 Interni n°599 LUCEPLAN http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,667,intLangID,2.html The country-system that does not exist
Riccardo Sarfatti, Founder
The role of design, product innovation, consumers’ logic, distribution, given the competition on a global scale, are changing direction together with our firms. There is another notable change, a generational change that implies a new philosophy, a renewed image, a different pool of people and requires time, patience, money. Here is the crisis coming just when firms are battling on all these fronts. Plus we lack the backing of a countrysystem, an eternal vice here in Italy. Scandinavians and French, with a country system that back them, have increased market share. Today we Italians are paying enormous prices for this lack of resources and many small businesses are at risk.


I have Luceplan in my blood
Alessandro Sarfatti, 40, CEO
When I was nine my parents involved me and my sister on the name to give to our firm and in the meanwhile some pieces of design came to the oven of our kitchen to get dried. In 1996 after graduation I worked in the firm for a couple of years, then in the US branch, first as an employee and then during the last eight months as a director. I came back to Italy as Sales Director and I am CEO since 2007. For a couple of years now I am in charge of the whole firm.

With my father discussion is always open
There are a number of issues that I discuss with my father. First, my management style in comparison to his is more team oriented. I have a penchant for working with a team of 5 or 6 people I completely trust, with whom I share responsibility, everyone with a strong education in a specific sector. Second, we have different evaluation criteria to measure people. I prefer “hands on” people I totally trust rather than the accredited manager with an aura that thinks he can solve problems applying universal recipes to my sector. Third, Luceplan was born with the mission ‘beautiful things for most people’ and this is a foreword I share, but there are oscillations in defining exactly those ‘most people’. He thinks about the mass, which I do not believe, because our product has sophisticated contents that you have to comprehend.

Generation passage is done
Managing the firm is an affair of mine. My father helps me, backs me and gives me his point of view. I listen to him and between us there is an intelligent dialog. Hearing my colleagues, there are many firm founders that are not able to delegate completely. According to me the presence of a manager with energy and passion is fundamental, and, to me, when you are 60 it is not there anymore.

My contribution to the firm
I am pushing Luceplan toward the contract area, given that private consumption is dwindling. It is an idea born four years ago on which we have remodelled our firm, concentrating ourselves more on big sales. It has been a long process of transformation and it is not over yet.Luceplan is already a new firm, with a product firmly set in this direction. Certainly, now that we should have already seen the return of the investment the crisis came! Anyhow, those who choose the right strategy will have less competitors in a few years.

No fashion, only design
I opine that the level of consumption and of waste of the western capitalistic system has been excessive and now the crisis rules down the consumption measures. I hope people can see the consistency of Luceplan products, that have always been outside of fashion trends.

No waste
On the products plan our axiom is: less products with great innovation. The policy of the 20 new products is a waste. Let us take away what is superfluous.]]> 2009-09-02 17:37:31 Interni n°599 Patrizia Moroso<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,666,intLangID,2.html A: I’m not one of those people who leaps into the big change because the world is changing. I already did my change some time ago, and I’ll keep heading in that direction. There are some added arguments: ecosustainability, for example, a priority for the younger generations, if you produce interesting things. Not all designers are capable of operating this way. Tord Boontje knows how to do a lot with a little. On the other hand, it is useful to talk about sustainability with Ron Arad: he has to make his forms. With Tord we are working in this direction. His latest project (Salone 2009) “Press flower table” uses a humble recycled material, enhanced by a solid paint finish, in the form of a film. This is an ecological invention developed by a young company in Udine, called Bagigi. We’ve been working with them for one year now. It is interesting to work with small companies that do research on alternative materials.

Q: Is it time to concentrate on big, safe names, or to look all around to find new energies?
A: You always have to pay attention to young talents. And schools. We will be doing a project with the Royal College in London, where Tord Boontje has become the educational director. It takes curiosity. For design to stay alive, it will always have to find someone who wasn’t there before.

Q: Hybrids, contaminations, grafts of different cultures, or a return to the roots of good Italian design?
A: I was born during the boom years of Italian design. I fell in love with it because I met Ettore Sottsass and other great masters. When Italian design began it was red hot. It gave me light, I believed in the possibility that it could be a revolution. Today its roots have dried up. Things change, you look elsewhere. Energies move, they travel. I look to Africa to find strong energies, to understand how to blend European thinking with African roots. I started with a very simple idea: to think here and make things there. Now we are also starting to think there.

Q: Is the brand still a strong appeal factor?
A: The brand does have great appeal. I realize, in my travels, that the Moroso name always has a certain impact. This renown also helps us to make beautiful things. It is important for it to maintain its value in time. It takes a lot to build a brand, but not very much to destroy it.

Q: Is it worthwhile to enhance the aura with collateral operations in the fields of art, architecture, advertising, or is it better to concentrate on products?
A: I like to enhance the aura, in particular, through collaborations with the world of art. In art there is total freedom of thought. Art sees. I’d like to mention, for example, my collaboration with Tobias Rehberger, who won a Leone d’Oro at the Venice Biennial this year. Design also has to come to terms with architecture, with the places where our objects will live. In an ugly place anything becomes ugly. We are building our new factory. The architect is David Adjaye, born in Tanzania, who moved to London at the age of 15. I discovered him at the Venice Biennial in 2003. He had done the architecture for the spectacular installation by Chris Ofili for the British pavilion. He is an architect who pays attention to art.

Q: Will communication still be decisive for the success of products, or are consumers starting to pay more attention to true, intrinsic values?
A: Communication is what you do, so your products are the best form of communication.

Q: To thrill or to reassure the consumer?
A: Obviously to thrill. Not to reassure. In fact, if anything, it is good to be a bit scary. Design companies always have to do something more.

Q: To follow the trends or forecast them?
A: I couldn’t care less about trends!

Q: Eclecticism or a return to greater stylistic sobriety?
A: Eclecticism. I don’t know anything about stylistic sobriety. I think it is marvelous to work with diversities.
]]> 2009-08-28 16:10:34 Interni n°599 LIVING DIVANI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,665,intLangID,2.html Communicating with art
Carola Bestetti, 30, spent her last six years working in her firm. The first three as a simple employee, the last three ones more involved at the managerial level
After the Liceo classico and economics studies I worked in the UK, in New York and Los Angeles in the Boffi show rooms, in a close contact with the public, That I have learnt to know well. A knowledge that I brought here, into the firm. Therefore when I entered the firm I was busy in the commercial side first, then in the American market and later on of product development. Today I am involved practically on every front. My mother follows the commercial side of the business and the relationship with the customers, while dad takes care of production. I am a filter in between, so I have these two areas of the firm talk to each other, whereas before they found hard to pass all the information. The area where I really contribute with something new is marketing and communication. I made a few deals tied to the art world because I always thought that our products are really related to that world, and therefore it is very effective to find links to bridge them. Retail should be helped - Clients are the big area of investment this year (we work 80% with foreign customers). Retailers look very much at our brand, at our presence, value how much the product they sell can be recognized, the actions that can convey it in other areas that have still a common target of reference. We will buy some pages less of classic advertising, and will invest a lot on the retailers front, letting them know that we can help them out in this critical time. We invite them also to visit our headquarters made by Piero Lissoni in 2007: our objective is to have them understand how we work and which is the quality of our products.

Management injections
In completing the handing over to me we will try to reinforce more our firm on the commercial side, to finalize a wide breadth strategy so that we can better follow international markets and serve retailers in the best possible way.


Essential design is the right key
Renata Pozzoli, together with Luigi Bestetti, her husband, is at the helm of Kartell
After years of unjustifiable excesses, it seems we are going back to a truer design, simpler, linear and tied to industrial research. This is a return that prizes our corporate path, designed together with our Art Director Piero Lissoni, a path relying on a concept of clean design,sustained by a strong industrial quality. Anyhow, in this period, I believe that a firm such as ours should strive for the best in any area, getting more organized and possibly keeping under control technological innovation, products and communication.]]> 2009-09-02 17:29:31 Interni n°599 KARTELL http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,664,intLangID,2.html Shop and product: one only vision
Claudio Luti, President of Kartell
Kartell should not change that much, but follow on with innovation and products investment, as it did in 60 years of history, since then Giulio Castelli, my father–in-law, was managing, until today. Sure, we will be now more attentive and thrifty, but the fact of the matter is that all springs out of the project quality. Strategy works well because products we made are strictly tied to the way they are distributed. Product and retail are two sides of the same coin, two aspects of an identical vision. Our products project is double-knit with the distribution project of one-brand and multi-brand shops, with the fundamental aim that they have to be profitable around the world. Besides, the logic of the durable, industrial, flexible, multi-purpose product is not enough; it has got to be trendy and to stimulate an impulse to buy. From this point of view, a Kartell shop is very much like an apparel shop, where products and shop windows are often changed. It is a formula I defined in 1988 but that I applied only ten years later, when I had the catalogue with the right products to keep up sales, and then I decided to open up the first two shops in Germany and New York.

Lorenza Luti, 30, Director of Marketing and Retail
I started working at Kartell in 2002. After I studied economy I went to make my first job experience at Ermenegildo Zegna. Then I switched to our shop in Milan, that is like a small firm. I worked for one year in Paris e since four years ago I am in the office for marketing and retail of Kartell. There is a lot to do in this area, given that we have 120 national one-brand shops, 11 of which directly owned, and 130 shop in shop. We have to maintain and manage the selling points, changing the shop windows theme at least five times a year. Last year I had a very good time in promoting personally an idea of mine, when I made a couple of plastic pump shoes that attracted a lot of talk…]]> 2009-09-02 17:26:41 Interni n°599 IPE http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,663,intLangID,2.html Not products, styles
Luigi Cavalli, President of Ipe Cavalli
We are in front of an international crisis that does not offer many alternatives, but almost mandatory choices. It is a situation, from my point of view, that pushes project designers to follow two main directions: on one side we have those that follow the route that brings them to think and project furniture everybody can afford, objects easier to make and to understand, conceptually simpler and even cheaper, in short, just to made myself understood, more “bread and butter”; on the other side there are those that follow the opposite route that brings to a quest for more specificity and originality, with more elaborated contents and more sophisticated crafting. Anyhow, if you want to see the glass half full, we have to say that this difficult time pushes firms and architects to a big movement. People make certainly more research to stimulate purchases. For many years we have been on the second front. In the last ten years of our business life, that this year reached its fiftieth birthday, we overcame the concept of ‘product design’ and passed on to project ‘housing styles’, that interpret homes in terms of entire spaces and technical areas, like for instance the kitchen and the wellness area. Among different housing styles, the one we named “Visionnaire”, that is unbiased in the richness of content and in its glamour effect, represented a turning point for our firm, opening the door to many sales points.


Eleonore Cavalli, 38, Responsible for Communication and Marketing. A graduate in architecture, with a postlauream at Domus, spent many years abroad. Her brother Leopold, 35, is CEO of Ipe
I have been working in my firm for ten years, but often I allow myself pauses when I go abroad , mainly driven by my passion for contemporary art. I believe artists today are the best interpreters of contemporaneity and these are feelings I share with my father. Mine is a particular job experience, I am a project consultant for Ipe. I preferred this formula to have time for travelling, that I believe is the best way to have our point of view evolve. My role in Ipe is the one of the “seismograph” , the distance I take from it allows me to have an external eye and to express a more critical judgment in its respect. I succeed in looking at it with greater objectivity. I have different roles: strategic communication, I take care of franchisees’ image (there are 13 of them, while in a short time we will open up in Cairo, New Dehli and Australia) and act as a filter between industry and creativity.]]> 2009-09-02 17:24:37 Interni n°599 Paolo Moroni<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,662,intLangID,2.html A: Let’s face it, the world is not going to stop turning... though certain economic models that were highly acclaimed yesterday, like the debt-based system, are now being criticized. We’ll have to make due with “a bit less” and work “a bit more” to keep what we have. In the end, it might help to revive enthusiasm, because the challenges start from a different context, and what really counts is the value of an idea, and we like that!

Q: Should design be reasonable, sober, or imaginative, even bizarre, to stimulate desire and offer gratification?
A: When possible it should be all those things, but above all it needs to perform its primary function: to serve. Art is increasingly blending with design and this is also acceptable in extreme forms, in the case of limited editions. Industrial production should never forget function, otherwise it would betray the true meaning of the term industrial design.

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, service and the signature of the designer?
A:True industrial production takes the function-quality-price relationship into account. Editions or one-offs can avoid that equation. In that case the signature of the designer, the refined aesthetic and very high quality of the craftsmanship, together with the guarantees of the editor, can justify the exceptional price.

Q: Are those who produce for an élite safer now?
A: No one has ever been safe, even prior to this situation. A niche product or one for an élite might have fewer chances, but it is a question of knowing how to manage things, of knowing your clientele and keeping it, avoiding shocks. You need to know how to wait.

Q: Sawaya&Moroni has grown and had success on an international level, starting collaborations with major architects. It was a pioneer in the sector of limited designer editions, a market that has grown and gained the attention of a larger and larger audience. What does collaboration with famous architects for small editions mean for your company?
A: Big architects, big projects, big adventures, big “primadonnas” and big whims, big difficulties, but also very big rewards.

Q: How must you be equipped?
A: You need to have a shared language, to know how to recognize, to interpret, to share a vision, to invest in ideas, to take risks, not only with economic goals in mind.

Q: Do prestigious signatures, at any price, still sell?
A: Not very much... The design, the project is always the most important factor, together with the quality of its making, with a few exceptions, where it is the artistic component that counts most.

Q: Architects have always been an ace in the hole. Is that still true?
A: I think so, but their influence will probably be less global, if only because of the reduced number of major projects that will be built, but above all also due to a change in the formal language, which will undergo radical changes and be influenced by thinking that is more philosophical in origin. Maybe there will be fewer “superstars”, and lots of architects will have to start designing for the community, not just for themselves.

Q: You have invented a specialization and a market for yourselves. What else can be invented?
A: I don’t know. In substance it was only an encounter. If it is true that the existence of an individual is based on language, it can happen only in dialogue, so we have simply exercised the faculty of language, establishing a dialogue between a designer, us, and those who listen to us. We talk about something together and the meeting becomes possible. This meeting has led to a specialization and a market, they are just consequences.

Q: Can a dominant stylistic trend be seen today, or are we living in an eclectic period of individual creative personalities?
A: The two trends exist, parallel, with different proportions. If by dominant style we mean “bourgeois trendy” that tries to appeal to a wide audience with pleasant things that avoid too much advanced formal research, then we can see this in the production of a great many companies, the majority. As a company we have always chosen the opposite path, which is harder.

Q: To thrill or to reassure?
A: It depends on the context. Surprise, as an element of novelty or invention, is also an important part for the success of a project, but it cannot be a constant, so one thing doesn’t necessarily exclude the other.

Q:Will sustainable projects like the Bella Rifatta chair designed by William Sawaya in 2001, perhaps a bit distant from your business, remain just episodes or will they continue, due to the growing sensitivity of consumers to environmental issues?
A: I truly hope they do not remain isolated episodes, so we have recently created another chair with a chassis in recycled PET. I must admit that we have not been encouraged by the results to proceed in this direction. Even today, the demand for eco-sustainable products is still very limited.]]> 2009-08-28 15:51:17 Interni n°599 FONTANOT http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,661,intLangID,2.html The Metamorfosis
Enzo Fontanot, President
The world of projects will pass through a true metamorphosis in all of his process, to begin with the brief, to pass over to the marketing office and get to the managing direction. The subject is one of shortening the duration of minimum development and implementation time, optimizing costs, reducing scraps to a minimum, shortening the distribution chain and bettering the real and perceived quality of products and services. It is a change undergoing in our firm. We have rationalized many sectors that are already giving practical results. On the other hand, change has always been in the firm DNA, it guided us in the road we have done so far, since we were a small artisan shop, until now when we are one of the first stairs producers in the European Union. Moreover, practicing continuous change is for us a permanent strategy, even though it receives, in periods like this, a further acceleration.

Change Management
Francesco Fontanot, Managing Director
I judge myself lucky having found in our firm an excellent organization that will surely allow me to reach our objectives, planned since a long time. My task is to consolidate organizational change, to strengthen research and development and to extend our market beyond European borders. Years ago I had already understood the need to diversify our sales network, to bet on innovation in products and communication. Results have come and this spurs me to follow on the same path.]]> 2009-09-02 17:22:40 Interni n°599 FLOU http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,660,intLangID,2.html Five years of changes
Rosario Messina, President of Flou Italy, USA and Japan
We are going through a transition phase that looks very complex and will prevent us from coming back to selling results we achieved once. For a definitive reorganization it will take at least five years, hoping that, anyhow, the market recovers in the first period of next year. Those who will survive are the firms with products and brand, that have good ideas and are adapting themselves to a market that, more than any other time, tends to pay the right price for whatever it buys. Another focus: today to be successful you need to research new materials, new technologies and new production systems.

Less products and perfected prices
This crisis will diminish the ‘monster’ number of projects presented each year by all firms. That number will be halved, there will be a more balanced and rational supply. Flou will present less products, with a quality/price ratio carefully studied. There will be a downsizing even on the production and distribution front. Today we have 20 thousand firms, 70 thousand artisan shops and 16 thousand sales points. We cannot think in perspective that those numbers are going to stay the same.

Beds, rooms, wardrobes
Flou has been a specialist of beds since thirty years, now it becomes a specialist for bedrooms. At the last Salone del Mobile we presented for the first time our wardrobe keeping the price fixed, but adding a 30% more of wood.


Manuela Messina, responsible for the Research and Development Center.
She graduated from Catholic University as a language enterprise expert
I always had a special feeling for fashion. I designed products that show clearly my penchant: a lamp with interchangeable tissue, and the bed ‘pochette’, where you can change the bedhead panel. I like to research for materials and production techniques found in other areas of business. For instance in a wardrobe I inserted a metallic grid made by a supplier that works in motorbikes.


Internet reorganizes the firm
Massimiliano Messina, Managing Director
He is 35 and has been following Flou for 8 years in commercial, administrative and production areas. He entered the firm after an experience in marketing at Kraft, Shell and in an Internet company, a portal of retail sales
We came back to emphasize the client relationship, but in meaningful part through new technologies. In the eighties and nineties the talk was about advertising and brand and communication took place among big media that had the same language. Today everything is much more personalized, you can talk directly even with your final client. In our firm Internet use has been determinant. It is one of the most interesting media. It starts as a mean to communicate with the customer, but it can upset the internal work organization. On our site we have a system that gives complete freedom to the client to build personalized items and can register his interests, giving us interesting indications on the future products to develop. The client projects on line the product he desires, brings it to the wholesaler and we are going to make it to custom. The same work that Nike does; with standard products but very easy to personalize. We get on average 30 thousand requests per year of estimate.]]> 2009-09-02 17:17:59 Interni n°599 Andrea Margaritelli<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,659,intLangID,2.html A: Apparently the crisis makes us take a step back. But history shows that things don’t work like a board game. You rarely pass through exactly the same point. Often it’s a matter of detours: almost nothing will be as it was before, but there won’t be anything radically different, either. Man’s genetics remain the same. Like his inborn ability to adapt. Charles Darwin said that “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Q: Is typological innovation a sufficient antidote?
A: It’s more like a vaccine. It has to be used in the moment when it is necessary, to belong to the orientation of the company. Or more precisely, it is like a homeopathic cure, to take constantly. If you call on innovation only to deal with emergencies, you run the risk of doing it too late.

Q: For companies like yours, investing in design has been a good strategy. Will it still be good in the future?
A: Intangible and immaterial elements are still distinctive forms of competitive advantage for the occidental economies. The developing countries, with low costs but also low levels of protection, focus entirely on the exterior aspects of materialism. On what the product looks like, what is immediately tangible. First of all, the price. Our job is to go deeper, to the layers below. And here the spaces to add value to products are still very big (design, respect for the environment, protection of health, representation of values and capacity to stimulate emotions).

Q: Is it better to rely on the prestige of big names or to invest in new talent?
A: Both, but with good judgment. The prestige of a name is not sufficient on its own. Neither is novelty. The focus has to be on substance, not looks. We approach personalities who share our sensibilities and show that they are in tune with the values of our brand.

Q: Invention or tradition?
A: For us those have never been contradictory terms. We have roots in tradition, because we work with wood. Innovation is necessary to interpret the tradition in a timely way. In 1980 we patented the Listone Giordano; then came design projects by Massimo Iosa Ghini for boiseries, and Michele De Lucchi for the Medoc floor, which evokes tradition with a distinctive contemporary sign.

Q: Investing in sustainability, certifying the origin of raw materials, can be even more important today.
A: Sustainability should not just be a buzzword, it has to represent real corporate values. It is not a banner you can wave as a guarantee of success. For Margaritelli it means concrete facts: in France (Burgundy) we have managed eco-certified oak forests for 50 years; in Umbria, on 160 hectares, we have planted 25,000 oak trees, obtaining forestry certification. In South America (Bolivia and Argentina) we have launched an ecocertification process for over 50,000 hectares of woodlands.

Q: Is it still possible for companies to invest in culture for its own sake, or is it time to concentrate on products and corporate strategies?
A: It depends on what you mean by investing in culture. Sponsorships as a phenomenon of pure economic transfer in exchange for positioning of a trademark are a thing of the past. Culture, on the other hand, seen as a fertilizer of ideas, remains very timely and is one of the most effective investments. For over 10 years we have been involved with art with the Fondazione Giordano.

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, the perceived value of the brand?
A: Price/value are the ingredients to balance in any purchase. In our case full correspondence between the two terms is real and documented. Just consider the fact that wood, even before it is worked, contains the value of time: it takes 180 years for an oak tree in the forests of France to complete its growth cycle.

Q: Flexibility or a return to more rigidity, as Paul De Grauwe, economist at the Center for European Policy Studies, recommends?
A: Rigidly anchored to one’s own values, with also with the conviction that great flexibility is need to interpret changes.

Q: To thrill or to reassure?
A: To thrill. The fact that there is still space for emotions is absolutely the most reassuring aspect.

Q: Expand the catalogue or concentrate on bestsellers?
A: Expand and diversify, but in the area of your own expertise, as demonstrated by our experience with wood paneling. From the core business of the Listone Giordano floors, we shifted our focus to vertical surfaces, making use of our experience and our tendency to add innovative content even to products rooted in the tradition. For example, now we are working with Massimo Iosa Ghini on a new, very striking project: LED backlighting for wood floors.]]> 2009-08-28 15:32:57 Interni n°599 FLEXFORM http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,658,intLangID,2.html A second generation export oriented
Matteo Galimberti, 35, Responsible for Marketing and Communication
Our firm was created in 1970 from seven members of the Galimberti Family, our fathers, still working in house. Five years ago four young cousins of the new generation entered the company with their own quotas: myself, Matteo, the youngest, Giuliano, export manager, Saul, who is an architect and Responsible for technical matters, and Luca, in charge of production and logistics. We are all forty. We are all Galimberti. With our entrance the international attitude of our firm has been reinforced and developed, following market requests, pushing exports up to 70% of sales, a level that before was reached by the Italian market. Two years ago we began exporting even into Brazil, Argentina and Arab countries.

Investing in retail
A determinant item in investing is retail and, at the forefront, service to retailers. To the seven monobrand shops we already have, we are adding this year a one in New Dehli with a local partner and another one in partnership in London. We are looking at America, where we opened up in Chicago, Miami and New York, and we are aiming at areas all to be built, like Brazil.]]> 2009-09-02 17:10:08 Interni n°599 Ernesto Gismondi<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,657,intLangID,2.html A: Lighting companies have two markets: retail and contract. First there was more retail. Today contracts are more important, for public projects. Retailers too, if they want to survive, have to gear up. This is a change that imposes new strategies.

Q: Is it better to invest in design, granting designers carte blanche, or to promote more market-oriented production strategies?
A: It depends on the designers. They have to be in the avant-garde. If they pay a lot of attention to tradition, then it’s better to stick with marketing.

Q: Should design be reasonable, sober, or imaginative, even bizarre, to stimulate desire and offer gratification?
A: It depends who you are and what you know how to do. If your intuition is sharp, go for it!

Q: In a saturated market or a phase in which people have little buying drive, what are the values that can convince them to consume?
A: The first and most important is energy savings, at the product level. We have to set up corporate strategy in the direction of environmental protection. It is not you that imposes it, that chooses it. It is the client, who for example wants LEDs because they last longer and consume less, and has accepted the new limits on light sources without complaining. Sustainability is an inevitable demand. We are now building a roof of the factory with solar panels.

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, service and the signature of the designer?
A: More than ever, it is the quality/price relationship that wins. There are no more fools out there! Everyone pays more attention, and people want efficient, lasting products at affordable prices.

Q: Is it better to stick with sure names, or invest in new talent?
A: To guarantee the life of the company you need both. To progress you have to take risks. But since you also have to think about the bottom line, you need to choose some reliable names as well.

Q: Expand or reduce the design team, opting for names that bring in sales?
A: Designers make sketches and send them. Gismondi takes care of throwing away the excess. You have to have a good relationship, and with designers that is difficult. The best thing is to be friends: to go yachting or skiing together. You need charisma to be listened to. It’s not enough to be the boss to say what you want.

Q: To thrill or to reassure the consumer?
A:To thrill. But you have to know your target well. It is no longer possible to make a common, useful product without decoration, without making it attractive. It has to be beautiful, both when it is on and when it is off. For contract, on the other hand, it can be more sober and technical.

Q: Is the brand still an appeal factor that can be boosted by investment in image and communications, or it is better to pay attention to the substance of products?
A: People have to perceive it. You can never relax. You have to make yourself known. In the front row. Spend time at the right courts. Post-mortem success is useless. Brands win when they are a guarantee of quality. You have to establish a close, direct relationship with clients, to gain loyalty. In the United States, for example, people buy things on-line, because they know they can be in direct contact with the mother company.

Q: On a political level (ministry of culture, aldermen, etc) can anything concrete be done to defend design Made in Italy, to bring to a wider audience, to make it a sort of guarantee for the buyer?
A: It should be done. For example, there is no protection against the copying that happens in other countries. And it could become a requirement, in public contracts, to use quality products.

Q: Can a dominant stylistic trend be seen today, or are we living in an eclectic period of individual creative personalities?
A: It’s an eclectic period. We are looking for a new orientation. It will come. All movements have taken time to emerge and spread.

Q: Futuristic, historicist, or just mundanely, cleverly trendy?
A: It pays to be trendy.]]> 2009-08-28 15:16:53 Interni n°599 DRIADE http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,656,intLangID,2.html The lightness of ideas
Elisa Astori, CEO of Driade since last December. Graduated in architecture in Madrid, has worked in France in distribution and in relationship with reference firm designers. She worked at Mario Bellini’s and Citterio’s. In her firm she focused for the first three years in research and development, going through procurement and logistics.
My father (Enrico Astori) is convinced that without scouting of products and of materials there is no firm. I share his point of view and this is, for me also, the most beautiful and fascinating part of my job. Together we form a very close and complementary couple; we complete each other, he defines general strategy, but all operating powers are mine. The footprint of the first generation is unavoidable because pioneers, visionaries that built firms based on aesthetics cannot be replicated, while my contribution is more on management, I am a manager. As our answer to the very strong crisis in the world, we of Driade, who are editors and have no production chain, are lighter than others and bet even more on the strength of ideas, may ideas be strong and able to inspire emotions.]]> 2009-09-02 17:08:19 Interni n°599 BONALDO http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,654,intLangID,2.html It is biographies’ time
Sabrina Bonaldo. Responsible for Communication and Marketing. She has been at the helm of her firm for 15 years together with her brother and father, who acts as President
We are in a transition phase, where you feel the need to have stable reference points. For this very reason we published a biography Bonaldo since a few months. It is an essential tool for internal communication, with the retail network and also to make ourselves known among new markets customers, especially in the Far East, where by tradition and culture they like to know everything - from product to history – of whatever they are buying. The biography is useful even to perform a deep analysis of our firm, starting from its history, revisiting and confirming the traditional values and transforming them in strength factors. And from there we start for further developments.

A team of forty-year olders
Alberto Bonaldo, 42, CEO
Our firm has just closed a phase of transformation. Last December we finished, after five years, a process of concentration of all the firms in the group. We merged all the companies into one single company, Bonaldo SpA. We needed this deal to reinforce our brand. Now we have three production units and a people’s team with an average age of 40 years. Our objective is to create value and margins within one only economic entity, and opportunities to make successive acquisitions and investments.

Attention towards the firm
If we want to elicit a positive element among the macroeconomic data under our eyes, the situation is such that in the next years it will cause more attention for business, the only resource that can sustain our country system. Acquiring companies for economies of scale
Crisis may help. You need the courage to believe in your own activity. We always invested in our firms, recapitalizing them to create value, and now they have strong shoulders. We are very attentive to capture bargains we can find today in the market: acquisitions of other companies, and mergers to create synergies, economies of scale to complete product lines.

Massive investments
Among other things we planned in 2008-2009 a series of investments either in communication or in production, enlarging collaborations with the national and international best designers, putting them side by side with emerging young talents like Ilaria Marelli, Alain Gilles and Luca Nichetto. With Mario Lipparini we are finishing our in house show-room to better follow retail. The building, all in glass and brick, will be completed for this years’ end, with two principal areas: exhibition space and marketing area, and all around them there will be a museum, workshop area and conference room.]]> 2009-09-02 17:06:44 Interni n°599 Roberto Gavazzi<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,653,intLangID,2.html  CEO and partner of Boffi
  Q: The crisis raises questions, demands changes, rethinking, new strategies. What things will no longer be the same?
A: The world was already complicated before the crisis. It is always necessary to question and challenge your business model. Today we need better antennae. Our company will adapt its business model to the situation, but it will not be substantially changed. In the initial phase of a crisis you feel a strong need for control. Then confidence comes back. There will be a natural sorting out. But the timing isn’t clear yet.

Q: Is investing in design, aesthetic elegance, innovation in the area of materials a winning strategy, or should we focus on performance and efficiency?
A: You have to pay close attention to substance. You cannot just amaze people with aesthetic effects. People want performance. I choose the design, it will also define character.

Q: Luxury or restraint? Efficient kitchens and bathrooms, but more Spartan?
A: People will spend more time at home, and they want to have beautiful things. I don’t believe in Spartan. I believe that instead of sobriety, it is time to convert to friendliness. Objects that are too strong, almost hostile, don’t work.

Q: Spending on catalogues, advertising, promotion, showroom displays? Or concentrating on products and prices?
A: You have to revise the mixture of the expenditures. Working mostly on the media that directly reach the consumer. Communicating your own talents better, with new tools. Direct marketing is useful. Attracting consumers into your shops. The shop narrates who you are and what you do. People are more attentive, they want to understand things better.

Q: Is the art director still an important figure, or just a cost that can be cut?
A: He is an indispensable figure. The entrepreneur must also be open to many collaborations. He cannot live closed up in his factory. It is important to construct a network of collaborators, using your antennae, and international relations. If you always stay inside the company, you can make good products, but you cannot construct a business model. Thirty years ago you could think only in terms of product. Today that isn’t enough. You have to think about consumers and trends.

Q: The kitchen and bath sectors have been driving forces, because they are connected with habits, like care of the body and cooking, areas in which people are willing to invest time and resources. Will this trend continue?
A: The kitchen and bath have to do with socializing and personal care, which in my view are going to continue to develop. There will be less ostentation, replaced by more pleasant, friendly atmospheres, and great practicality. In the bath people will still look for reserve, peace and wellbeing, perhaps by eliminating exaggerated things.

Q: If people go out less, and spend more time at home with family and friends, will this lead to more investment in sophisticated cooking gear?
A: Our clients are more severe and demanding. There are fewer of them, perhaps, in terms of numbers, but the budgets are bigger.

Q: Should brands focus on a homogeneous stylistic offering, or be more imaginative and eclectic?
A: It is important to be coherent, to be ourselves, immediately identifiable. But a bit of variety here and there doesn’t hurt.

Q: Do the history, the tradition of the company, the guarantees it can offer of many years of experience, reassure and attract customers? Or is innovation more important?
A: People are very alert now, and you have to reassure them. If you have an impressive history you have to make it count. High-level clients are looking for unique things. So we are thinking about offering almost custom products. We have to prove that a product with an industrial history behind it is much better than one made by craftsmen.

Q:Will corporate welfare become more important?
A: It is important. And it can be practice without exorbitant investments. Today you cannot do without enlightened management that takes the social values of labor into account. Welfare also means a beautiful factory, a nice dining hall. It means treating people well and recognizing the value of their work.]]> 2009-08-28 14:48:01 Interni n°599 BAXTER http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,652,intLangID,2.html To young people, complete freedom
Luigi Bestetti, born in 1943, President
I gave birth to this firm in 1988 from a rib of Living, my other firm, and after five years I left the steering wheel to my nephew Paolo. I put the right person in the right place, my nephew that has given value to the firm and made it grow. I always leave free rein to the young.


Transversal experiences
Paolo Bestetti, 46, Baxter CEO
My uncle allows people working with him to make mistakes. He is a man of great experience, with whom I check out my ideas. During generational succession it is important that people work outside of the family firm.

Cost/product, first parameter for the consumer
This is only the first phase of the crisis. There is only diminishing consumption, but not a radical change. We are doing a research but without upsetting our firm, just to understand what our client is looking for. We have seen that today consumers, when they buy, pay attention mainly to the cost/product ratio, independently from the fact that the product is very expensive or not. On our side to manage this ratio we verify our industrial costs and invest in promotional campaigns in the market.]]> 2009-09-02 17:02:38 Interni n°599 Piero Gandini<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,651,intLangID,2.html A: There have been other crises. But never so sudden, so fast. History is an alternation of euphoria and decline. But what is happening now is different, because the world is globalized: it was like blowing on a house of cards. They all fell down, one after the other. I don’t think things will be much different from avant-garde design companies.

Q: Expansion, or concentration on core business? A: We are hyper-concentrated. The temptations are there. But lighting is increasingly specific, increasingly linked to architecture, so this is the direction in which we have to move. Diversification is necessary to be able to continue to offer excellent, new products.

Q: The prestige of big-name designers, or investment in new talent?
A: You have to invest in new energies, otherwise you become a conservative company. A policy based only on prestige has little breadth. In a certain sense we are forced to continuously update our languages, to always produce new expressive forms. But innovation should not become a myth. The avant-garde at all costs, without solidity and organization, makes you into an ‘atelier company’.

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, the perceived value of the brand?
A:We have a very wide range of prices, from 100 to 8000 euros. You have to be a bit careful, but that doesn’t mean eliminating variety. You have to learn how not to cross psychological thresholds.

Q: Flexibility or greater rigidity, as Paul De Grauwe, economist of the Center for European Policy Studies, recommends?
A: Those who make risk their reason for living have to be flexible, otherwise they will disappear. Debt is physiological. When it gets out of proportion there is no more flexibility. So you have to avoid going out of proportion. This is the meaning of rigidity. At times people make fun of me, because my company keeps too much capital. To innovate you need tools and strategies to move rapidly. At times you have to pay “cash on the line”. You have to be able to move without totally depending on banks.

Q: To thrill or to reassure?
A: Definitely to thrill. We’ve been doing it for forty years, and not to show off. Reassurance comes from the brand. The brand is reputation, it needs to be confirmed by taking new risks, never resting on your laurels. It’s not a noble title you can inherit. You have to earn it, day by day. We have a niche of consumers linked to our company by intellectual complicity.

Q: Does the brand still have strong appeal for consumers?
A: If you mean the brand as an added value recognized by a consumer-victim, then I hope that is no longer the case. If, instead, you mean it in the good sense of the term, as a matter of reputation gained by innovating, reflecting a sense of responsibility, then I think the brand can still represent a sort of guarantee for consumers.

Q: Is it worthwhile to enhance the aura with collateral operations in the fields of art, architecture, advertising, or is it better to concentrate on products?
A: When you have the resources, why not spend them on image? A bit of generosity is also necessary. The question is the content. Design doesn’t have the capacity to handle decadence, because it is made to last. Fashion, on the other hand, is intrinsically decadent. The imagery of decadence is no good for design. We need to stay away from the spells of useless impulse buying, though some flirting with all that is OK. Booms tend to be decadent. The crisis may help us to avoid the temptations of decadence.

Q: Does the star status of designers help to increase sales and strengthen the brand?
A: If the project is a good one, star status helps. But you cannot replace good design with stardom. Michael Jordan, who made basketball very popular, used to say “remember, it all starts on the court”, when his popularity brought in big crowds for his team. Young designers who make impossible prototypes to get into the magazines replace design with communication. Starck, on the other hand, knows how to design, so it’s even better if he also knows how to be a star.

Q: How much do the energy, passion and personality of the entrepreneur influence the health and mood of a company?
A: The chain of decision-making should be a short one. So there has to be one person who takes all the risks, both for product strategy and investment. For this person, usually the owner of the company, energy and enthusiasm are indispensable.]]> 2009-08-28 14:33:05 Interni n°599 Gabriele Centazzo<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,650,intLangID,2.html A: Recently I have wondered about the crisis, about how much it will change our way of living and how much, with greater environmental attention, it can help to solve this problem. I think that to have real changes in our society a philosophical revolution is needed that manages to shift the present guidelines dictated by economics, which can be summed up as: “continuous growth of consumption sustained by the happiness of possession”. This has to be replaced by a guideline dictated by ethics, leading to other forms of happiness; the happiness of love, the happiness of beauty. I don’t see this revolution happening. The only effort we make is to try to figure out how to survive the crisis, stimulating consumption and returning to business as usual.

Q: In your information materials you write: “the aware use of material, in a perspective of sustainability not only of the production process but also of the product itself, is fundamental. Respect for the environment is the ethical imperative behind all Valcucine projects”. Does your ethical imperative, in a period of growing awareness of environmental issues, shelter you somehow?
A: The new, sudden environmental awareness is also being treated as a pure economic opportunity to trigger a rebound of consumption, instead of a change of consciousness and responsibility for the earth and future generations. Responsibility comes from awareness and awareness comes from knowledge. Environmental knowledge is a cultural process that requires time, it cannot be improvised inside companies, it has to impregnate every sector, generating a new way of thinking. All companies and their products today suddenly seem to have become ecosustainable, but actually this is just a “green make-up job”. For the products already on the market, it is a pure marketing operation, which unfortunately creates great confusion; not even the environmental certification trademarks are helpful for consumers, because they keep multiplying and it is hard to figure out which ones are real and which are just window dressing. In this situation the people who shout the loudest prevail. I’ll try to explain with a metaphor: there are two trees, one with all red leaves and just one green leaf, the other with all green leaves and just one red leaf – now it’s time for an action of communication, to convince everyone that the trees are green. For the first tree, I can spend a few million on advertising, focusing my cameras on that single green leaf. For the second, I have no advertising budget, so I just tell the people who pass by that my tree has only one red leaf. Which of the two trees will seem greener to consumers? The only way to unmask the deception is to instill true environmental awareness in consumers, helping them to see through false messages. It is a long process that will take at least one generation, and in the meantime there is plenty of room to use marketing to hide the truth. It may seem that the real efforts of companies to produce less environmental impact are useless, but that is not the case, because a true process of sustainability implies innovation and innovation is perceived in a positive way by consumers, apart from its environmental value.]]> 2009-08-28 13:02:38 Interni n°599 Francesco Casoli<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,649,intLangID,2.html A: Lots, because this crisis brings us back down to earth, imposing changes, but it is also a moment in which to get back to the real value of things. Recently the virtual has gotten the upper hand over the real, and that doesn’t jibe with everyday life.

Q: Is typological innovation a good antidote, or do we have to play it safe, improving performance? In practice, precious, decor hoods, or sober but increasingly efficient ones?
A: Balance is the winning formula, also when we talk about production: typology and performance must both follow growth curves, a revision of lifestyle doesn’t have to penalize the enjoyment of beautiful things, but it does impose a higher standard of quality.

Q: The prestige of big-name designers, or investment in new talent?
A: I think investment in new talent pays off.

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, the perceived value of the brand?
A: Value for money is a parameter that will be increasingly important: people may be willing to pay for quality, but only because it is precisely what guarantees future savings.

Q: Flexibility or greater rigidity, as Paul De Grauwe, economist of the Center for European Policy Studies, recommends?
A: I don’t agree with rigidity, which in the case of Paul De Grauwe smacks of protectionism, even when it refers to human capital: I believe the right orientation is toward flexibility, which does not have to translate into the transfer of the costs of the crisis to labor. It is all too clear that the consequences of uncontrolled free market policy will impact the whole economic system. Instead, I think about the advantages of negotiation on a second level, specific to the needs of the workers of a given company or a given territory, or about the idea of a sort of flexible unemployment insurance: in this way, you can safeguard both production and social concerns.

Q: To thrill or to reassure?
A: To reassure in a thrilling way.

Q: Expand the catalogue, diversify offerings, or concentrate on bestsellers and the core business?
A: Every year, in our company, we have a two-day session to analyze strategies and the next moves. We just did one: if we innovate and diversify, the market can continue to grow. But we also have to be innovative in terms of functions, not just aesthetics. And functional quality is related to the entire product process, from design to recycling.

Q: Corporate welfare is important: providing workers with health care, contributions for transportation costs, scholarships for their children.
A: This aspect is fundamental. Involving people means giving them responsibility, letting them work in a pleasant environment, which is also an advantage for the company and its products, because the best human resources are attracted and then remain: this doesn’t mean everything will go perfectly, the crisis causes problems anyway, forcing some painful decisions, but our commitment to our employees does not change. I call it egotism: you undoubtedly feel better when everyone feels good.]]> 2009-08-28 12:51:23 Interni n°599 B&B ITALIA http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,648,intLangID,2.html Absolutely striving for quality
Giorgio Busnelli, President and CEO of B&B Italia
Change in our firm has begun since a long time. We are performing a very deep analysis, together with a prominent Italian University, of our internal processes, from product creation to product manufacturing until delivery with complete customer satisfaction. Products we presented to the last Salone del Mobile in Milan were already influenced by this new deal in our firm. What we do is to be more attentive, striving always for quality. Resources in research are not reduced, but better managed, with a bigger attention to the project value.


To be quickly in the market
Massimiliano Busnelli. Third generation. He is 31 and spent five years in his firm. After graduating in architecture and a successive management course at Bocconi University, he got active on production at the Research and Development Center.
Today it is strategic to be in the market with new products in the quickest possible way. If we want to be competitive we have to shorten the time between ideation and creation of a product. From the moment a customer looks at a new product until it is delivered usually two months elapse, too much time to keep enthusiasm alive. Since a few months I began to introduce this process of acceleration and B&B Italia is investing in it in different ways: facilitating dialogue between business divisions, planning in a different way work with external designers, implementing new technologies for a more rapid creation of prototypes. This process represents for us an important challenge and I am deeply involved in it.]]> 2009-09-02 17:00:12 Interni n°599 Giulio Cappellini<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,647,intLangID,2.html A: The crisis is certainly a moment of assessment. We have to weigh errors and positive factors, to take a “contemporary” path, in line with the needs of the market. It definitely makes no sense, today, to do projects as an end in themselves, beautiful things, perhaps, but not useful. We need to try to make excellent, useful, function objects that are also and above all beautiful.

Q: Using the prestige of big names or investing in new talent?
A: Investing in new talent as a fundamental part of our corporate project. Faced with good designs, we can also work with prestigious names. Consumers judge products for what they are, not for the name of the designer.

Q: Re-issues, or always production of new things?
A: The latter, as a tendency, if it represents contemporary character, innovation. Re-issues of just a few, exceptional, peerless projects, perhaps updating them to make them more affordable, with new production techniques.

Q: Will price become a decisive factor, or will it still be a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, the perceived value of the brand?
A: Price is already a decisive factor, but not absolute. The relationship with quality and perceived value is still important. The new consumer, freer and more eclectic, is ready to mix products with different price ranges in the home, as long as the right value is there. The paradigm of high design = high price is no longer valid: but companies need to concentrate on what the market expects, focusing on their niches, not thinking they are capable of making everything for everybody.

Q: Flexibility or a return to more rigidity, as Paul De Grauwe, economist at the Center for European Policy Studies, recommends?
A: Rigidity in the sense of greater caution in taking financial risks, greater care in investments, but without blocking research and formal and technological innovation.

Q: To thrill or to reassure?
A:To thrill. That’s the only way to convince people to buy things. Probably few people, to be purely rational, really need a new table or a new sofa. If you reassure the consumer too much, you run the risk of always postponing the purchase.

Q: Does the brand still have great appeal for consumers?
A: Consumers are intelligent, informed, ready to discuss and compare. The brand makes sense only when it is a synonym for research, guaranteed quality, durability over time. After all, a name brand does not necessarily mean a high price. The brand, if it is consistent and eludes comparison, can be an added value.

Q: Belonging to a group: what are the advantages, what are the limits?
A: Belonging to a group means creating synergies in terms of financing, production and distribution. What is important is to keep the image of each individual brand clear, avoiding dangerous overlaps of style and products. There are no limits if a company has full independence, in keeping with a strategic plan of the group.

Q: Following trends or forecasting them?
A: Forecasting them means being contemporary. Today a company can be considered part of the world of design only if it sets trends, innovating, surprising people.

Q: Can we identify a dominant style, or are we living in an eclectic period marked by the personalities of creative talents?
A: Today, often, everything and the opposite of everything can work. The dominant thing is being serious, concrete, an attitude that can take on many forms and modes. The personality of individual creative talents has to be in perfect tune with the overall project of the company.

Q: Is your work as an art director for other companies a “distraction”, a sort of intellectual opening, a workout?
A: Coming to terms with different productive realities is certainly good exercise. What is important, while remaining consistent with one’s own way of working, is to interpret the real productive and cultural story of each individual firm. Working for different brands, never overlapping, can lead to great mental openness, I think.]]> 2009-08-28 12:42:55 Interni n°599 Alberto Alessi<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,646,intLangID,2.html A: I don’t know how to do anything else – or do it well, I mean – so I don’t have any choice!

Q: Should we up the design ante or downshift toward more market-oriented policies?
A: Were we to pursue the latter option we would no longer be design-oriented, by definition, so we would lose our nature as “factories of Italian design” (i.e. an industrial research lab in the field of design whose role is one of artistic mediation between the most interesting expressions of international creativity in industrial design, on one side, and the so-called “market” on the other).

Q: Should the design be reasonable, sober, or imaginative, even bizarre, to stimulate desires and offer gratification?
A: Undoubtedly both, that’s how it has always been, as far as I can recall, naturally depending on the designer...

Q: In a saturated market or a phase in which people have little buying drive, what are the values that can convince them to consume?
A: Personally I would like to be more incisive for further improvement of the four parameters of my “success formula”: F (=function, practicality) + SMI (= sensoriality, memory, imagination) + C (=communication) + P (=price)...

Q: Is price a decisive factor, or a variable in relation to quality, aesthetics, service and the signature of the designer?
A: ...the parameter P will have an increasingly important role (but without taking much away from the others).

Q: Is it better to rely on well-known names, or to try to surprise everyone, investing in new talent?
A: We try to do both: Aldo, Achille, Vico and Ettore are no longer with us, but Sandro, Enzo, Richard, Philippe, Stefano, Jasper and Piero are still alive and kicking and stimulating... then there are the young designers, a mine we continue to explore with great commitment, though it can be arduous.

Q: Do you want to thrill or reassure consumers?
A:We are looking for thrilling reassurance! (but it’s always borderline: never too much tranquility, that should be left up to mass production).

Q: Is there still room for so-called “gadgetizing”, or should we get back to the path of good common sense and normality, or even “super-normality”, as Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa have theorized?
A: What can I say? For me, the two extremes – those of the duo you mentioned, on the one hand, and Stefano Giovannoni, on the other – both work...

Q: Futuristic, historicist, or just mundanely, cleverly trendy?
A: Never trendy in the conventional sense of the term: I’m happy to leave that up to classic industry and the business school grads. If anything, we try to discover trends (or set them), not to follow them, because if you can follow that means they are already too widespread.

Q: Can we identify a dominant style, or are we living in an eclectic period marked by the personalities of creative talents?
A: I have lived through, and interpreted, the downcurve of “Bel design italiano” in the 1970s, then the postmodern in the 1980s, the playful design in the 1990s. Where our decade is concerned, I have waited until now to give it a title, but in vain: I guess we might call it eclectic, as you say, or perhaps mannerist. But I have resolved to be able to give a title in advance to the next decade, for the metadesign exhibition we will open at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich in May 2010.]]> 2009-08-28 12:28:36 Interni n°599 ARCLINEA ARREDAMENTI http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,645,intLangID,2.html Personalize. The preferred verb for new humanism
Silvio Fortuna, CEO
The “project” must have man in its centre, his well-being and therefore a product philosophy more apt to today’s world. A new idea of luxury is in the coming: functionality took the place of pure ostentation. There is a research of comfort and pleasure of use that the most advanced technologies may favour. Firms with custom-made products are not feeling the crisis. The unique piece has appeal, and the market for limited editions is on the rise. Personalization is the route followed by many firms, with very special versions of their products. The new frontier are the firms of the ”furniture-design” area, mainly Italian, that possess in their DNA these abilities.

To organize themselves for the world
World GNP in a few years will be 50% in industrialized countries and 50% in emerging markets. We are on the eve of a new global equilibrium, a new way of weighing markets and consumers. New frontiers will e opened and we need to be set up for these scenarios. Our guideline will be to meet these opportunities as a business concern in their whole span.


My Asia
Federico Fortuna, Export Manager
I got into the firm recently, after a few experiences abroad, mainly in Asia. I worked in Hong Kong at Rotschild Bank and in Tokio at Max Mara; for this reason I took the role of Export Manager for Asia and Middle East. My task is to assist our partners in developing their business, controlling and suggesting to them actions in product strategy and marketing. I also look for potential partners in commercially unexplored areas.

I and Arclinea
My university education in economy and marketing and my job experience in financial and commercial areas developed in myself a global market and business vision. My objective is to bring in fresh and innovative ideas, absorbing from outside and importing into the firm a new way of thinking. My international projection notwithstanding, I feel anyhow defined by a strong attachment to my land: my love for my land and its traditions have made me conscious of my belonging to a project that was born many years ago, and that through changes has maintained the same values.]]> 2009-09-02 16:56:59 Interni n°599 Nerio Alessandri http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,643,intLangID,2.html A: In recent years we have seen a sort of distortion of the concept of value. The world of finance seduced investors with short-term promises, and we all fell for it, due to the reckless behavior of some people, and due to the lack of rules. Many things will no longer be the same: there will be a return to the culture of making things, of value based on tangible projects and investments.

Q: Will the new sobriety put the obsession with care for the body, physical looks and wellness back into perspective?
A: No, quite the opposite. In moments of crisis consumers want to get back to fundamental needs: we save on non-essential things and invest in everything that seems to be truly important. And what is more important than taking care of your health? Technogym invented the concept of wellness back in the 1990s, the lifestyle based on a balance of regular physical activity, good nutrition and a positive mentality. For us, wellness represents not only a business opportunity, but also a choice that has nothing to do with the obsession for care of the body.

Q: Staying ahead of the pack or going back to the roots?
A: I don’t think those two concepts are opposites, in fact they have to coexist in our strategies for the future. After a period of “good harvests” in which all kinds of things were produced and sold, I think the true innovation will be to get back to basics, to understand how to develop products and services customers really need. Wellness and health, together with ecology, will be the big growth trends.

Q: Is typological innovation an effective antidote to crisis?
A: Innovation in general is the strongest antidote. We have to continue believing and invest in innovation to be ready, and equipped, to deal with the post-crisis period, without losing our competitive edge.

Q: Will design still be decisive?
A: Of course. At Technogym we have made a very precise strategic choice: wellness. Wellness means offering an experience, not just equipment. In this scenario the design of the equipment and the environment in which it is used are fundamental to create a pleasant, positive experience capable of attracting more and more people to regular physical exercise.

Q: You have invented the machines, the name of a practice, making it become a widespread custom, and you have transformed the machines into furnishings, with good design… Any other rabbits in your hat?
A: Innovation has always represented the motor of growth of Technogym; in these months, we are launching new, innovative products like Run Personal, the new tapis roulant designed by Antonio Citterio, and Vario, a new item for gyms, a cardio device. Another area of development is that of the personalization of services: offering every user a training experience that does not involve only the machines, but also the design of the environment, instruction, workout programs, communication.]]> 2009-08-28 12:09:51 Interni n°599 The Made in Italy of today and of tomorrow http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,110,intIssueID,639,intItemID,642,intLangID,2.html 2009-09-02 17:14:24 Interni n°599 Masters’ voices http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,109,intIssueID,639,intItemID,641,intLangID,2.html ]]> 2009-08-28 16:33:14 Interni n°599 Design Thinking and neo-pragmatism http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,108,intIssueID,639,intItemID,640,intLangID,2.html 2009-08-28 11:47:31 Interni Onboard n°4 Fisherman & Gentleman <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,78,intIssueID,609,intItemID,637,intLangID,2.html  by Simona Spriano
  Until a short time ago they were the choice of people who focused on the sporting aspects of life on the sea. But fishing boats, today, are also making inroads as pleasure yachts, thanks to new, more refined interior design. Far from ostentation, not interested in competition, many owners have been seduced by the appeal of fisher boats, the motorboats originally created for sports or for work that have now taken on certain overtones of rugged glamour. Heirs to the legendary atmospheres of Maine or the Keys, the conserve their functional characteristics for ‘hunting down’ marlin & co., but add external lines and interior furnishings that have become more genteel, for high-class comfort. Some of the models display technical features that conserve the typical image, while others abandon nostalgia to make more room for elegant details and modern design. The first group includes boats like the Riviera 58 Enclosed Flybridge, an Australian classic whose concept is still that of a functional fishing boat, but with a particular focus on European tastes, especially in the interiors. Winner of prestigious international prizes, including Cruiser of the Year 2007, the Riviera 58 fully interprets the sense of adventure, between coral reefs and Hemingway atolls. A different philosophy can be seen in the Apreamare 64, for the first time in a fly version. Here the traditional Sorrento ‘gozzo’ is updated, without betraying its memory, developing forms and volumes for both play and comfort. The horseshoe sofa at the bow is a must, like the pronounced lines of the stern, the nerve center of life on board. The furnishing materials are absolutely classic and natural, with polished and matte mahogany, Vienna thatching and mirror-finish chromium-plated steel hardware. In the Bertram 540, on the other hand, technological innovation for sports fishing plays a leading role, including avant-garde solutions, like the careful study of the positioning of the peaks (to hold up to 25 fishing rods), and the conversion of the refrigerator into a bait pool or an ice machine. But the new look of this ‘fishing machine’, presented at the International Boat Show of Fort Lauderdale in October, also ‘invades’ the spaces below deck, which are much more luminous and comfortable than in the past, almost betraying the Spartan spirit of the brand. Now we are looking at a luxury yacht in which sports fishing exists in parallel to the pleasures of yachting, with cabins and dinettes that offer high levels of comfort and decor. Built-in iPod and LED lighting systems guarantee maximum relaxation. Winner of the World Yacht Trophies 2007 as “Best open yacht up to 24 meters” in the Interior Design category, the Mochi Craft Dolphin 64’ also offers new ideas to respond to contemporary tastes. A distant relative of the overseas lobster boat, conserving its style in a version with a flybridge, this boat stands out for its rounded lines, large lateral glazings, and the color of the bulwarks: aquamarine green, a delicate turquoise, coral, creamy yellow, as well as the classic intense blue and amaranth. Solid teak and fine leathers form a balance in the finishes, like the teak floors striped with maple and the wooden furnishings. The design of the Viking 82 Convertible is unmistakable, with its incisive, light lines and slim profiles; it is very ‘Yankee’ below, with a prevailing sense of convivial warmth. Modern capitonné sofas are fitted precisely into the corners of the spacious interiors, creating intimate, evocative zones. A more muscular design is found in the Hatteras 77 Convertible, famous for its sturdy build and seaworthiness, which are nevertheless combined with refined interiors based on traditional canons, with tasteful color combinations and big, breathtaking views.
]]> 2009-07-15 15:26:32 Interni Onboard n°4 New generations<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,79,intIssueID,609,intItemID,636,intLangID,2.html  text Michelangelo Giombini
  One is transformable and modular. The other uses regatta-type technologies. Bluegame 47’ and Vismara V52 Bwave belong to a new generation of motor yachts: the result of experience from sailing, they are designed for the owner who is looking for the most refined technical solutions, and great versatility. Bluegame 47’ - Using a term borrowed from the automotive sector, the Bluegame 47’ can be defined as a seagoing crossover, due to its capacity to adapt to the needs of an increasingly wide range of yachtsmen. The offerings of the shipyard invented in 2002 by Luca Santella, Olympic sailor and architect, are based on great potential for personalization of products, more like the world of automobiles than that of boats: there are over 2500 possible configurations, guaranteeing almost tailor-made enjoyment of the sea, with a particular focus on safety and comfort. The configuration of the boat is chosen from eight main models with outfitting of the deck that ranges from simple pleasure boating to deep-sea fishing, with colors and interiors available in five different versions. Just consider the fact that the customizing software created by the shipyard even shows the name chosen for the boat written on the stern. One of the fixed elements is the hull, with elegant lines based on those of work boats, an accentuated V at the prow, and a flat profile at the stern to guarantee stability. The interior is cool and luminous, with segmented bulwarks and Venetian blinds in white painted ash, for a pleasantly retro look. The boat can also be outfitted as a floating galley for big yachts

V52 Bwave - The Bwave marks Vismara’s debut in the world of motor yachts, and combines many of the technological characteristics developed by the shipyard founded by Alessandro Vismara during twenty years of production of high-performance sailboats. As a result, the Bwave is very light, because it uses exclusively composite materials, vacuum-worked, for the hull, the bulwarks and the structural systems: this characteristic permits gliding at 10 knots with very little expenditure of power and fuel, for safe navigation even in rough seas, thanks to the V-shape of the bottom. The dining area is on deck, protected by a hard top superstructure with lateral windows that open, and a transparent top. This boat launches a new, innovative open yacht typology, protected to offer comfort and shelter for the crew, but extremely livable outside, with sunbathing zones, a vanishing garage for the tender, and a sufficiently large stern platform for the transport of toys. The layout below is essential and rational, with the owner’s cabin at the prow, a double cabin, two bathrooms with showers and a large galley. The teak finishes and the elements of the structure, left visible and painted, reflect the interior style of the famous sailboats created by this shipyard in Viareggio.

]]> 2009-07-15 15:22:44 Interni Onboard n°4 Lightning on board<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,77,intIssueID,609,intItemID,635,intLangID,2.html by Francesca Lanz and Irene Pasina
 by Silvia Piardi
by Francesca Lanz and Irene Pasina Light, darkness, day, night, summer, winter…
by Silvia Piardi
At sea, lighting is design material. And a complex one too: raw, intense, sharp in the day, warm, enveloping, seductive at night. All to be experienced, tamed, shaped, thanks to skillful use of design. If you want to design light, you need to know what is darkness. I don’t know if that’s an ancient Chinese proverb, but it might be. There are many coordinates to consider to explore the theme of ‘light on board’. The first factor, characterizing and invasive, is the presence of a huge expanse of reflecting, moving material, capable of refracting, reassembling, coloring light in a thousand ways. The surface of the sea, or any other expanse of water, amplifies and reflects light, its intensity and quality, and establishes a dialogue with the expanse of the sky, which also changes constantly. Those who have designed homes on the water know that light becomes one of the main design materials. Summer seas, clear, bright skies, light that penetrates inside a boat and creates a range of different effects. The finishing materials capture and reflect light, playing with it, like the white gold leaf surfaces of the new PAB by Ivana Porfiri. An excess of light is countered by its opposite, the need to make natural light go below decks in large vessels, with volumes below the water’s surface, as already happens with earthbound structures, where refraction systems can bring the light’s rays down into basement depths. Natural light underlines details, and at times it can be merciless, causing premature aging of materials, fading fabrics. Sometimes light needs to be tamed, using dark glass, sunscreens, blinds, curtains. The problem is often to protect things from too much natural light, to darken cabins not only during the day, but also at night, in port or even anchored in a bay. Because artificial light is a relatively recent phenomenon, and therefore it is still interpreted as a display of power, and a declaration of security. No one can approach without being seen, if everything is lit up brightly. Too much ostentatious light, imposed by those who have big on-board generators to defy the night, may add drama to yacht interiors, but it spoils the context, banishing darkness. Because people are afraid of the dark, especially at sea. Sailboats, in particular the smaller ones, have always been more careful with artificial light. Producing energy on board means running a motor, which means noise and pollution. For many years an oil lamp was the sign of a true sailor, and candles, also at dinner, have been a part of going to sea for many generations of yachtsmen. Then came darkness, while sailing, or at anchor. While navigating, darkness is something dense: it is frightening, but it is also peaceful and satisfying, perhaps the most beautiful thing you can experience at sea. Darkness at sea is enlivened by artificial lights that conserve their value as signals: beacons and lighthouses, to recognize the coast, the lights of other boats on the move. A small red light to read charts below deck, without the glare in eyes that have to adjust after darkness. Discreet lights, for reading without disturbing others. Designing shadow, using light to give spaces identity, to enhance darkness, which also means making it possible to gaze at the stars. Because in the end, one takes to the sea for just such reasons. Light pollution has contaminated our coasts in an overwhelming way; the lights of the marina, and the seaside promenades that are now a must in every town, are joined by the lights of yachts that blaze like a shopping mall. So let’s try to reflect on the design of light on board in a more complex, rich way. The metaphor might be that of the ‘sailor’s twilight’, that moment in which the first stars appear, but the horizon is still visible, the ideal moment for taking bearings. - Caption pag. 61 The two-storey staircase of the Guilty (Cantieri Navali Rizzardi) by Ivana Porfiri permits natural light to enter the interior. To the side, an installation on the lower deck: black walls, mirrors and projected light create a ‘moon in the well’ effect (photos Andrea Ferrari).

Luminous effects
by Francesca Lanz and Irene Pasina
From a feature to complete a project, to an unrivaled protagonist of space. Also thanks to the possibilities offered by new technologies, light becomes the soul of the nautical environment, the staring point and inspiration for the development of interior concepts. Technical lighting design is an increasingly important part of nautical design. It certainly has a lot to do with the particular environmental conditions of seagoing – where light undergoes sudden, unpredictable variations – but also with the increasingly widespread trend of opening big windows overlooking the sea, in bulwarks and ceilings, for a more intense indoor-outdoor relationship, allowing lots of natural light to enter. At the same time, thanks to the development of new technologies and new light sources that respond to the functional and structural needs of nautical spaces, it is now possible to experiment with artificial lighting as a crucial factor. It is perhaps in this area that we are seeing the greatest number of technical and expressive innovations in the design of on-board interiors. Spaces below decks, previously seen as a refuge from bad weather and a place for sleeping, now take on many new functions. Here artificial light plays a crucial role because it contributes to the psychophysical wellbeing of guests, enhancing materials and forms, modifying perception of spaces, working together with natural light to create situations of coordination or contrast with the luminosity of the day and the darkness of the night. Technical lighting design, which used to be developed a posteriori with respect to the overall project, has now become an integral part of the design of a yacht, influencing solutions, determining the choice of materials and finishes. Light sources are carefully selected, built into ceilings and furnishings. From this viewpoint, the advent of LEDs has definitely opened up new scenarios, making it possible to replace the spotlights once so common in below-deck spaces, resolving many problems of a technical and regulatory nature that had slowed the development of on-board lighting design. The small size, long duration, flexibility and possibilities for use with innovative materials and sophisticated control systems make these light sources the ideal tools to create dramatic, colorful lighting effects, whose presence is increasingly frequent and tangible inside yachts, modifying the entire concept of light on board. Light becomes a design material, a component that is not just functional but also aesthetic, to be shaped in relation to the surfaces and complex geometries of the boat, enhancing its volumetric, sculptural features. Openings for light work on elements of nautical architecture creating the illusion of communication with the outside. White or colored light contributes to alter perception of materials and forms in space, as well as the interaction of human beings and their senses; it brings out lines of connection between planes and volumes, creates a game of solids and voids that make direct reference to land-locked architecture, or to the art of James Turrell and Nanda Vigo. On the contemporary nautical design scene there are many designers who are meeting this new, stimulating challenge, often achieving surprising, innovative results. Ivana Porfiri, for example, has made natural and artificial light a true compositional feature, studied and organized according to its interaction with different materials and finishes, and its influence on overall perception of space. This can be seen in the use of dichroic glass, to give light a variable color, as in the skylights of the communication garden on Guilty, or in the use of precious metals like palladium and gold: utilized to clad ceilings and bulwarks on the Abrouq and the PAB, these materials reflect and amplify light, giving the interiors a very rich atmosphere in sensorial terms. Thanks to these coverings, interior enclosures become surfaces that are activated by light, creating a dynamic space that modifies itself, reacting to the variations of natural lighting; at the same time, the use of RGB LEDs and optical fibers permits creation of new, changing scenarios based on artificial lighting, both colored and white. The variables that intervene in the design of lighting on board are many, and the different ways they are combined generate an exceptional variety of solutions. On the Canados 110 Mikymar by Studio Salvagni the design is determined by the important choice of eliminating any direct light sources. The artificial light is diffused by immaterial surfaces in backlit Barrisol, and the furnishings are arranged to allow natural light, filtered by screens, to spread uniformly inside, from one bulwark to another, while covering and propagating artificial light as well. Artificial and natural light are combined in a complementary way on the yachts designed by Claudio Lazzarini and Carl Pickering, like the recent, innovative Nautor Swan 82C, where light and shadow are carefully modulated, as the artificial lighting, based on advanced technologies, comes into play at night to guarantee the same quality and atmosphere created by sunlight during the day. A different approach can be seen in the case of the Sea Force One by Luca Dini: conceived as a yacht primarily for night life, it makes artificial light its leading feature, with evocative disco-like settings, scenarios for new functions and lifestyles, also with an impact on outdoor lighting. From the general atmosphere to the detail, the furnishings to the choice of materials, the design of artificial light has taken on a central role in the interior design of the new yachts, opening up new paths of experimentation that, also in relation to energy issues and the theme of “human light”, will certainly have an influence on lighting design in the future, even in earthbound interior architecture.

]]> 2009-07-15 15:23:42 Interni Onboard n°4 Stefano Giovannoni How design navigates<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,80,intIssueID,609,intItemID,634,intLangID,2.html  text Cristina Morozzi - photos Aurora Di Girolamo
  “When I fish I am always tense”, says Stefano Giovannoni. For him, fishing is something instinctive, not an end in itself. What counts are the results. When you fish, you should catch lots of fish. The bigger the better. Because there is something very primitive about fishing: you can eat what you catch. A nice raw dentex, for example, cleaned and sliced while it’s still moving. “Since I was five”, Stefano Giovannoni says, “I went fishing with my grandfather. I was fascinated by the color of the sea, the depth, the mystery of the abyss. I always brought a notebook and drew the fish, all the types, with great attention to detail” (Cristina Morozzi, Stefano Giovannoni, Electa, 2008). For Stefano, the sea is very important. He was born in La Spezia, a port in Liguria, and has been familiar with the sea since early childhood. We might say that his figurative approach has marine origins. There is a close relationship between fishing and his design. “Drawing fish”, he says, “was a formative experience. I learned to catalogue, to pay attention to details, the understand how they can make the difference, to reflect on shapes. It taught me the logic of sets, of constructing typological families”. His uncles built boats. He grew up amidst boats, and he knows and loves them. His grandfather, who taught him to fish, called him “nostromo”, because he was always roaming around the boats in the port. At the age of five he already knew how to handle a boat while continuing to fish. For him, fishing is not a pastime, a getaway from the stress of professional life. It is a matter of concentration, a competition. His fish stories: a 14-kilo dentex, a 45-kilo maigre, that took more than one hour to land. “I like to eat what I catch”, he says. “We love cooking and eating fish. We clean it and fillet it directly on the stern of the boat. My son Vasco is 9 years old, and he can eat a one-kilo dentex all by himself, raw”. He thinks fishing is a very serious, even scientific activity, so he has gotten the best possible gear: a Luhrs, the classic American fishing boat, for tuna, with a turret, built with the most sophisticated techniques, the best brand in this sector. It has dual controls, two in-line motors, 240 hp each, with a speed reduction system for trawling at 1.5 knots. He keeps it in the port of Lavagna and brings it to Olbia for its annual overhaul. “Boats”, he says, “are very delicate, complex objects: they contain everything you have at home, but you’re on the sea. The brine ruins everything and there are always problems with the electronics”. If you get him talking about fishing, instead of design, it’s hard to stop him. He wants to explain every detail, to illustrate the techniques. He is precise, painstaking in his descriptions, logical, because in fishing nothing can be left to chance. On close reflection, we realize that fishing is like design, or at least like his way of doing design. But let’s get back to fishing. Giovannoni trawls with live bait and with a 1-kilo lead sinker attached to a branch of the main line. He specializes in dentex, a fish that lives only in the depths, but he is also good at catching maigre, which roams the middle depth range. The ideal spots are shoals and banks out at sea, with rocky beds. The boat is the best of its kind, but so is the rod: a Japanese Shimano, in carbon fiber, with reel. The boat has to cruise as slowly as possible. Two displays appear on the computer monitors: one of the seabed, showing the topography; and one showing sonar results. On the boat, a tub of live bait, garfish, squid, continuously circulating water. The bait is attached to two hooks, one at the beak (garfish are like little swordfish) and one under the skin in the tail, so the fish can move freely, otherwise the dentex, which are very clever fish, won’t even approach. The dentex bites between 0 and 3 meters. It is a predator, so it hides and waits, to ambush. The hard part is following it: approaching cliffs, keeping the bait and sinker at the same level, being careful not to grapple the sinker. You have to constantly pay attention. Who says fishing is relaxing? It calls for great concentration. Until last year he would go to fish in Corsica. He rented an isolated house on the beach and then spent the whole day on the sea, one of the best spots for fishing, catching things and eating them raw. At times the refrigerator was also full of fish. Last year, on the other hand, they went to Favignana, a less isolated spot, where you meet up with five or six other boats over a shoal. If fishing is a method you can perfect to achieve better results, then the tools have to be perfect too. The boat and the rod must be gems, used and treated with great respect. The boat is pampered and checked, like a design. It’s not enough to own it, you also have to constantly keep an eye on it. It wants attention, but it pays you back with the thrill of being out at sea. Fishing can be a metaphor of design: it requires a commitment, a tension, that are similar to the approach to a good design. But it has the advantage of being practiced on the open seas. Beyond the passion developed since childhood, we imagine that fishing, for Stefano Giovannoni, is a sort of workout, not just physical – though you have to be strong to pull in a 45-kilo maigre – but also, and above all, mental.
]]> 2009-07-15 15:16:37 Interni Onboard n°4 Panther <span class="currency_converter_link" title="Convert this amount">2</span><br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,609,intItemID,633,intLangID,2.html text Marianna Aprile

 project Giorgio Vafiadis & Associates/Luca Dini
text Marianna Aprile

  An architectural use for light, defining spaces as well as lighting them. A refined game of contrasts between natural and artificial materials. An original combination of artworks and design. This is how Luca Dini has given a new, contemporary look to the interiors of the Mondomarine Panther2, the sistership of the vessel of the same name, 41.65 m in light alloy, made by the Savona shipyard. Designing a yacht so that it will be flooded with light means, at times, deciding to let the environment in which one travels enter inside, ideally removing any barriers. But designing a yacht so that light becomes an element that helps define spaces and volumes means imagining human intervention at the precise center of nature. Brushstrokes of light and ingenuity sculpt the interiors of the new Mondomarine Panther 2, the sistership of the 41.65 meter in light alloy of the same name designed by Giorgio Vafiadis and ordered from the Savona shipyard by the same couple of Greek owners. The subdivision of the spaces is also comparable: owner’s suite at the prow of the main deck; five guest cabins (three double, two twins with pullman beds) on the lower deck; an upper deck dominated by a second saloon and a second dining area, before the wheelhouse. Everything else has changed. And changed a lot. Because the interior designer has changed: the owners, this time, have turned to the Florentine studio Luca Dini Design: «Light is precisely the furnishing element that makes it possible to create effects that would be hard to achieve only with real volumes», says Dini. In the cabins this structural use of light is particularly evident: «In the owner’s suite the headboard-wall is in wood that has been fluted by hand, painted with tempera and acrylics in tones of blue. The light, hitting this irregular surface, creates a play of shadows, of very evocative solids and voids». Dini has developed unique solutions entirely based on contrast. The first: the combination of tradition and experimentation. «I like challenges, and the one I set for myself on this yacht was to manage to harmoniously combine very different materials», the architect says, after working on this project together with two of his staffers, Gabriele Tartarelli and Silvia Margutti. On board, one has the clear sensation of a won wager: “We have used raw, archaic materials, but also synthetics. The owners, and the lady in particular, had very clear ideas about the sensations and atmospheres: they wanted the perception to be somehow land-like”. This brings us to the second contrast on the yacht. “We created a clearly minimal environment, but it is a warm minimal that takes the geographical origins of the owners into account. Their homeland, Greece, for example, suggested the use of olive wood for the furniture”. The wood always has beveled angles, defining the volumes of suspended, backlit furnishings. “For the floor, the choice went to Cadorin oak, with irregular planks, and an intentionally random looking installation. The oak is worked raw, and it feels warm under your bare feet”. Cool forms, rational spaces, but also warmth. More contrasts that find their ideal and visual continuation in the daring colors of the various spaces. Acid green, yellow, shocking pink, all the tones of blue, in a striking mélange effect. “One example is the pink and blue resin wall leading to the guest zone, created by a couple of Florentine artists”, says Dini, who filled the interiors of this ultramodern, high-tech yacht with many examples of Italian craftsmanship: “I am obsessed by crafts Made in Italy. I couldn’t conceive of doing a boat without them. In the end, those who come to Italy to find the yacht of their dreams are looking precisely for our mixture of the modern and the ancient”, says the Florentine architect, who has also favored Italian brands for the furnishings. Lighting fixtures by the Bologna-based company Viabizzuno, metal laminate walls by Abet, from Cuneo, fabrics from the Dominique Kieffer collection of the historic Venetian firm Rubelli, divans by B&B Italia and Minotti, tables and chairs by Cassina. Made in Italy, in short, is a source of inspiration, but not a dictate. And in fact the effective diffused lighting is by Kreon, while the faucets are by Boffi (like the big shower heads), but also by Hansacanyon (design faucets in the bathrooms). Speaking of bathrooms, the one in the owner’s stateroom was a real wager: «When you design the guest bathrooms you always fear that they might seem small, in spite of the large size of a yacht like the Panther 2», says Dini. “So we played with solutions that would somehow break up the volumes. In the VIP guestroom we decided to leave the washstands and showers exposed, separated from the rest of the cabin only by glass panes, letting the rust-color wall of the bed zone continue, and the beams of light that run along the walls. The effect is that of a unified space, making it all seem larger”. On board, the harmony of the forms and colors, in spite of their force, is undeniable. “But the space I think is most successful is the upper deck”, says Dini. “We decided that the steering gear should be concealed from view for those entering the saloon, but the insertion of a wall between the dining zone and the pilot house would have diminished the perspective effect of this large space, with its clean, linear furnishings”. To resolve this, Dini inserted a glass wall that can be transparent or opaque, depending on the needs of the moment, therefore displaying or concealing the pilot house: “When you decide to leave it transparent, when the door is open light invades the upper deck on all four sides, and you have the sensation of being in a big verandah, though you are still inside”, Dini says. When the dining zone is being used, on the other hand, the opaque, colored glass hides the pilot house, making you almost forget you are on a yacht over 40 meters long, with 20 knots of speed.
]]> 2009-07-15 15:19:10 Interni Onboard n°4 Ocean Emerald<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,609,intItemID,632,intLangID,2.html photos Paolo Maggi/Nigel Young - text Marianna Aprile

 project Foster + Partners 
photos Paolo Maggi/Nigel Young - text Marianna Aprile

  A luxury megayacht, 41 meters, to purchase in a multi-property arrangement. Fractional ownership is a sort of crisis-proof formula, or a new fashion. And it has even attracted Sir Norman Foster, the architect behind the ten identical boats of the YachtPlus fleet, being built at Cantieri Navali Rodriquez. The English architect told us about the design process of the first specimen to be built. Making form and substance coincide, while innovating on both fronts, is a tough job even for the most highly acclaimed designers. But when the task is met successfully you can’t help but notice. This is the case of the Ocean Emerald, a 41-meter yacht in aluminium designed by Sir Norman Foster and constructed by Cantieri Navali Rodriquez of Sarzana. Everything about this yacht is different. Starting with its owner. Ocean Emerald represents the debut of the YachtPlus project, based on the concept of fractional ownership. It is the first of ten identical yachts (located in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, depending on the season) shared by eight owners (purchase price: 1.8 million euros, with 230,000 euros of annual expenses), who for eight years will have the use of the yacht for 30 days per year (also for chartering). An original formula that lets you show off in a signature design maxiyacht for the price of a standard 18-meter vessel. From a design viewpoint, the OE was another new challenge for Foster: «These are the occasions in which our experience as architects really pays off», he says with pride. «Our work is guided by the conviction that everything around us has a direct influence on the quality of our lives», he explains. The quality of life of those who get on board this yacht must be very high indeed: slender as a shark, with aggressive forms like those of an offshore racer, but also soft, like a dolphin emerging from the waves. «Nature was our source of inspiration». Foster has chosen a gray color for this 41-meter with curved lines for the superstructure and rational, repeated straight lines for the forceful staircase that leads from the stern beach deck to the sun deck, framing terraces and other spaces. «The OE has the capacity to adapt to the needs of different people; for example, certain traditional fixed furnishings have been abolished, so that the interiors can easily be rearranged», says Foster. Regarding the dominant presence of the staircase, the English architect notes: «The stairs contribute to three key principles of the yacht: privacy, outdoor spaces and light. Privacy is fundamental for clients, like the double routes that permit the staff and crew to work discreetly, behind the scenes. The external staircase follows the curved lines of the superstructure, maximizing available space for the terraces and emphasizing the curved forms of the yacht, while the internal staircase, in transparent glass, allows daylight to enter the decks below». The effect is surprising. Even the four guest cabins on the lower deck get sunlight from above, thanks to skylights. The owner’s stateroom, on the other hand, is at the prow of the main deck, and terminates in two lateral balconies that stop just before the two uprights of the superstructure converge at the bow. These balconies are proof that genius does not follow fashions, but subverts them: in a moment in which it is hard to find a megayacht without balconies that can be altered, Foster returns to fixed balconies: «We wanted to reduce the mobile external parts to a minimum, to maintain the elegant profile of the yacht», he explains. A profile echoed on the inside by the play of glass and openings that multiply the natural light, also thanks to ceilings in bright white Corian, full-height windows, liners that ignore the borders between inside and outside, internal carpeting that imitates the planks of the external wood flooring, and a skillful game of spotlights and diffused elements in the artificial lighting system. The English architect narrates the creative process that led to these results: «We have constantly explored the expressive and technical potential of glass and light in our constructions. If the task of architecture is to create spaces, light is the means that brings them to life and shapes them. Light has poetic qualities, it can blend spaces with the sea and raise the spirits, but it must always be balanced by shadow, offering more intimate, darker zones. With YachtPlus we wanted to create a sense of light and space, to evoke the unique spirit of navigation. The internal glass staircase helps to bring natural lighting to the lower decks and cabins. At night, the windows seem opaque from the  outside, but during the day sunlight invades the spaces, making the windows completely transparent and opening up the view of the sea». For the internal furnishings, Foster has chosen Made in Italy: «Even the yacht, after all, is an example of Made in Italy, so we thought it would be appropriate to continue with the tradition of Italian design and craftsmanship in the furnishings as well». So in the kitchen we find a model by Schiffini, created for the occasion, while the furniture is by Cassina. All this splendor will be enjoyed by twelve persons at a time, assisted by a crew of seven, managed by the Swiss company Floating Life.
]]> 2009-07-15 15:13:26 Interni Onboard n°4 Baracuda <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,609,intItemID,631,intLangID,2.html photos Onne van der Wal/Giuliano Sargentini - text Massimo Paperini

 project Perini Navi/Ron Holland/John Pawson
photos Onne van der Wal/Giuliano Sargentini - text Massimo Paperini

  Continuous spaces, sculptural volumes, openings for light that grazes the surfaces. The minimalist touch of John Pawson gives a fresh, absolutely contemporary image to the new maxi-sailer from Perini Navi, marking an important new chapter in the history of this ship yard in Viareggio. “The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne / Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; / Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds were love-sick with them...” (William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2). The new Baracuda maxi-sailer by Perini Navi is a 50-meter designed by Ron Holland and Perini Navi for the nautical parts and exteriors, with interiors by the English architect John Pawson, already well-known in yachting circles for the interiors of the B-60 by Luca Brenta. This is the first time the shipyard has made a boat with rectangular portholes on a dark metallized gray body. The owner wanted a hue similar to that of fish scales, while for the sails, in violet, the inspiration came from the famous barge of Cleopatra described by William Shakespeare. The external lines underscore the stylistic evolution in some of the new creations of Perini Navi. One absolute novelty for this 50-meter is the double stern door that can be raised to make room for a large beach deck with a ladder for access, and then raised further to permit access to the garage and to launch the second tender. Regarding the interiors, John Pawson explains: “the big challenge with Baracuda was to take a series of spatial principles and apply them to a particular situation such as that of a 50-meter sailboat. I wanted to create a place that would bring out the priority value of light, space and proportions, principles that have given form to my work from the very beginning. The main deck is conceived as an open space, without divisions; the goal was to have a clear environment, a visual field free of obstacles, unlike what is usually done on vessels of this type. The wall coverings, made with parchment paper, were chosen not only for the delicate beauty of the texture and color, but also for the way they contribute to dematerialize the volume of the central staircase. The fluidity of the space is also accentuated by the connection of the living area to the aft well-deck, marked by uninterrupted lines for the ceiling and floor. This spatial fluidity, one of the most important principles of my architecture, is not a pursuit of homogeneity and perfection, as in a gesamtkunstwerk (a universal artwork, ed.), which would not have much to do with concepts of livability and comfort. So for the furnishings, in fact, we have opted for a combination of custom pieces and design classics”. From the classic ‘open-air’ well-deck of Perini Navi one directly reaches, through a sliding door, the living area, composed of a single space for living, dining and relaxation zones, separated by the volume of the central staircase. The choice of materials by the English architect, a worldwide reference point for minimalism, aims at creating extreme sobriety and purity of lines. For the ceiling and the lining pieces blanched teak is combined with white lacquered oak, while for all the vertical surfaces matte white lacquer has been applied. Openings for light in the ceiling, at the points of connection with the walls, dematerialize their consistency, in a space dominated by pale, luminous surfaces. Inside the single space, furnishings from the 1930s and the 1960s, divans with sleek lines, floor lamps, a dining table in Macassar ebony surrounded by ashwood chairs, coexist in a harmonious way. The central block connecting the various decks, clad in matte-finish parchment, contains a staircase in blanched teak that seems to float in space thanks to the detachment from the lateral walls, and the glow created by the lighting below it. The staircase leads to the lower deck, containing an owner’s stateroom with his and her baths, two VIP staterooms and two single guest rooms with a second, foldaway bed. The cladding of the lining pieces adds continuity for the various zones thanks to the combination of white maple and blanched teak, but in this case the ceiling takes on the white color of the vertical surfaces. All the lines, including those of the beds and the divan in the owner’s stateroom, with a desk by Christian Liagre, are sleek and clean; the bed seems to be suspended, and the nightstands are simple cubes attached to the bulkhead that forms a headboard, but also a divider for the closet zone that leads to the two bathrooms. The only notes of color are the violet cushions, echoing the hue of the sails, and certain details of the matte ebony. In the VIP and guest cabins, of equal elegance and balance, the protagonists are the wall lamps of the Agrafee nightstands by Serge Mouille, with their sinuous lines in absolutely neutral, linear spaces. The lighting of the staterooms is diffused, favoring the lateral surfaces that contain the portholes, though a few spotlights are added on the ceilings, for accents. The bathrooms are also essential, with suspended ebony furnishings topped by washstands in cream-color limestone. Thanks to the innovative interpretation provided by John Pawson for the interior layout, Perini Navi, well-known for the technological content of its classic yachts, continues along its path of exploration of contemporary trends in interior design, after the experiences of other yachts like Squall, Roseharty and the more recent P2.
]]> 2009-07-15 15:10:07 Interni Onboard n°4 Floating House<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,13,intIssueID,609,intItemID,630,intLangID,2.html photos Florian Holzherr - text Matteo Vercelloni

 project MOS Architects, Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample
photos Florian Holzherr - text Matteo Vercelloni

  A house floating on Lake Huron, at Pointe au Baril, near Ontario, Canada. A small dwelling built on a platform, that in the contemporary reworking of vernacular techniques and models offers a good example of sustainable architecture. The site itself – a small island in the middle of Lake Huron, chosen as a refuge for weekends and vacations in a natural setting – points to the close relationship between habitat choices and water, seen as an element of continuous presence that surrounds the land and the houses in every moment of the day. If the house, as in this situation, instead of resting on land floats on the lake and is moored to the rocky shore by a mobile wooden gangplank, the distinction between a nautical interior and a home can be seen only in the size of the spaces and the large windows. While on a sensory level the main experiences are the rocking of the moored boat, the sound of the water on the shore, the reflection of the moon in the quiet surface of the lake. But this floating house, built on a mobile metal platform with large empty barrels to guarantee equilibrium, is not just a successful compositional experiment. It also underlines a very timely working method, for the optimization of resources and the reduction of waste. First of all, building a house of the same size, with the same finishes, on the chosen island, rather than on the water surrounding it, would have been much more expensive due to the complications caused by transport of materials and workers. So the lake becomes a sort of ‘water highway’, and the home is a ‘mobile home’, while the worksite becomes a space near the builder’s facilities, to optimize timing and costs. Having positioned the metal base on the surface of the frozen lake, the builders began to make the house itself. It has the shape of a typical house with a pitched roof, like a kid’s drawing, made only with cedar planks, in keeping with the traditional local construction techniques, for the verandahs, the porch and all the facades. The open and closed segments of the facade alternate with portions with separated bands, like horizontal grilles, to permit varying degrees of indoor-outdoor transparency. The recognizable, ‘vernacular’ shape of the overall volume combines with the essential, contemporary design of the enclosure as a whole and its interiors, where the wood used for the ceiling and floors alternates with the luminous white surfaces of the walls. When the house was completed, and the ice had melted, the vessel traveled for about 80 km, transported by a motor boat, reaching its destination. Another wooden walkway connects the deck at lake level with the rocks of the shore, as a ‘natural’, exclusive outdoor space for the house. The floating system permits possible moves to other locations, and adapts to the seasonal changes in the water level, simply changing the angle of the gangplanks.
]]> 2009-07-15 15:08:38 Interni Onboard n°4 Summary<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,107,intIssueID,609,intItemID,629,intLangID,2.html  Interni OnBoard 3 EDITORIAL

ARCHITECTURE FOR THE SEA

Ontario, a floating house
design by MOS Architects, Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample
photos by Florian Holzherr - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Viareggio and Lisbon, reuse of two shipyards
projects by Paolo Riani and Alberto Caetano with Manuel Reis
photos by Alessandra Chemollo and FG + SG Fotografia de Arquitectura - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Baracuda
design by John Pawson
photos by Onne van der Wal and Giuliano Sargentini - text by Massimo Paperini

Sea Force One
design by Luca Dini
text by Simona Spriano

Ocean Emerald
design by Foster + Partners
photos by Paolo Maggi/Nigel Young - text by Marianna Aprile

Lazy Me
design by Carlo Galeazzi/Carlo Paladini
photos by Giovanni Malgarini - text by Decio Carugati

Nirvana
design by GCA Arquitectes
photos by Ed Holt/Albert Brunsting - text by Simona Spriano

Panther2
design by Luca Dini
text by Marianna Aprile

THE ENCOUNTER
Stefano Giovannoni
interview by Cristina Morozzi
photos by Aurora Di Girolamo

MASTERS
Gino Sarfatti and the big ships
by Decio Carugati


THE CENTRAL THEME
Light on board
by Francesca Lanz and Irene Pasina
introduction by Silvia Piardi

DESIGN PROJECT

New generations
by Michelangelo Giombini

Spider & Open: for excellence
by Decio Carugati

REPERTORY
Fisherman & gentleman
by Simona Spriano

SCHOOLS
Where and how: training in yacht design
by Benedetto Inzerillo

FIRMS DIRECTORY
by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

On the cover: stern detail of the Ocean Emerald, the 41-meter yacht designed by Foster + Partners and constructed by Cantieri Navali Rodriquez for YachtPlus. This is the first of ten identical yachts for ‘fractional ownership’, characterized by very original architectural solutions, including a large staircase that starts at the beach deck, crosses the four levels and reaches the sun deck.


]]> 2009-07-15 15:05:21 Interni Onboard n°4 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,59,intIssueID,609,intItemID,628,intLangID,2.html  by Gilda Bojardi
  This revolutionary passage of scale has led to the creation of new, increasingly diversified models of utilization of yachts: every boat expresses the lifestyle and aesthetic culture of its owner.
A house floating on Lake Huron, at Pointe au Baril, near Ontario, Canada. A small dwelling built on a platform, that in the contemporary reworking of vernacular techniques and models offers a good example of sustainable architecture. The site itself – a small island in the middle of Lake Huron, chosen as a refuge for weekends and vacations in a natural setting – points to the close relationship between habitat choices and water, seen as an element of continuous presence that surrounds the land and the houses in every moment of the day. If the house, as in this situation, instead of resting on land floats on the lake and is moored to the rocky shore by a mobile wooden gangplank, the distinction between a nautical interior and a home can be seen only in the size of the spaces and the large windows. While on a sensory level the main experiences are the rocking of the moored boat, the sound of the water on the shore, the reflection of the moon in the quiet surface of the lake. But this floating house, built on a mobile metal platform with large empty barrels to guarantee equilibrium, is not just a successful compositional experiment. It also underlines a very timely working method, for the optimization of resources and the reduction of waste. First of all, building a house of the same size, with the same finishes, on the chosen island, rather than on the water surrounding it, would have been much more expensive due to the complications caused by transport of materials and workers. So the lake becomes a sort of ‘water highway’, and the home is a ‘mobile home’, while the worksite becomes a space near the builder’s facilities, to optimize timing and costs. Having positioned the metal base on the surface of the frozen lake, the builders began to make the house itself. It has the shape of a typical house with a pitched roof, like a kid’s drawing, made only with cedar planks, in keeping with the traditional local construction techniques, for the verandahs, the porch and all the facades. The open and closed segments of the facade alternate with portions with separated bands, like horizontal grilles, to permit varying degrees of indoor-outdoor transparency. The recognizable, ‘vernacular’ shape of the overall volume combines with the essential, contemporary design of the enclosure as a whole and its interiors, where the wood used for the ceiling and floors alternates with the luminous white surfaces of the walls. When the house was completed, and the ice had melted, the vessel traveled for about 80 km, transported by a motor boat, reaching its destination. Another wooden walkway connects the deck at lake level with the rocks of the shore, as a ‘natural’, exclusive outdoor space for the house. The floating system permits possible moves to other locations, and adapts to the seasonal changes in the water level, simply changing the angle of the gangplanks.

]]> 2009-07-15 17:00:30 Interni n°599 Summary<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,608,intItemID,627,intLangID,2.html  
 EDITORIAL

INTERNI SPECIAL ON SICILY
edited by Antonella Boisi

INTRODUCTION
Sicily has a secret
text by Philippe Daverio

The New Deal of Palermo
encounter with Diego Cammarata by Gilda Bojardi

Taking back the sea
design by studio Italo Rota & Partners
text by Matteo Vercelloni

ARCHITECTURE
Vendicari, a house in time
design by Achille Scaringi Raspagliesi with Corrado Papa
photos by Alfio Garozzo - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Ragusa, a house as a continuous ribbon
design by Architrend Architecture
photos by Umberto Agnello - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Palermo, an avant-garde home
design by Giuseppe Di Prima
photos by Giacomo Giannini - text by Antonella Boisi

Palermo, an nautical loft
design by Domenico Argento con/with Michele Cammarata
photos by Alfio Garozzo - text by Alessandro Rocca

Noto, a home amidst the glow of tufa and stone
design by Corrado Papa
photos by Alfio Garozzo - text by Alessandro Rocca

Modica, a house in the rock
design by Franco Menna
photos by Paolo Utimpergher e/and Antonino Savojardo - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Ginostra, a home for art
design by Fausto Fabiani
photos by Paolo Utimpergher e/and Antonino Savojardo - text by Francesco Vertunni

Pantelleria, a dammuso on the island of the wind
design by Gabriella Giuntoli, Lucia Bisi
photos and text by Costanza Rampello

Partinico (Palermo), the house of wine
design by Ruffinoassociati and Annibale Sicurella
photos by Giacomo Giannini - text by Francesco Vertunni

Calatino Creative Country Club
projects by Marco Navarra/Nowa
text by Alessandro Rocca

THE ENCOUNTER
Nino Bevilacqua
edited by Davide Rampello
photos by Giacomo Giannini

TIMELY TOPICS
Salemi, The republic of ideas
text by Antonella Galli

THE CENTRAL THEME
Design in the sun
by Nadia Lionello
images processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino

DESIGN PROJECT
Design in Sicily
by Cinzia Ferrara

Addiopizzo, hello legal trade
by Cinzia Ferrara

Dense tranquility
projects by Giovanni Levanti
by Stefano Caggiano

ART
Salvatore Scarpitta: The art of racing
by Germano Celant

REPERTORY
Pungent Design
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY

TRANSLATIONS

On the cover: detail from the performance VB62 by Vanessa Beecroft (a work featuring real women and plaster casts), that opened the activities, last summer, of Fondazione Goca (Gallery of Contemporary Art-Palermo), directed by Antonio Bevilacqua. In the renovated space of the church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo, the project emphasized the link with the Sicilian baroque sculptural tradition, an excellent example of integration with the context.
Foto di/photo by Vanessa Beecroft "VB62.29.DG.VB", 2008. VB 62 Spasimo, Palermo, Italy ©2009 Vanessa Beecroft Courtesy of Galleria Lia Rumma & Massimo Minini

]]> 2009-07-14 12:53:55 Interni n°599 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,608,intItemID,626,intLangID,2.html The first monographic issue on the Regions of Italy that are making great progress in the field of design, in the widest sense of the term, covering architecture, landscape, design and art, is on Sicily. An article by Philippe Daverio, art historian and professor in the Department of Design at the University of Palermo, offers an interpretation of the character of the Sicilians and the complex culture of the island, illustrated by the most important projects of renewal and renovation of a specific cultural heritage, updated in a contemporary key. Stories of cities, palaces, houses, typologies and traditions, reinvented in an innovative, productive way. Diego Cammarata, the mayor of Palermo, emphasizes how the rebirth of the port, the waterfront and the historical center become the themes of reference of his city’s “New Deal”. Vittorio Sgarbi, mayor of Salemi, among other things, narrates the unique experience of this ‘republic of creativity’ (also thanks to the contribution of Oliviero Toscani). Bernardo Tortorici, President of the Association of Historic Estates, talks about the importance of renovating palaces with modern methods, facilitated by the entry on the scene of new, enlightened owners. Nino Bevilacqua, President of the Port Authority of Palermo, patron of the Goca and an enthusiastic collector of contemporary art, is interviewed by Davide Rampello, focusing on new places, neighborhoods and spaces in Palermo that influence the cultural life and utilization of the city. Another new development of Sicily, the “island without a bridge” for the writer Matteo Collura, is the concept of the Distributed Museum, with recently founded institutions including Palazzo Belmonte Riso of Palermo, extending the process to the contexts and protagonists of contemporary art. The pages on design, finally, show individual objects and recent research, keeping track of the names of young designers. Because Sicily looks to the future.
Gilda Bojardi
]]> 2009-07-14 14:55:55 Interni n°599 Pungent Design<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,70,intIssueID,608,intItemID,625,intLangID,2.html  by Katrin Cosseta
  Icons of the Sicilian landscape, cacti and prickly pears are a very current image theme for furniture, complements and lighting. Playful interpretations of Mediterranean identity. ]]> 2009-07-14 15:41:43 Interni n°599 Design in Sicily<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,608,intItemID,624,intLangID,2.html  by Cinzia Ferrara
  “The atlases say Sicily is an island, so it must be true, because atlases are books of honor. But one is tempted to doubt, considering the fact that islands are usually seen as gatherings of races and customs, while here everything is mixed, changing, contradictory, with all the complexity of a continent. It is true that there are many Sicilies, I will never finish counting them. There is the green Sicily of the carob tree, the white Sicily of salt flats, the yellow of sulfur, the gold of honey, the purple of lava”. If you can’t say it better, you might as well use words already written, especially if they were written by Gesualdo Bufalino to lucidly, honestly describe his homeland. Of the many Sicilies, I’d like to narrate the one that lazily moves, so as not to betray its nature, toward possible scenarios in which design, with its many names, can become a tool to enhance a territory full of legacies, of cultural resources, crafts, food and wine, all legacies that are undervalued and underutilized. Design for development is a definition that takes us straight to the story of the Department of Design in Palermo, still an Institute in the 1980s, and to Anna Maria Fundarò, its director, who with a group of young researchers, all of whom are on the faculty today, began to apply a method of research and diffusion of the design discipline in a territory that was reluctant to accept change. Those were the years of the first important signals of a process of growth that has slowly led to the success of design here, after rolling with the punches of a real battle, with occasional knock-downs as well. Design for development became a slogan, the battle cry of many initiatives promoted by the institute, workshops, conferences, exhibitions, collaborations with companies, in the years when it was possible to meet great masters, in the lecture halls of Palermo, like Ettore Sottsass, Ugo La Pietra and Marco Zanuso. For those who were trained in that period the growing passion for design was overwhelming, fed by the pride of belonging to a sort of elite, and the difficulties of applying industrial design as a powerful tool of change for the Sicilian territory. For many who studied at the department of architecture and explored the subject matter of industrial design, this profession was a mirage, impossible to reach. But not for all. Some of them tenaciously continued to work, creating optimal conditions for a leap forward with the creation of the first degree program in industrial design in southern Italy, after the one created in Naples. So “Design for Development” has continued to be more than a motto, and it is still the focus of the department, the doctoral research program and the degree program, representing the aspiration of design to become a discipline of central importance, to activate processes of growth in the territory. The idea is not to import models of growth, imposing a forced process of modernization. Instead, the constant attempt is to listen to the territory and to try to improve it with actions that call the many disciplinary areas of design into play, on their own or integrated with other disciplines, for the creation of sustainable solutions. Among the many Sicilies, today we can list the Sicily of design, which by nature, by aspiration, always looks forward, but without ever losing touch with that land, which more than an island is a microscopic continent in its own right.


]]> 2009-07-14 15:52:08 Interni n°599 Salemi: the republic of ideas <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,608,intItemID,623,intLangID,2.html  by Antonella Galli
  Can a town in western Sicily be revitalized through creativity? Vittorio Sgarbi and Oliviero Toscani think so. To do it, they have called on both Italian and foreign brains and personalities of culture. Focusing on excellence and the desire to invent a new policy path. Vittorio Sgarbi, mayor of Salemi, a town of 11,000 inhabitants in the province of Trapani: the news, in June 2008, raised some eyebrows. One year later, Sgarbi’s plan to revive the town of Salemi has involved other well-known names of Italian culture, in an approach of  creative administration, a subversive experiment of actions away from the usual beaten track of politics. So we have Oliviero Toscani, as the Alderman of Creativity, Bernardo Tortorici for Urban Planning, the Historical Center, Urban Decoration and Landscape, the architect Peter Glidewell for Culture and Agriculture, Fulvio Pierangelini, chef of Gambero Rosso, as Alderman of “Mani in Pasta”, Davide Paolini, gastronaut, as Alderman of Taste and Distaste, and then Umberto Montano, Philippe Daverio (librarian), the architect Pietro Carlo Contini and many others (www.assessoratoallacreativita.it). All hard at work for Salemi: why? “I promised that Salemi would become famous around the world, and that promise is being kept”, says the mayor; “There is the possibility of using art, creativity and culture to revive a territory like this one, that has not yet recovered from the earthquake that struck the zone over forty years ago”. To renew the historic part of Salemi that was abandoned after the quake (50% of the original settlement), the mayor and his alderman Oliviero Toscani have launched the project ‘houses for 1 euro’, offering anyone the possibility of buying a ruined house for just one euro if they take responsibility for the costs of reconstruction, obviously in keeping with criteria supplied by the administration. Sgarbi takes stock of the situation: “There were almost 10,000 applications, from all over the world, including India and Australia, and many from England as well. The project is entering the active phase: the first houses will soon be assigned. But a lot of time was needed to determine the properties and the purchases, because every house, though abandoned, had a history, an owner, so there was a legal procedure that had to be followed”. Umberto Montano, president of the “Associazione Salemi e Pepemi” (another idea of the Department of Creativity, to promote local food products), is working on the legal part of ‘Homes for 1 euro’: “The procedure is complex, precisely because things are fragmented, but the city is now the owner of 1000 houses, which will soon be handed over to new owners (about 250 lots are ready). To the buyers, we are working on guidelines to guarantee willingness to stick to the rules set by the administration during the reconstruction phase”. The architect Pietro Carlo Contini has prepared a detailed plan for the project in Salemi: “This will be an open-air laboratory that will permit work on an ‘Italian way’ of restoring historical buildings. One enlightening example is that of the restoration of the frescos by Giotto at Assisi: where the paint was gone, nothing extraneous or fake has been inserted, just lines that offer a glimpse of the former continuity. The same approach can be taken for the houses at Salemi: after careful analysis of what already exists, of the materials and the history of the building, the renovation and conversion must be done without overlapping or transfiguring; in a gentle, inspired way, the identity, the truth of the houses should be reconstructed.” Oliviero Toscani has activated a workshop in Salemi called the Earthquake Project, with twenty young people working on a campaign of promotion for the town: “Wine is one of the strong points of this zone, and it can be exploited further”, Toscani says, “so for the harvest, we intend to organize a festival, filling an abandoned amphitheater with wine, making it into a wine swimming pool, as a playful way of emphasizing the quality of this product.” Other campaigns are already under way: “Some are ethical in character”, says the famous photographer, “like the one to stop violent treatment of women, involving young women from Salemi and nearby towns (but it will soon extend to all of Italy), and a campaign to stop the abandoning of pets, with the construction of a kennel to protect animals, on land reclaimed from convicted organized crime organizations. Then comes cinema, with the extraordinary donation by the New York collector Yongman Kim (55,000 DVDs), making Salemi the world capital of independent cinema: we will put the films online and create a festival”. Sgarbi, in the meantime, will launch a festival of religious film in Salemi in September, called “Visions”. And the capacity for vision, perhaps, is the best feature of this creative administration, an added value seldom found among the ‘professionals’ of national politics.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:51:02 Interni n°599 Nino Bevilacqua<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,97,intIssueID,608,intItemID,622,intLangID,2.html photos Giacomo Giannini

 by Davide Rampello
photos Giacomo Giannini

  46 years old, engineer, designer, in Italy and abroad, of infrastructures for circulation, and a key figure in the New Deal of Palermo for his role as President of the Port Authority, supervising the rebirth and renewal of the port and waterfront zone. He is also the patron of the Fondazione GOCA (Gallery of Contemporary Art of Palermo), which opened in July with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft at the former church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo.  Engineer, professor, contemporary art collector, wine producer: which of these activities brings you the most satisfaction?
“I couldn’t say, it’s like asking a father which of his children he prefers. I don’t know how to do just one thing. I tend to approach all these activities with the same enthusiasm, though in certain phases of life I may be more closely involved with one as opposed to the others”.
How did you develop your passion for contemporary art?
“It comes from my curiosity, a character trait, but I think you can approach contemporary art, in the sense of understanding it, only if you know the history. Then it becomes something you have inside you, and you can no longer live without it”.
How did you start collecting?
“Of course, then you start collecting, but in my case – I’d like to point out – this has been as a direct consumer, in a visual-emotional relationship with the work. It isn’t a drive to possess things, that doesn’t interest me”.
What about your training? What are your main activities today?
“I have a scientific background, I am an engineer, I became a college professor at the age of 39, I love research and I am motivated by the desire to make my own small contribution, above all for young people. I have taught at the Turin Polytechnic, and now I am at the University of Palermo. It’s a job I do with passion. But my main activity is still the design of transport infrastructures, bridges and highways, with a sacred respect for architecture. My work always starts with analysis of the environmental context, because a bridge, an overpass, a street are strong presences, but they should be integrated in the territorial or urban system, playing a significant role in the landscape, which is inevitably modified. Details are very important. There is a segment of the Palermo-Messina highway where this relationship between the infrastructure and the environment, with nature and greenery, is very evident. The same is true at Ortigia, Siracusa, where we have renovated a historic bridge and made a new bridge connecting Via Malta and Via Chindemi, a slender wave resting on two central supports, with an elliptical section for the stone structure, and a surface finished with steel sheets, a contemporary figure that makes inevitable changes in the landscape, in the system of relations between natural and artificial elements”.
Where does your professional activity happen?
“The headquarters is in Palermo, at Palazzo Torremuzza, then there is a studio in Rome and we will soon be opening one in Milan, too, at Via Tortona 37, inside a building designed by Matteo Thun, an industrial structure that has been converted in an excellent way, for the height of the spaces, the possibility of indoor-outdoor relations, the light, the relationship with the context”.
Would you tell us about your key role as President of the Port Authority of Palermo?
“Of course. Palermo is a port city, in the physical and symbolic senses of the term. But in the 1950s the sea was physically separated from the town, the rubble from the war was used to make an embankment and a dump. The redesign of the waterfront is a strategic operation, a way of putting the urban fabric back in touch with the sea, through the creation of courageous scenarios. The project of development of the new port is the result of coordinated work between different territorial agents. One strategic choice was that of constructed the Officina del Porto, a think tank for the development of design activities, involving a series of internationally acclaimed architects as well as young local talents. In such a complex project programming is fundamental, as is teamwork, the agreement on architectural choices that are contemporary in nature, but also involve the renovation of monumental resources. The renewal of the Foro Italico based on a project by Italo Rota (suggested precisely by Davide Rampello, President since 2003 of the Milan Triennale, and from 2002 to 2006 Artistic Director of Major Events for the city, ed.), who is also working on the creation of the new maritime passenger station, and then the restoration of the Archaeology Park of Castello a Mare, and the cleaning up of the Cala, the natural bay of the Porto Antico, are all aimed at reviving an idea of the city that takes back its access to the sea”.
How will the New Deal of Palermo continue? Have the cultural activities of recent years had an influence on how people use the city?
“Certainly in recent years much has been done to revitalize the cultural life of Palermo. Important steps have also been made in the renewal of the historical center. You cannot talk about cultural activities without starting with the city and its history. We needed, above all, to re-enter our places, in a positive way. We should not forget that any exhibition of contemporary art done in Palermo may have a smaller audience with respect to places like Milan, New York, Paris, London, etc. But Palermo, and all of Sicily, have one exceptional strong point: the magical relationship that can be created between history and the contemporary world. This is what makes us stand out. Why Sicily? Because its context is extraordinary, unique. Sea, greenery, mountains, Aetna, the salt flats, the Greek Theater of Siracusa, the temples of Agrigento, the historic palaces of Palermo… Knowledge of the territory remains central. Many young people have approached these projects in a synergistic way (mixing architecture, art, culture, history). A Gallery of Contemporary Art has been created, like Expa, and a series of cultural programs like Kals’Art. The projects are systematic: churches are kept open in the evening, the most important palazzi could be visited, renovated and restructured places bearing the signs of history, like the former Locomotive Depot of Sant’Erasmo, hosted contemporary art”.
Which places, neighborhoods and spaces have specifically had this function of revitalizing the cultural life of Palermo? Do you remember the Kals’Art project, on which we worked together?
“Or course. First of all, the Kalsa neighborhood, in the center of Palermo, adjacent to the Cala, has been a driving force for the others. I have passionately focused on all the phases of its renewal, especially in terms of accessibility. It was necessary to intervene in an organic way. Last July, starting the activities of the Fondazione Goca, we used the recovered space of the church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo, for a performance, the first in Sicily, by Vanessa Beecroft, who made a group of plaster sculptures of women, positioned in the space below the apse of the church. A project that underlines the link with the Sicilian baroque sculptural tradition, represented in particular by Giacomo Serpotta. An excellent example of integration with the context. The building where my studio is located, Palazzo Torremuzza, also has a close relationship with its territory: it has been revitalized together with its context – the Arab quarter – which is now a civic zone you can freely visit even at one in the morning, something you could not have done just a few years ago”.
Is it possible to make a list of the Sicilian cities in the avant-garde in terms of culture?
“I live in Palermo, but when I talk about Palermo I am referring to all of Sicily. I think the other cities are doing very well in the area of renovation and a focus on cultural activities, like Siracusa, Ragusa, Catania, Trapani. Apart from rankings, I can sense a shared desire to invest in the territory. But the renewal – and this is a sore point – comes more from private initiatives than public ones. I hope the public sector will grow and take part, to match the commitment of the private sector”.
Which contemporary artists would you like to see at work in Sicilian cities?
“There are many internationally known contemporary artists and promising young talents working in Palermo. I am thinking about Aleksandra Mir, Jenny Saville, Stefania Galegati. So Palermo can be considered a true scene. I would like to see Anselm Kiefer at work on the territory here, for the ability of his art to interpret the relationship with the history of places”.
Favorite architects?
“I have appreciated, with you, the work of Dominique Perrault, and specifically his foot bridges for Palermo, that make it possible to reorganize circulation without creating visual and architectural barriers. I also admire the work of Massimiliano Fuksas, creator of the sets for the summer season  at the Greek Theater of Siracusa. In any case, more in general, I feel in line with the architects who manage to maintain a direct, real relationship with projects, who are capable of expressing their thoughts, even with sophisticated means, but like a craftsman”.
How does modern design culture fit into the multicultural tradition of Sicily?
“I should say that I am absolutely opposed to the philological remaking of a historical space or place. I think it is always more interesting to focus on contemporary intervention in a contextualized way, connected in a correct way to the specific history of the area concerned. Vittorio Gregotti has acknowledged that he made a mistake of evaluation regarding the Zen housing complex he designed in Palermo, because he didn’t know enough about the territory”.
Do you think all these projects in the city will translate into an increase of consumption, a modification of the habits of citizens?
“Undoubtedly renewal should be seen as an activity of synergy, not based on one single case or another, but a strategic overview of urban, structural, architectural, artistic and social terms, and always – I emphasize again – contextualized. Above all with respect to the socio-economic fabric of the host zone”.

]]> 2009-07-14 15:50:20 Interni n°599 A dammuso on the island of the wind <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,608,intItemID,621,intLangID,2.html interior design Lucia Bisi 
photos and text Costanza Rampello

 architectural design Gabriella Giuntoli
interior design Lucia Bisi 
photos and text Costanza Rampello

  Pantelleria, and a primitive example of bioclimate architecture, revived. Formerly a rural structure, now an initial experiment with a hybrid system that uses the marvelous climate resources of this Mediterranean island. The windmill, with an unusual form, is more like a sculpture. Planted in the middle of a vineyard, with its looming presence and dizzying perpetual motion, it represents the only contemporary sign in a completely archaic context. This original windmill, the manifesto of the pioneering determination of a grape farmer who has moved to the island, together with a photovoltaic system, powers the dwelling and agricultural complex she owns. A settlement composed of rural dammuso structures, bordering the zibibbo vineyards and a flat portion of Valle Monastero, on the side towards the sea. The valley, part of one of the many volcanoes on the island, is one of the rural zones that continues the tradition of vineyards of Pantelleria. Bordered on one side by the mountain and a crest that separates it from the sea, Valle Monastero is a vast plain characterized by ancient settlements where grapes and, to a lesser extend, capers are grown. There is still an intact, primordial harmony of very fertile land, with cultivated plots bordered by lavic stone walls and punctuated by dammusi made with the same stone. These dammusi are partially agricultural structures, cellars, wineries, storerooms, but many have now become refined vacation homes. The recent conservative renovation has revived this rural settlement, previously used as a temporary shelter for work in the fields, and made it into a permanent residence for year-round living. The restoration and completion of the volume, which also called for the addition of a traditional garden, has been handled by Gabriella Giuntoli, an architect who lives on the island, and one of the people responsible, on a wide scale, for the conservation of the extraordinary dammuso typology. This complex in lavic stone is composed of a house, the home of Floreana, and a growing business. The original dammuso contains the living room, alcoves and a bath; the second, smaller, new structure contains the kitchen. The interior furnishings have been created spontaneously, thanks to the friendship between Floreana and Lucia Bisi, an architect who often visits the island. With a taste for experimentation with something new and different, on an island considered ‘African’, where rather mannerist Arabesque expressions abound, making many of the houses seem very similar, the two friends have developed unusual, innovative solutions, conforming to the rigorously ecological approach desired by Floreana in terms of energy and technical limitations. In a space that required nothing except enhancement of the simple, archaic volumes, and possibly some lighting fixtures of limited impact, they used the Bacchetta Magica model of fluorescent lamps by Viabizzuno (joined, in the kitchen and bath, by lamps by Luceplan and Artemide). The diffused light from these fixtures, of different lengths and at different angles, suspended at the intersections of the vaults, is ideal for the spaces of the dammuso, formed by cupolas, alcoves and apses. For the furnishings, the designer has stuck with an approach of absolute simplicity: Italian walnut for the table, gray painted wood for the beds and divans. The Indian red and fuchsia violet colors of the cotton coverings by Mimma Gini enhance the pastel tones of the colored cement of the floors (a slightly violet earth tone) and the walls (powder); the striped drapes, painted by hand by the designer, echo the same hues.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:49:37 Interni n°599 In the rock <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,608,intItemID,620,intLangID,2.html photos Paolo Utimpergher and Antonino Savoiardo - text Matteo Vercelloni

 project Franco Menna 
photos Paolo Utimpergher and Antonino Savoiardo - text Matteo Vercelloni

  In Modica, in the hillside neighborhood of Monserrato, the renovation of a house with stone walls, a conservative restoration project that reveals the original structure, but does not avoid contemporary touches in the interiors, both in terms of furnishings and of configuration of new spaces. An abandoned house, with a ruined roof, damaged and marked by time, but with great potential due to its sincere simplicity and its panoramic position overlooking the city and its churches, and the surrounding space: a large terrace for outdoor living, in the shade of an impressive fig tree, curving toward the stone facade. This was the situation in which Franco Menna found this house, a bit separate from the center of the city, but reached on foot, along flights of steps and narrow streets, from the main street. The position is isolated, almost rural, yet very close to the town. The house stands on the hillside, ‘saving’ one constructed facade and using the rock, which invades the interiors, as a natural embankment wall. The project has revealed the original stone of the structure on all sides, clearing off layers of stucco and paint. The stone, also recycled from thick internal partitions that have been eliminated, continues from the main facade to the embankment walls and those connecting the complex to the entrance from the street, and then forms the opus incertum of the large terrace, utilized as an outdoor room, with privacy guaranteed by the high position of the entire construction. The image of the exterior is tactfully inserted in the hillside landscape, mixing the natural colors of the stone and those of the hill with the greenery of the vegetation. Inside, the reconstruction program was more detailed and complex. First of all, the idea was to optimize energy performance, with special wooden window frames and the construction of a new insulated roof, with sloping pitches, like the original, covered with blanched wooden planks, like the support beams. Finally, a vertical insulating ‘coat’ was installed, then sheared and painted white, against the walls, with the exception of certain significant portions. The entire stone wall, parallel to the long main facade, has been cleaned and enhanced by evocative perspective openings formed by the new bridge-loft in marine wood, painted white, that contains a small bedroom area. The suspended space is one of the new figures that redesign the interiors; the existing height beneath one of the sloping pitches made it possible to create this small, cozy floating room, detached from the longitudinal walls, in this zone of exposed stone. A solution also conceived to underscore the different dimensions of the spaces, and the independence and completeness of the new volume, the linear figure of insertion that joins the gray support wall connected to the level below, and the wooden staircase behind it. The loft is framed by a large existing arch that separates the dining-kitchen zone from the living area. The arch was revealed by demolishing thick partitions that subdivided the available space in a very random way. It emerges in the living area, defining the space around it and becoming, together with the white loft behind it, another characterizing figure of the internal space, configured as the linear sum of different rooms. Behind it, along the larger sides of the bridge-loft, a series of skylights created in the roof capture natural light in the rear zone and along the conclusive stone wall with the kitchen placed against it. The stone of the facades and the terrace, the material that gives the house its character in the landscape, is thus brought inside, combining with the rock and the flooring in local pitch stone.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:47:47 Interni n°599 Once, in Noto <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,608,intItemID,619,intLangID,2.html photos Alfio Garza - text Alessandro Rocca

 project Corrado Papa 
photos Alfio Garza - text Alessandro Rocca

  A precious, light second home, inside a strong, heavy work of architecture, an ancient place of bright tuba and Modica stone. A tunnel, almost a cave, dug into an 18th-century palazzo that was originally made as a courthouse for Noto. Carlo Ferine is a Florentine wine expert of great fame and success. After studying agriculture, he rapidly achieved great international renown, including an award from the American magazine “Wine Enthusiast” in 2007. In an interview conducted some time ago, Riccardo Falchion, editor of the food and wine periodical L’AcquaBuona, asked: “If you had to leave Tuscany, what region would you choose?” and Ferine, clairvoyantly perhaps, responded: “Sicily. What a land, what potential... still waiting to be exploited”. Evidently he was already on his way south, at least in mental exploration. Today we can see the results, in the completed restoration of an 18th-century complex in the historical center of Noto. A comfortable pied-à-terre for his wine-related activities on the island and for moments of relaxation, in a city with many extraordinary characteristics. Entirely reconstructed after an earthquake in 1693, Noto is a true treatise on Baroque architecture, and since 2002 it has been inserted in the world heritage listings of Unesco, along with Caltagirone, Militello Val di Catania, Catania, Modica, Palazzolo, Ragusa and Scicli. The architect Corrado Papa, who has a studio in Noto, approached a typical theme for this city, that of the recovery of structures and spaces that date back to the first phases of the reconstruction, most of which have remained pretty much intact. The 300 years that have elapsed have simply added an irregular patina to the stone, making these places even more precious. In this antique place, as monumental as an exterior, Papa has operated with great care, capturing and enhancing all the elements of historical value, and adding new features with caution and balance. One wise decision, for example, was that of limiting the treatment of the antique parts to a minimum, exploiting the emotional and historical depth of the signs of life and experience, like the blackened tuba stones near the hearth. On the ground floor, a single room extending from the street to the internal garden, the fields of white stucco are like neutral inserts in restored paintings, underlining the materic and figurative energy of the powerful barrel vault. The floor, in Modica stone, is cut by a glass opening that offers a view of the water cistern. The old staircase leads to the upper level, where the antique stone floor has been maintained and restored, along with the almost black ceiling in reeds and plaster. Integral parts of the project include the sculpture by Giovanni Fronted, four paintings by Michele Ciacciofera, and the furnishings, supplied by Habitat, that introduce, in a delicate but authoritative way, the gentle modernity of contemporary design.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:47:01 Interni n°599 The flavor of time <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,608,intItemID,618,intLangID,2.html photos Giacomo Giannini - text Antonella Boisi

 project Giuseppe Di Prima 
photos Giacomo Giannini - text Antonella Boisi

  A house in Palermo, a restructuring project that responds to contemporary needs in an innovative way: the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the history of places and spaces in a respectful way, but without avoiding new languages and ways of living. “Without Sicily, Italy cannot be fully understood. It is here one finds the key to all things", Goethe wrote, over two centuries ago. Villa Di Liberto, now the Troja house, dates back to the 18th century. Built as a summer residence at Piana dei Colli in Palermo, it is part of the town of San Lorenzo, which grew up around a church that has now been deconsecrated. The maps of the first half of the 1700s show the countryside to the north of the city striped by a road system penetrating the Piana, the result of expansion and rationalization of old mule trails. The land of sea, sun and springtime, of serene sunsets and rural landscapes had to adapt to the phenomena of widespread urbanization triggered by the rise of the middle class. Villa Di Liberto was no exception. The villa has had the good fortune to meet up with a new actor on the scene, Massimiliano Troja, who understood its potential for use in a contemporary key. And the gentle, sure hand of the architect Giuseppe Di Prima, who explains: “Confrontation with history formed the center of a restoration project that attempted to recover traces of the memory of the house, but without giving up on the development of languages and modes that can adapt to the residential needs of the 21st century”. The massive entrance door in wood, with a classic image, still leads to an internal courtyard, partially organized as a garden, with a small citrus grove, and a basin for collecting rain water. The essential Euclidean geometry of the construction, based on parameters of symmetry, with windows at the sides and a balcony at the center, underlines the linear, diagonal development of the volume set aside for the staircase leading to the dwelling proper, on the first floor. The deconsecrated church is now being restored, also with access from the street, and will soon be converted into a space for cultural events, in a more secluded position, to the back of the house. The workspaces of Troja’s office-studio are on the ground floor, while the roof features a double pitch with wooden trusses. The architecture that has developed over time conserves the original layout and flavor of the rooms, emphasizing the typology that governs the spaces and their decorations. “We have used precise compositional devices as solutions of continuity between existing features and new functional equipment, convinced that less always wins, that each added element should be part of a well-gauged mediation”, the client and the designer explain. “We have left the structures and passages as free and open as possible, in a neutral enclosure, conserving the bucolic wall paintings, where they interacted with the imagined sequences of the rooms, along with the white plaster cut out in only one part of the living room, to reveal the frescos. In the end, we have removed material to show the various stratifications and the significant fragments, without attempting stylistic reconstructions or extreme philological restoration”. The memory of the sequence of interconnected rooms and the external portal, as the ideal rhythm of reference, creates a perspective view from the entrance to the small internal patio, connected to the dining area crossed by a glass walkway. The line that generates the design of the floors underscores the original irregularities with white Carrara marble, bordered by an ordering strip in darker marble, without grain. The skillfully deployed chromatic accents enliven the atmosphere of the rooms. At the sides of the internal promenade other spaces open outward: “Imprisoned for centuries inside ‘apparently’ regular, symmetrical grids, they are now ‘freed’ in abstract, conceptual dimensions. So a ‘wing’ with an iron frame and fields of bordeaux plaster restores the continuum between the living area and the bedroom, revealing murals and inverting the classic use of the space: from the bed you can observe the alcove that contains a shell-tub that is the true protagonist of the setting. A system of dark blue painted walls contains the technologies of the kitchen space, softening the forceful presence of an island in stainless steel. The new metal staircase, like a suspended ribbon, finds its way through the vaults, while the handrail connects the parts, supports, separates, narrates the path. The new iron casements join the original system of doors and walls, generating a shadow, the necessary detachment, a sign of respect for the original structure”. We should also mention the role of the contemporary furnishings, selected from the catalogues of the design majors, that light up the scene, providing a necessary counterpoint to the narrative.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:46:24 Interni n°599 Continuous ribbon <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,608,intItemID,617,intLangID,2.html photos Umberto Agnello - text Matteo Vercelloni

 project Gaetano Manganello and Carmelo Tumino Architrend Architecture
photos Umberto Agnello - text Matteo Vercelloni

  In a rural zone near Ragusa, a house open to the landscape. A work of contemporary architecture that reinterprets the theme of the ‘Mediterranean home’, in open contrast with the traditionalist approach based on camouflage and stylistic uniformity. The context is agricultural, a plateau with sandstone walls to divide the various portions of property. Once marked by the productive outposts of the “masserie”, farms with cultivated fields and cattle, today the Ibleo territory has changed its look. Instead of scattered farmhouses, isolated and divided by farmlands, construction has gradually filled spaces, erasing the network of isolated architectural complexes gathered around courtyards, like ‘pacific forts’. Nevertheless, the site of this project has partially conserved that precious idea of ‘isolation’, and the whole design comes to grips with this context, constructing a direct relationship with the landscape, faced openly on two sides, while emerging from it thanks to an eloquent contemporary design. The program of the compositional process is that of a large single-family house, alone at the center of a meadow, bordered by the free, linear horizon of the plateau. Here, in the midst of the grassy terrain, treated as virgin land for construction, the architecture stands out clearly as a complete entity with definite limits. But its borders are not ‘introverted’, they are open to visual enjoyment of the outside world, through the creation of outdoor living spaces, rooms without walls that become parts of the overall solution. The relationship with the context and the sequence of the three stacked floors relies on a sort of continuous architectural ribbon that reinterprets the flavor of the Mediterranean home, developing, bending to form rooms and the roof, outdoor zones raised from the meadow like platforms, porticos and overhangs, balconies and terraces. A solid facade clad in stone, to the north, is flanked by the harmonious antithesis of the southern and eastern facades, fully glazed and open to the greenery. They reveal the two-storey height of the living area, with the mono-beam staircase leading to the first floor, containing a studio zone and a bedroom. The daytime area is joined to the kitchen, located in the lower volume, while the luminous living and dining area emphasizes the double height of the construction, with its large pitched roof. The master bedroom zone with bath and closet is located behind the living area. The sequence living-dining-kitchen encounters two outdoor spaces: on one side, facing the living room, a terrace at ground level connects to a recessed patio faced by the underground spaces, with two bedrooms and a den, shaded for cool comfort. Behind the kitchen, connected by a full-height glazing, an external portico is like a room without walls, open to the surrounding lawn. The white stucco and stone facings that wrap the forceful geometric design, highlighted by a red floor marker that interrupts the high corner glazing, the planes that combine, in a dynamic way, around the sloping roof, reveal the pursuit of a ‘possible Mediterranean style’ that pays attention to local history, but without copying, ready for experimentation with new possibilities.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:45:16 Interni n°599 Taking back the sea<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,104,intIssueID,608,intItemID,616,intLangID,2.html text Matteo Vercelloni

 project Studio Italo Rota & Partners
text Matteo Vercelloni

 In Palermo, the promenade of the waterfront at the Foro Italico (2005) was a decisive step in reviving the relationship between the city and the sea. Now, in the context of the works stipulated by the new Master Plan of the port of Palermo, including significant expansion of the spaces for cruise ships and pleasure craft, the renovation of the historic Stazione Marittima Passeggeri is another contribution to the renewal of the urban waterfront area. Headed since 2004 by Nino Bevilacqua, the Palermo Port Authority has become the institution of reference for the management and activation of vast urban renewal programs organized in the context of a single operative instrument: the Master Plan of the Port of Palermo, introduced by the municipal administration in July 2008 and now on its way to definitive implementation. The invention of a new urban planning tool like this port master plan, involving the City, the Province, the Region and a range of other government agencies, has achieved an “extraordinary result that has made it possible to created a shared plan that will eliminate the barricades and unnecessary divisions between the port and the city” (Bevilacqua). The aim is to make the port area more interesting and efficient for tourism, expanding the areas for yachts and pleasure boats used both by local residents and by visitors, with a series of functioning offerings including restaurants, cafes and new shops. The logistical activities of the port, on the other hand, will be shifted toward the port of Termini Imerese. The creativity of this urban planning approach is accompanied by that of the individual projects, rejecting the widespread practice of ‘spot planning’, which can lead to disjointed episodes based on private initiatives, without overall coordination. This public effort is aimed at eliminating the separation between the city and the sea, the inhabited fabric and the waterfront. Among the individual projects, two are by the Studio Italo Rota & Partners, both involving a rethinking of spaces in terms of the connection between the water and the constructed city. The first project, completed in 2005, was for the organization of a green public area at the Foro Italico, a seaside promenade marked by a series of objects, furnishings, pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths, spaces for relaxation and sports, restoring six entire hectares of land for public use, in a successful effort to also underline the connective value of this area between the urban fabric and the sea. Among the various objects utilized in the project as elements of “transition”, the colorful vehicle barriers in terracotta, based on the female figures of the school of Gagini on display in the nearby museum of Palazzo Abatellis stand out, along with the 15th-century bust of Eleonora d’Aragona, sculpted by Luciano Laurana and conserved at the Regional Gallery of Sicily. In a reinterpretation of the famous ‘rotational’ sculpture of Renato Bertelli of the ‘continuous profile of the Duce’ (1933), the female profile rotates 360° on a central axis, generating a sculptural figure that forms the “princess” vehicle barrier, multiplied by 2500 pieces along the side of the area toward the city. These colorful, functional presences prevent motor vehicles from entering the park, but allow pedestrians completely free access. The “princesses” are joined, in the area with a blue pavement that can be used for projects by local artists, by divan-benches, also covered with ceramic, in white with colored dots. “The result is a place of transition between places that never had a dialogue, before, a zone capable of sending a signal, of changing all the existing relationships between the city and the sea. Another ‘transition’ space, conceived as an element of connection between the port and the city, is the Stazione Marittima Passeggeri, built just after World War II and still operating today. In the initial design ideas for the functional revamping, restructuring, addition and redesign of the spaces, still being developed, the approach focuses on incorporating the hospitality and restaurant-cafe facilities connected with the new orientation toward tourism of the master plan, as well as the services required for the departures and arrivals of passengers. “The materials are closely related to the theme of the sea and the port, like the shaped fiberglass with its shiny white finish. […] Dramatic elements in mirror-finish steel, bent and shaped, are reminders of ‘seaweed’, climbing the walls and ceilings, covering the pillars, creating a grid that is used for special lighting fixtures that emit colored light”. A project that along with the conservative renovation of the original construction, also displays its contemporary character, through the configuration of dynamic, enveloping spaces, including two-storey zones, with new elements of attraction brought outside, along the pier. - Caption pag. 13 On these pages, the first ideas for the internal spaces in the functional renovation of the Stazione Marittima Passeggeri of the Port of Palermo. On the facing page, above: panoramic view of the project for the historic port. - Caption pag. 14 The impact-proof “princess” vehicle barrier in vitreous terracotta, with a concrete core, specially designed to protect the border of the park of the Foro Italico, is the result of 360° rotation of the profile of the bust of Eleonora d’Aragona, sculpted by Luciano Laurana. Photos by G. Giannini. - Caption pag. 15 Above, two images of the new park connecting the city and the sea at the Foro Italico: to the left, a sports area; above, the blue zone with the colored ceramic benches. To the side, study of attraction elements to be placed on the pier of the Stazione Marittima Passeggeri. Below, a moment of work at the Officina del Porto.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:20:13 Interni n°599 The New Deal in Palermo <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,104,intIssueID,608,intItemID,615,intLangID,2.html  by Gilda Bojardi
 The new Palermo expresses a sense of experimentation, also in the words of the mayor Diego Cammarata, now in his second term. He explains how the future of the city is based on renewal of the waterfront and the historical center. The modernization starts with recovery. “The best achievement is to restore the sea to a city that has rejected it for too long, cutting it off, leaving the port enclosed and isolated, in a ruined state of abandon. Bringing the port back into the city and the city into the port, equipping it with hospitality structures and facilities, restaurants, services and shops, has been my mission from the start, in 2001, when in the Officina del porto, a shed built in 1972 and then abandoned, I created an exceptional staff that included Nino Bevilacqua, President of the Port Authority, and a team formed by the French architect Dominique Perrault, the Italians Massimiliano Fuksas, Fulvio Irace, Flavio Albanese and Italo Rota, together with some young architects from Palermo. Today we can also look to another important result: the approval of the Master Plan of the Port, now being studied by the city council. The new visage of the waterfront, calling for works for a value of one million euros, will cover the entire “sea frontage”, from Arenella to Sant’Erasmo. But many things have already been done: the recovery of the lawn of the Foro Italico facing the sea, for example. A worksite in full swing that also includes the complex of the Castello a Mare – a fort of Norman origin, home of the Inquisition and a Bourbon prison, extending from the Foro Italico to Mondello – an archaeological zone to be renewed and equipped as a park, a place to experience like a work of art. The project, done in cooperation with the Department of Cultural and Environmental Resources of Palermo, will produce a physical connection between parts of the city, and a direct link to the port, also thanks to the reconnection with the recovered space of Piazza Fonderia, for a literary cafe, based on a project by Rossella Piraino, a new window on the sea. Mondello, the beach of the people of Palermo, has also been renovated, transforming the iron gate that separated the city from the sea into a mobile structure”. This is the story of the waterfront, but there are other outstanding initiatives as well. One of the most interesting is that of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM) inside the museum complex of Sant’Anna alla Misericordia. “This was my first challenge, when I arrived in 2001, I was faced by a pile of rubble, and I set the goal of a truly rapid rebirth for the place. It has become an evocative space, highlighted by contemporary design furnishings”. Where problems of circulation are concerned, the groundwork has been laid for significant improvement. “A few months after I took office, in 2002, the administration had already prepared an integrated Public Transport Plan, that  was approved a few months later by the City Council. The Plan calls for four lines of intervention: three streetcar lines to connected the outskirts of the city to the historical center; doubling of the rail bypass to connect the airport to the highways (Palermo-Catania, Palermo-Messina); completion of the rail ring with an urban rail system and an automatic light metro system that crosses the fundamental access of the city, below ground. Today we have two open worksites (those of the three streetcar lines and the doubling of the rail bypass); by the end of this year work will begin on the completion of the rail ring, and the light metro system remains to be started, after examination of the overall project by the Ministry of Infrastructures. The competition for the architectural design has been won by the French studio of Dominique Perrault, in a project covering the system of stations and the pedestrian bridge over the internal expressway. Another completed project that can already be used, which I think is a small gem, is the Giardino della Zisa, a renewal project we have pursued with particular passion and pride, because it restores a place of my childhood, in a dimension that banishes words like decay and abandon”. We asked Mayor Cammarata where his passion for architecture comes from. “It comes from a natural vocation”, he explains. “I am a lawyer, but I want to share a less random aesthetic in what surrounds me, generating a strong, innovative project for my city”. Other dreams for Palermo, other projects about to begin? “I see great potential in the recovery of the abandoned chemical plant of Arenella, to make a facility for entertainment and leisure time. Other zones with great impact on the urban and cultural fabric include the Cantieri culturali della Zisa, with a cinema school and a contemporary art museum, another opportunity for cooperation and gathering. I also think the context of Nuovo Montevergini is fantastic: the spaces of a deconsecrated church, entrusted to the care of Alfio Scuderi, to form a new multicultural center with residences for artists, an annual theater festival, a workshop-atelier for the creation of artworks on site, and moments of live music. This year, for example, Jannis Kounellis, for the traditional feast of Santa Rosolia, created a veil studded with 5000 Swarovski crystals. In July, finally, we hope the cultural project Kals’Art can resume, which has made a great contribution to renew a problematic zone of the historical center”.
- Caption pag. 10 Below: the new foot bridge over the internal expressway and a station for the light metro system, designs in progress by Dominique Perrault. - Caption pag. 11 Upper left: the deconsecrated, renovated space of the Nuovo Montevergini, for the creation of cultural events. Top: the Giardino della Zisa in its present state. Above: the monumental complex of Sant’Anna alla Misericordia, home of the GAM (Galleria d’Arte Moderna), after restoration. To the side: view of the archaeological zone of Castello a mare, a worksite in progress.

]]> 2009-07-14 15:10:48 Interni n°599 Sicily has a secret <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,104,intIssueID,608,intItemID,614,intLangID,2.html  Sicily has a secret, which is actually very easy to decipher. All its troubles and much of its charm depend on this secret. The secret is courtesy. Taken to extremes. It is easy to notice as soon as you go somewhere, on a sunny day, driving a car. There are not many traffic lights, but like anyplace with a population there are plenty of intersections. At the third intersection along the way you will most probably meet another car, coming from the right. You swap a quick glance with the driver, not distrustful, and then a little miracle happens: he stops to wave you through, in spite of the fact that he has the legal right of way. A natural gesture of courtesy because you are a visitor. This would not happen on the peninsula. In Monreale, a woman accompanied by her husband orders an ice cream cone, and the server spends ten minutes preparing it, adding layer after layer of colorful flavors to form a baroque sculpture. It’s the gallantry that comes from courtesy. There is nothing ambiguous about this decorative food ceremony, just respect, translated into practice. Sicily has been everything and belonged to everyone in its very long history. Punic when the Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean. Greek when the Magna Grecia was like being American in today’s Occident, with the luck of having the biggest fields, the most plentiful seas, the richest mines. Roman when Rome, after the Punic Wars, began to refine the manners of a nation of peasant-soldiers. Sicily was already civilized in the distant past, when it was conquered by the second wave of Arabian expansion. This, perhaps, was the era in which the new rulers, sated by conquest, began to pay attention to politeness. But they were almost immediately replaced by a well-organized band of Normans, whose numbers, however, did not permit them to dream of imposing their own bureaucracy. They accepted the existing world and decided to coexist with everyone. These were the magical years that were generating, in the south of France, the first courtly lives, after a long period of domination by the Carolingian sword. Palermo, too, became a court for the descendants of Roger de Hauteville. A curious way of living was being invented, that was not based at all on tolerance, a virtue whose premise is that some be placed highly and others lowly, where the latter must simply hope for clemency; instead, it was based on coexistence, a mechanism much fuller of possible contaminations. Toward the end of the 11th century Roger chose as the admiral of his  fleet, the builder of his ships, a certain George of Antioch, who spoke Arabic, prayed in Greek and got down to building in Sicilian, combining all of his cultural baggage. The bridge, still known as that of the admiral, still bears witness, as the first result of that taste that two centuries later was to become the Gothic, a triumph throughout Europe. This is the bridge crossed by Garibaldi to conquer the city. But in the meantime people learned to live like Arabs in a country linked to England after the Norman conquest of the battle of Hastings. The marvels of “cuba” construction appeared, places of pure pleasure, often positioned in the middle of pools of water, to generate that precious coolness that in other cases was even supplied by system of air conditioning, based on the circulation of air between the walls. This paradise of courtesy was also called an earthly paradise in Arabic, the Genoard, and survived until the time of Boccaccio, who couldn’t help but set one of his tales in such a place. The court became even more refined when the last Hauteville, Constance, married the Swabian emperor and Frederick II was born. The mysteries of Palatine life grew together with poems and hunts, like the ones that two centuries later found their way into the frescoes now visible at Palazzo Abatellis. The mysteries mingled with the Hispanic rituals of a Baroque that absorbed everything in a single decorative ringlet. They celebrated when Nelson fled Naples with the beautiful Lady Hamilton and transformed Sicily into a love nest and land of wines for a London that had lost its control over the wine of Oporto. Marsala became the business center for British producers and the fulcrum of a Belle Epoque that was undeniably the longest in Europe, in a Sicily that became the destination of all discerning travelers. One courtesy after another, a stratification of care that was halted after the first world war, when Italy decided to become great, forgetting the most precious pieces of its own past. The 21st century is beginning well, with restorations, on the one hand, and the desire to see the merry-go-round of elegance start to spin again, on the other. Palermo remains the absolute symbol. One look at the cathedral immediately reveals a wide range of viewpoints. It might seem like the height of the Baroque conception, but it can also evoke a palace of 1001 Nights. San Cataldo, from the outside, is the sum of France and the Orient, while inside it is a concentrate of Byzantine spirit. Everywhere, as soon as the noise of the city and its traffic abates, as soon as the gaze shifts away from recent disturbances, the souls and voices of distant relatives who could, like Anna, mother of the Latin priest, be worthy of the tombstone engraved in 1148, written simultaneously in Greek, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. Languages placed around the sacred octagon of Mediterranean perfection.
Historic & Contemporary - Bernardo Tortorici, Prince of Raffadali, is the President of the Associazione Dimore Storiche for Sicily, President of the Friends of Sicilian Museums and Alderman of Urban Planning for the town of Salemi. “It is interesting to observe how the entry of new, enlightened owners in historic estates, which in Sicily are about 3000 in number, including public holdings, has opened the way for contemporary languages. I am thinking about Nino Bevilacqua with Palazzo Torremuzza, or Marco Giammona with Palazzo Sambuca. We should not forget that from the postwar era onward it has been hard for the ‘historic’ owners to update furnishings and collections, due to lack of finances, constraints imposed by the heritage authorities, or lack of support from the public sector. Today there are about 300 members of the Association in our region. Opening historic estates to the city also means establishing a new relationship between public and private, necessary for the safeguarding of these landmarks”.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:11:02 Interni n°599 A house in time<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,608,intItemID,612,intLangID,2.html photos Alfio Garozzo
text Matteo Vercelloni

 project Achille Scaringi Raspagliesi with Corrado Papa
photos Alfio Garozzo
text Matteo Vercelloni

  At the Nature Reserve of Vendicari, on the southwest Ionian coast of Sicily, the renewal of an agricultural structure, the sum of three volumes in a row, built over time. A respectful, careful redesign that narrates the temporal memory of three interiors, reflected on the facades by original construction materials, extending new habitat qualities to the outdoor spaces as well. “Traces, though worn and damaged by the elements. Houses that unpredictably reflect images that continue to communicate. With the invincible material of walls and roofs, the shelter of rooms and closets, the orchestra of objects” (Antonella Tarpino, Geografia della memoria, Einaudi, 2009). The survival of these traces, the history and memory of a construction discovered in a state of abandon, were the focal points of this renovation to create a vacation home at the magical nature reserve of Vendicari, one of the most important wetlands in Europe, where hundreds of species of birds stop over during their migrations, and where it is still possible to observe the typical Mediterranean brushland in all its natural splendor. The Oasis, officially created by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests in 1984, extends along the coast for an area of 1450 hectares, and contains a series of outstanding buildings (including the Byzantine Basilica) and many abandoned farms, like the structure renovated in this project. So what might seem like a ‘simple’ renewal project actually exists in a context of values that suggest a wider scenario, connected with protection of the territory and this precious nature reserve, where the necessary recovery of ‘minor’ constructions is indirectly delegated to private initiatives. The construction, surrounded by vegetation, had not be utilized in years, and was severely damaged, with broken walls and roofing. It is a complex that expanded over time, in parallel additions, as can be seen in the materials used and the thickness of the masonry structures, which have been involved in complex operations of structural reinforcement and insulation, through injections of lime and “ecopozzolana” (by Mapei). Stones were used for the thick walls of the first room, blocks of sandstone for the thinner walls of the second, followed by blocks of concrete, for the most recent zone. This series of single episodes becomes the leitmotiv of the whole project: on the outside, displaying the original materials, while adding stucco to the most recent part, with a new floor marker in sandstone and a fountain in Mutina mosaic to interrupt the facade, creating an evocative vertical opening. Inside, a sort of perspective tube has been created, starting at the master bedroom and crossing all the spaces, to conclude at the large kitchen-dining area created in the oldest portion, under the sloping roof with a single pitch. The overall narrative is based on the use of uniform flooring material, local pitch stone, salvaged from other spaces and interrupted at the openings of two old cisterns found during the work and transformed into effective light sources, at floor level, thanks to LED fixtures. The bedroom zone, which also contains a guestroom, is positioned centrally beside the living area with a new, essential geometric fireplace between the two glass doors facing the external pergola, and with a masonry divan that supplies two more beds if required. There are other episodes of built-in furnishings, based on the reinterpretation of typologies found in rural homes, not only in Sicily. Like the cupboards with wooden doors, the kitchen surfaces faced with handmade terracotta (Franco Pecchioli), the headboards of the beds, the niches for storage and books, the wardrobes created in the careful interlocks of the internal partitions. The succession of rooms is reflected, outside, by a new series of open-air spaces that expand the house and transport it into the surrounding landscape. The outdoor interventions maintain the same approach of recovery of local materials and figures.
]]> 2009-07-14 15:44:11 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,604,intItemID,607,intLangID,2.html 2009-07-07 09:24:43 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,604,intItemID,606,intLangID,2.html 2009-07-07 17:43:39 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,604,intItemID,605,intLangID,2.html 2009-07-07 09:23:22 Interni n°599 Games of detail http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,99,intIssueID,587,intItemID,601,intLangID,2.html Katharina Horstmann
photos Nicolò Lanfranchi by Katharina Horstmann
photos Nicolò Lanfranchi A product, an idea, a concept, a color or something else: in contemporary design the difference is made by little things. The use of materials, often recycled ones, narrates stories that escape the everyday dimension to become unpredictable and unusual.]]> 2009-05-31 12:29:36 Interni n°599 Milanese landscapes http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,99,intIssueID,587,intItemID,600,intLangID,2.html Olivia Cremascoli
photos Sergio Anelli by Olivia Cremascoli
photos Sergio Anelli For the FuoriSalone ’09 the Brera Design District was formed, the first step in a project to bring new life to Brera (over 40 showrooms, purveyors of furnishings and antiques), revitalizing the neighborhood as the cultural ‘motor’ of the city. Here’s an overview.]]> 2009-05-31 11:56:36 Interni n°599 Wunderkammer http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,99,intIssueID,587,intItemID,599,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi
photos Matteo Cirenei
 by Cristina Morozzi
photos Matteo Cirenei Contemporary chambers of marvels to display extraordinary objects. As if
in a display case, or in the lens of a camera, the works were arranged to amaze.
Juxtapositions and overlaps played with color combinations. While even the
most improbable contaminations proved their worth, to bring out the unique
character of creations.]]> 2009-05-31 11:27:25 Interni n°599 Belle de jour http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,99,intIssueID,587,intItemID,598,intLangID,2.html Laura Traldi
photos Giacomo Giannini by Laura Traldi
photos Giacomo Giannini Few places exist that can be described by saying anything and its opposite. Zona Tortona is one of them. After all, this is the place where big brands go arm-in-arm with self-production, innovation mixes with bric-a-brac, and design celebrities chat with students. If it were a woman, the Tortona zone would be capricious and elusive. Experimental, like a pulsating water lamp; romantic, like an assemblage of white porcelain; reckless and irreverent, like a tattooed lady who sips champagne in a chic interior. All waiting to be discovered.]]> 2009-05-31 10:45:54 Interni n°599 Alchemies http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,99,intIssueID,587,intItemID,597,intLangID,2.html Antonella Boisi
photos Simone Barberis by Antonella Boisi
photos Simone Barberis Milan Design Week: itineraries + ‘notes’ in pursuit of creative acts, artistic facts, works in progress, ‘savoir faire’, arts and crafts, dialogues among cultures, fusion accents, intersecting paths of fashion and design, product innovation, qualities and ideas. The approach is archaic, but the (technological) eye looks to the future.]]> 2009-05-31 10:13:56 Interni n°599 Introduction http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,99,intIssueID,587,intItemID,595,intLangID,2.html  
 Never before have the expectations in Milan been so hopeful, and full of trepidation, as for this year’s FuoriSalone. In an atmosphere of crisis, uncertainty and negativity, Design Week in April – with all its events, human and economic resources called into play, and international attention – was seen as an important test of our country’s capacity to react, putting its best foot forward: creativity. For months we had been saying that in moments of crisis design and designers get going, and bring out their best to find solutions and lay the groundwork for major individual and social transformations. Many people mentioned the example of the postwar period, when in the face of total devastation Italy rolled up its sleeves and put its economic house back in order, investing in the inventive brio of designers and generating the phenomenon of Italian design. Medicine teaches us: under stress, the brain and the heart can do extraordinary feats. And as history shows, it is precisely the sense of looming crisis that has produced the painting of great artists like Caravaggio, Edvard Munch or Jean-Michel Basquiat, and led to the birth of revolutionary expressive currents, from the Florentine Renaissance to the Neo-Realist films of the 1940s and 1950s. What we saw in April in Milan didn’t suggest any true revolutions, but the birth of a new, widespread sensibility that will undoubtedly lead to something big, something different. In the end, the main difference between postwar Italy and today’s Italy is that sixty years ago we had to reconstruct everything, while today there is no need to start over from scratch: we just need to rethink things, to figure out how to do things better. The atmosphere was full of energy, positive, reactive, propositional. The designers and all the protagonists of the sector, in general, including the businessmen, took advantage of the moment to meet, reflect, discuss and offer their services. Without grand gestures or amazing innovations, but with the intention of being there, of pulling together in a system and believing in the new. With about 400 events, the big design fest was not a disappointment: it filled the streets of the city with vitality and optimism, a city that becomes truly international only for one week, in April, reviving national pride for a moment, including that of the companies and personalities involved in the world of design. The signals may not have pointed to a new era, but they certainly were encouraging.
(MP)]]> 2009-05-29 18:13:33 Interni n°599 Summary<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,587,intItemID,594,intLangID,2.html  
 

NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNER

IN PRODUCTION
Opinion Ciatti, SantambrogioMilano
Pedaling design
Technology and tradition from Holland
Working comfort, anywhere

IN FAIRS
Abitare il Tempo in Verona
Ambiente Italia in Roma

PREMI & CONCORSI
Cristalplant Design Contest, Good Design Award,
Green Living Projects, A model chair

WORKSHOP
Boundless

SHOWROOM
New openings in Milan:
Skitsch, Poltrona Frau, Meritalia, Luxury Living, Azucena,
Fornasetti, Disegno Ceramica

COMMUNICATION
Campari: red living
Philips Lighting Italia: The culture of light
Seoul Living Design Fair

CITY PROJECT
Public Design Festival di Esterni

IN EXHIBITION
FuoriSalone in Triennale di Milano

IN BOOKSTORE
Philips Design and Fornasetti

EVENT
InterniDesignEnergies

TRANSLATIONS




 EDITORIAL

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
HOMES OF PROTAGONISTS
edited by Antonella Boisi

Milan, the home-studio of the Palombas: 360° wellbeing
design by Ludovica and Roberto Palomba
photos by Giacomo Giannini - text by Antonella Boisi

Milan, the home-studio of Anna Gili: tailored synesthesia
design by Anna Gili
photos by Giacomo Giannini - text by Antonella Boisi
TIMELY TOPICS
Seoul, Prada Transformer
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone

THE OPINION
Design without thought?
by Andrea Branzi

ART
Design samba: Alessandro Mendini
by Germano Celant













 MASTERS
Ernesto Nathan Rogers
by Gabriele Neri

FUORISALONE 2009
Introduction

Alchemies
photos by Simone Barberis
edited by Antonella Boisi

Belle de jour
photos by Giacomo Giannini
edited by Laura Traldi

Wunderkammer
photos by Matteo Cirenei
edited by Cristina Morozzi

Milanese landscapes
photos by Sergio Anelli
edited by Olivia Cremascoli

Games of details
photos by Nicolò Lanfranchi
edited by Katharina Horstmann

FIRMS DIRECTORY
by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

On the cover: view of the exhibition InterniDesignEnergies, organized in April
by Interni in the courtyards of the Università degli Studi of Milan. In the foreground,
the installation Parasols designed by Fernando & Humberto Campana:
a light structure conceived as a portable shelter, based on the traditional
Oca lodges of native Brazilians. Made with the Lounge Bleach synthetic fiber
by Dedon woven on aluminium frames; the hassocks are covered
with Alcantara® Celadon Green. Wooden platform by Listone Giordano;
built-in lighting by iGuzzini, design J. M. Wilmotte.
Foto di/photo by Andrés Otero
]]> 2009-05-29 15:54:13 Interni n°599 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,587,intItemID,592,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi All of which brings us to the big theme of this year, that of energies, also underscored by our event InterniDesignEnergies...All seeds waiting to sprout. To not forget the way we were yesterday, to know how we will be tomorrow: the lesson of a master like Ernesto Nathan Rogers and the timeliness of a mobile work of architecture like the Prada Transformer in Seoul, by Rem Koolhaas, tell us that the path has been a long, intense one. Like the intensity of the events and proposals during seven non-stop days in Milan, confirming the city’s status as World Design Capital. The expectations were fulfilled by the energy called into play, leaving behind a palpable sensation of a pulsating, vital design culture, in spite of the undeniable structural difficulties of the market. The images that follow speak for themselves: perseverance in pursuit of quality and creativity, of properly made things, of experimentation and research, crossovers and critical rethinking pays off. Of course some things need adjusting, some of the curves need ironing, and a bit of natural selection won’t hurt. The colors of design are still infinite, like the seemingly infinite events (over 400) scattered around the city, that attracted centripetal forces and even bigger crowds than usual. The spotlights were pointed, at the same time, at the 48th edition of the “Salone Internazionale del Mobile e del Complemento d’Arredo”, but in this issue we concentrate on the FuoriSalone, identifying a series of themes that correspond to innovative design contents. Because the things that make the difference in contemporary design are: big brands going arm in arm with self-produced objects; details games; alchemies of art, crafts and technologies; the pulsating water lamp... All of which brings us to the big theme of this year, that of energies, also underscored by our event InterniDesignEnergies, presented in the historic courtyards of the Università degli Studi of Milan (Ca’ Granda): a series of installations by prestigious international designers, who worked with leading companies in the field of clean, sustainable energies, to demonstrate how design energy becomes invention. All seeds waiting to sprout. Gilda Bojardi]]> 2009-05-29 19:56:07 Interni n°599 Ernesto Nathan Rogers http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,96,intIssueID,587,intItemID,591,intLangID,2.html Gabriele Neri by Gabriele Neri This year marks the centennial of the birth of the architect and leader of BBPR, the group of designers who in the postwar years played a guiding role in the transformation of Milan, demonstrating how the need for modernity could be dialectically confronted with tradition. In 2009 Milan celebrates not only the centennial of Futurism, but also that of the birth of Ernesto Nathan Rogers, an unchallenged point of reference for Italian architectural culture after World War II. The career of Rogers, who was born in Trieste, developed precisely in that city, from the years of training to his premature death in 1969: a versatile career in which he stood out as an architecture, a teacher, a critic, and above all as a democratic thinker, never attached to one particular style or another, but always focused on constant research that rejected any preformulated solutions. This attitude was already evident in his years of study at the Milan Polytechnic, when Rogers examined the problems raised by the masters of European modern architecture. This led him, after taking his degree in 1932, to found the studio BBPR, an acronym for the last names of those who shared his conviction regarding the need to go beyond the immobilism of the Milan school of architecture: Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers. BBPR immediately came into contact with the most influential personalities of Milanese architectural culture – like Giuseppe Pagano, first of all – and began to make a name for themselves, on the pages of Casabella, with works like the famous “Saturday home for newlyweds” at the 5th Milan Triennale in 1933 (in collaboration with Piero Portaluppi), the Colonia Elioterapica of Legnano in 1941, and the Le Grazie low-cost housing, also in Legnano, in 1942, constructions that illustrated their willingness to come to terms with any design theme, in keeping with the famous slogan “from the spoon to the city”. The team’s cultural depth also emerged, however, in their collaboration with different magazines (especially Quadrante), their assiduous contacts with the greatest artists of the day (like Lucio Fontana) and, above all, their early entry in the Italian CIAM group in 1934, which led to a network of international contacts. For BBPR, this was the moment to come to terms with the promises made by Fascism on the relationship between art and ideology, and they let themselves be deceived – like most of the architects of the time – by what seemed like an inviting syllogism: if fascism is a revolutionary idea, then modern architecture (or art) must be fascist. Their expectations were soon disappointed, and the group had to face the drama of the war, which led to the exile in Switzerland of Rogers, because of his Jewish origins, and the deportation of Belgiojoso and Banfi (the latter died at Mauthausen). The symbol of the ‘catharsis’ of Rogers and his partners would be the “Monument to the victims of the Nazi camps” at the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan, in 1945, in which the poetics of the rationalist frame is charged with the task of getting beyond the dark years of conflict, combining the hopes of the first years of activity with a hard-won maturity. The value assigned to the communitarian ideal on which the group was based is a fundamental element for an understanding of Rogers’ thinking, and in particular of his relationship with teaching, where he sought necessary mutual exchange with his students. In this sense, Walter Gropius was the master from whom he inherited the approach of a “Socratic maieutics transposed onto the anguishing scale of modern times”, complementary to the emphasis on logical, rational method, from which all solutions, never equal to each other, must be derived: an impartial method, elastic, immune to formalism, that is the true lesson of the Modern Movement. Universities all over the world embraced this attitude, but in Italy the response was more tepid, and its cultural impact was not officially recognized until the 1960s. During the postwar period Rogers became more deeply involved in criticism and the theoretical side of Italian architecture, as BBPR took part in the birth of the “Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura” (MSA) in 1946, and then with his entry in the international committee of the CIAM in 1947, and his appointment as editor of Domus (1946-47) and later of Casabella (1954- 64), which under his guidance changed its name to “Casabella-continuità”. The second term added by Rogers had a decisive role to play with respect to the reconstruction and the imminent ‘economic miracle’: “Continuity means historical consciousness; i.e. the true essence of tradition, in the precise sense of a trend that, for Pagano and for Persico, as for us, lies in the eternal variety of the spirit, contrary to any formalism, past or present”. Rogers thus underscores the preeminence of a historical process that must necessarily make the modern and the antique coexist, countering the idea of the tabula rasa, but also the pursuit of a false historicism, indifferent to the lessons of the Modern, with a reconciliation of opposites. At this point it was just a short step to reach the definition of what was to become his battle horse: the consideration ‘pre-existing environmental factors’ as the point of reference for design activity, namely to recognize a propositional value in what exists (natural or artificial), that can guide the design of the new, wedding invention and environmental adaptation. One direct manifestation of this thinking would be the Torre Velasca (1958), which already in its name (tower, not skyscraper) openly declares the pursuit of a balance between past and present, generated not only by the literal reference to historical building, but above all by a “functional method that determines the form, deducing it from the determining factors of the surrounding environment and the requirements of the organism”. While some felt this meant seeking refuge in a limbo of expression that betrayed the progressive hopes of the Modern Movement (seen as being confirmed, on the other hand, by the Pirelli skyscraper by Gio Ponti), from another viewpoint the singular silhouette of the Velasca suggests the insertion of more elastic, more complex variables in the overly rigid functionalist equation. Convinced of his ideas, but above all convinced of the importance of doubt, Rogers worked with rare empathy together with BBPR in the center of Milan, on projects halfway between restoration and the design of the new, like the Lurani-Cernuschi house on via Cappuccio (1959-61), the house on via Bigli (1960), the building for offices and apartments on via Maddalena (1965), the Banca Privata Finanziaria on via Verdi (1966), the residential complex on via dei Chiostri (1968) and the bank at piazza Meda (1969), whose curved form was suggested by the nearby apse of San Fedele. Separate attention should be paid to the restoration and organization of the Museums of Castello Sforzesco, starting in the early 1950s: BBPR attempted to reconcile the complex historical layers, the philological interventions of Luca Beltrami from the start of the century, and an up-to-date sensibility regarding exhibition functions. It was a courageous and opinionated operation, which with the museums of Franco Albini and Carlo Scarpa ushered in a new period of Italian museum design, prompting a debate that remains quite timely today, given the recent proposals for a reorganization of the Castle. Milan, in short, was not a stronghold where Rogers could safely experiment with his ideas, but a logistical base from which to interpret the job of the architect through professional consistency and, above all, an ethics far from any extremism, aware of the productive value of diversity and oriented toward a culture that was never mono-sectorial. A diagonal culture that ranged from literature to art, philosophy to politics, then joyfully returning to the tangible reality of the construction site, because “if I haven’t built anything in a while, buildings are born inside me, like love in dreams after a long period of abstinence”. - Caption pag. 31 BBPR, Torre Velasca, Piazza Velasca, Milan (1958).]]> 2009-05-29 17:29:57 Interni n°599 The game of four forms http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,587,intItemID,590,intLangID,2.html Rem Koolhaas/OMA-AMO
photos and text Sergio Pirrone project Rem Koolhaas/OMA-AMO
photos and text Sergio Pirrone South Korea. In the center of Seoul, the internationally renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has designed the Prada Transformer. A mobile, multifunctional space for the Prada group, opened on 25 April. An architectural form locked in the geometry of a dynamic tetrahedron, to function as an exhibition space for contemporary art, fashion shows and film screenings. Koolhaas is slim, like a greyhound. He has slender hands, agile fingers, that manipulate a little white model in polystyrene, on a scale of 1:200. Like a magician he explains that the game of 3-card Monty can be expanded with a fourth card. The fourth dimension has pure geometric forms that connect to each other through amorphous surfaces, hard to define, but still coherent. The fourth dimension is capable of multiplying the third, of reproducing different identities with the variation of time and its constant modification. Architecture has gone beyond the phases of classical symmetry, of its destruction and asymmetrical reconstruction, and can now accept the diagonals of perspective rotations, breaking up in protruding interlocks, becoming more complex, with descents and ascents of parabolas in steel and titanium. Now the anti-blob is also its own blob, it is like Rem and his mirror, like OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) and AMO. Entities that are not equal nor distinct, that never separate and always integrate, and always articulate alternative thoughts in true architecture, urban planning, communication of sustainable trends and images, always amazing the world. The Prada Transformer opens a new path in Seoul, that brings architecture to the geometric original through the multiple union of its forms and functions. But it does this with a terse structure, without wasting even one square meter of material, without saying one extra word. “As opposed to the rigidity of a simple static object, it is a dynamic organism that can be modified in real time to facilitate the different functions it intends to contain”. The flexible ideal has finally been freed of its structural constraints thanks to four cranes capable of raising a toy in the form of a tetrahedron, rotating it, turning it upside-down, putting it back town on another surface, in just 40-60 minutes. This regular polyhedron, whose four equilateral triangles clutch a hexagon, a rectangle, a cross and a circle, will blow up the basic architectural elements when its rotation in the sky, between metropolitan vibrations and Mt. Inwangsan, will transform walls into floors and floors into roofs and roofs into walls. And the next event will find its present, new platform, new space and new identity, without ever forgetting what it was before, or what it will be. The curious constancy of a swing that rocks between past and future, of this unidentified object, which on 25 April 2009 appeared with its circular visage, chilly and white in the morning light, just set down beside the thickened history of the 16th-century Gyeonghui Palace, in the center of Seoul. From a distance, stone and bricks are the solemn backdrop for a young membrane, translucent as the dawn of a new discovery, so slender and elastic that we can glimpse the ribbing of the steel framework. 1660 sq meters of nude skin, produced by Cocoon Holland Bv and originally utilized as covering for docked military planes, display anorexic external surfaces that squeeze a body famished for events, art and culture, fashion and architecture. A barycenter that swells with creative contaminations, an epicenter that radiates the force of a brand that is never satisfied, never complacent. From Luna Rossa to Fondazione Prada, from architecture that changes the history of cities to cultural utopias that go beyond the appearances of useless marketing and consumption. Prada has always wagered on talent. Today it is wagering on Seoul and the Korean spring. “The Prada Transformer will be our main platform of communication, from a vibrant metropolis, between business and cultural activities, design, architecture and contemporary art”. Patrizio knows that the end justifies the means and that art and culture can embellish any business strategy. Miuccia tells the story of her skirts in “Waist Down: Skirts”, since 1988 using desire and sensuality to experiment on the personality of dress, always in movement. The creation of AMO extends the capacities of the black spider web and the icons dressed in fabric and color that survey spinning or wavy skirts, others suspended, alongside eight young Korean promises, and on to the next event. When the rectangle touches down, the Cinema selected by Alejandro González Iñárritu will fill the dreams of Korean men and women. Who will then tread on the cross, and gaze in wonder at the provocative videos of Nathalie Djurberg, in the installation “Turn into Me”. All the way to the rings of the circle, between centripetal contraction and centrifugal force, which will welcome a special event still to be discovered. So different, a gentle giant, 20 meters tall, a taciturn image, if not accompanied by the ideal sidekick, by the steady, constant rhythm of 20 containers for offices and services, alternating with sheets of translucent glass and polycarbonate. Where will they take them in mid-October? Rome, Istanbul? What skies will they ponder, how many rotations will they make, how many identities will they have before they once again see the fingers of the magician, silently playing with history?]]> 2009-05-29 17:22:42 Interni n°599 Wellbeing 360° http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,587,intItemID,589,intLangID,2.html Ludovica & Roberto Palomba
photos Giacomo Giannini
text Antonella Boisi project Ludovica & Roberto Palomba
photos Giacomo Giannini
text Antonella Boisi In Milan, the home-studio of Ludovica & Roberto Palomba, architects and designers: a loft with open, luminous, rigorous and essential spaces, conceived as a veritable ‘creative factory’. Yesterday they lived and worked in a courtly context, a Venetian villa in the green countryside, an important introspective dimension, to keep the pressures of a place like Milan at a distance. Today they live and work in the heart of that city’s Navigli zone, in a loft of 600 m2, ‘open’ in both the physical and cultural sense of the term, created in a former crafts workshop that has maintained its character as a fluid, dynamic space in which to combine life and work. But they have added something more: the narrative of a philosophy that favors exchange, intellectual commitment, research, and a vision of architecture that leads to coherent, synergic design. Beyond the courtyard that extends into the interiors with majestic strelizia plants, beyond the Mackintosh-style entrance, beyond the unified space on two communicating levels (studio below, residence above), beyond the furnishings based on pure signs, mixed with signature pieces by other designers, modernist heritage and travel souvenirs, there is light. Light is the true protagonist of the architecture, spread in the daytime into every corner thanks to the large skylight on the roof, while in the evening skillful lighting adds special atmosphere to the total white space, that vibrates in effects of reverberation and shading. The synthesis of a pursuit of harmony, beauty, innovation and balance. As the designers explain, “our vision of architecture is that of a space that contains everything that is beautiful: dreams, light, human beings, fragments of physical, emotional and formal journeys, nomadism, contaminations and hybrids, colors that add fundamental punctuation, games of tones, light and shadow, emphasis. And, above all, materic dignity, because material passes from the eyes, from the hands, to the brain, and our senses are a severe, fundamental key of interpretation for the evaluation of every dimension”. In their case, every dimension must always by interpreted in a particular perspective: that of wellbeing. “This is narrated, case by case, depending on the environment analyzed. Wellbeing is a state of mind you want to find in every space and every place”. In practice Roberto & Ludovica, who work with many leading companies in this sector, from Poltrona Frau to Boffi, Zanotta to Foscarini, Sawaya&Moroni to Orizzonti, have conducted research on this state of mind for many years, making a fundamental contribution to the formal evolution of the concept of the bath. Their collections of tubs, showers, washstands and faucets have become the new icons of wellbeing. Now comes the next step: “We have become aware of the fact that wellbeing is not produced by mechanically inducing beneficial effects (as in the case of hydromassage tubs). Those effects are necessary, but they are not enough to guarantee wellbeing. So we’ve become more radical: we focus on the architectural-aesthetic components, in a holistic approach to inner life, the experience of the senses, not just outer appearances involved in the ergonomic-functional development of products. One viewpoint remains indisputable: if the objects we design are not also beautiful, desirable, silent companions on a hopefully long journey, all the rest is useless”. The new ‘journey’ of our globetrotting, trendsetting duo is eloquently narrated by two recent projects, presented during Design Week in Milan in April: the Faraway collection for Zucchetti and Kos, and the Sant’Agostino ceramics collection. The first required four years of study, 200 prototypes, 80 products, a lifestyle mood, from the accessories to the spa concept, in chromium-plated and white versions, using different types of materials, new technologies for saving energy and water, and a series of multitasking elements that put different functions into a single piece. The second features large sizes in ceramic material of varying thickness, structured and texturized, free of decorative features, inspired by the architecture of Mexico, the dense, vibrant colors of the volumes of Barragan. Because wellbeing is a concept that must be viewed from 360°, applied to every scale. Getting back to their home: “We eliminated all the doors, so as not to limit space. We opened all the spaces as much as possible. Light spreads into every angle. Inside the studio there are many plants, gigantic strelizias, because contact with greenery is fundamental for the circulation of energy. In the house there are many characteristic features: a floor in natural wood on which it is pleasant to walk barefoot, an entire perimeter wall that is a white curtain, very low furnishings, colors based on earth tones, historic design objects, things we have designed and other more casual items we have discovered when traveling. In the end, all these objects represent us: they dilate the conception of wellbeing inside the space”.]]> 2009-05-29 17:18:32 Interni n°599 Residential synesthesia http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,587,intItemID,588,intLangID,2.html Anna Gili
photos Giacomo Giannini
text Antonella Boisi project Anna Gili
photos Giacomo Giannini
text Antonella Boisi In Milan, the home-studio of Anna Gili, architect and designer. A loft with a decisive character, a creative space based on transparency and intense color as an artistic and sensory experience. Anna Gili’s home in Milan is a loft on two levels, around a central patio connected with open spaces. Colors are used in forceful tones and full fields, of fuchsia, blue, yellow, inspired by India. They are symbols of the joy of living, contrasting with the white of the walls. The space conserves its visible metal structures, a memory of its industrial past, updated by a spirit of high-tech conversion, with the warmth of oak for the flooring. But the key words are elsewhere. Kandinsky said that “color is a medium that has a direct influence on the soul”. Anna measures energy in terms of color and graphic lines. Color is the element that enhances the purity of forms and the fluidity of spaces, restoring harmony and evocative force. The transparency of surfaces manages to distill – in the figure of a walkway with a theatrical railing in panes of colored glass – the sign of passage to the studio on the upper level, and the meaning of a sensorial fusion that coincides with a personal idea of art. Like an intimate diary, this creative mental home-space, a puzzle of pieces of life, is Anna Gili’s most successful operation of synesthesia. The ‘Body’ that contains all: artistic sensibility combined with a playful approach, the background from her fortunate encounter, at the start of her career, with Studio Alchimia. A kitchen at the center of the house has doors in colored glass and a freestanding equipped island in metal that becomes the fulcrum of flavors, around which everything gravitates. Then, scattered everywhere, her very colorful vases in Murano glass, also designed for Salviati and Bisazza; a dynamic sequence of fluorescent lights, a recent theme of research; the graphic signs of zoological iconography, which form the basis for her painting projects. And, obviously, the matrices of the scenes of Mental Bodies. Objects, projects and images, the title of the two exhibitions Anna Gili presented during the events of the FuoriSalone in Milan in April: large luminous paintings that represent animals and photographs on canvas, a reworking of some of her wellknown artistic performances.]]> 2009-05-29 17:15:18 Interni n°599 Styles of relaxation<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,571,intItemID,586,intLangID,2.html Nadia Lionello
image processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino
 by Nadia Lionello
image processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino The evolution of contemporary design offers a panorama of ‘light’ sofas, a continuous variety of ideas for the creation of exclusive relaxation zones: Fifties style, monochrome, ethnic, minimal...]]> 2009-05-07 17:40:20 Interni n°599 Futurcolors<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,571,intItemID,585,intLangID,2.html Nadia Lionello
photos Miro Zagnoli
 by Nadia Lionello
photos Miro Zagnoli Sets based on the pictorial hues of Futurist paintings: photographic representations where the true dynamic element is color. Blue, red, green and yellow furnishings narrate and interpret a new spring.]]> 2009-05-07 17:36:34 Interni n°599 Headed for the table<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,571,intItemID,584,intLangID,2.html Odoardo Fioravanti
photos Lars Gundersen and Morganmorell
 by Odoardo Fioravanti
photos Lars Gundersen and Morganmorell They have the forms of a variety of original hairstyles, but when you put them on a table they turn out to be glazed ceramic bowls and fruit holders. This project by the Danish duo Claydies offers reflections on the essence and appearance of objects. “I think of sculpture as something made by subtracting: what is made by adding is closer to painting”: the two routes of shaping objects and sculptures were thus defined by Michelangelo, at the start of the 16th century. I have always thought that ‘subtraction’ had to do with discovery and unveiling, something closer to magic, to investigation of the unknown, to invention as finding things. Just as I have always thought that ‘addition’ had something to do with creation, with ‘bringing into the world’, a sort of demiurgic process. On the one hand we have the act of removing the surplus to find a form, as in a block of marble; on the other, we have the shaping of one’s ideas, forming and deforming clay. This is why the work of the potter has always seemed very close to that of the designer. It is no coincidence that most design historians identify the birth of the discipline in the division between the work of the draftsman and that of the craftsman, which happened at the Etruria factory of Wedgewood in the second half of the 1700s. In the sphere of art, before the contemporary era, clay was usually used to make works that imitated nature, the forms of animals or men. While for material culture it was always the main material for the creation of tableware. This dual identity of ceramics seems to fuse once again in the work of the Danish duo called Claydies (clay+ladies), formed by Tine Broksø and Karen Kjældgård-Larsen, both graduates of the Danish Design School. Visiting their atelier in Copenhagen, one is struck by their great output, a sort of vitrified forest of sparkling objects. Two photographs on the wall stand out from the rest, though. In these glossy prints the two designers pose as models, wearing strange ceramic wigs. The intuition quickly picks up on the game, and the result is enthusiasm. Claydies and Gentlemen – the name of the ceramic headgear – comes from the idea of creating a series of bowls and fruit dishes starting with different hairstyles, shifting the decoration of hair to the movement of the surface of these vessels. The result has great impact and seems to demonstrate that in contemporary design the image of the object is paradoxically more important than the object itself. Ontology blends with communication, pushing the three-dimensional existence of things into the background. How many of the objects we know about have we actually touched and seen ‘live’? How much of our design culture remains two-dimensional? The images of the Claydies and Gentlemen bowls make us forget all the rest, for a moment, which is the gift of great designs. The types range from a curly bowl to one with the hair-do of Rudolph Valentino, a punk bowl to one with ringlets, an Elvis pompadour to a sci-fi hairstyle. Above all, there is the idea that the surface of objects and architecture can, once again, whisper and shout. Fragile angles, pointy handles, furry cups a la Meret Oppenheim, elastic amusement park floors. And the awareness that things are as they are, unless proven otherwise.]]> 2009-05-07 17:57:24 Interni n°599 Tetê Knecht: signal lights<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,571,intItemID,583,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani
photos Andrés Otero
 by Maddalena Padovani
photos Andrés Otero Childhood travel memories of the Brazilian designer take the form of a series of limitededition lamps. Based on street signs, they create an evocative system of indirect lighting. We’ve been hearing about the anti-global projects of Andrea Emilia Knecht (Tetê for friends) since 2005, when the young Brazilian designer – defined by her ‘mentors’ Fernando & Humberto Campana as one of the most promising members on the new creative scene in Rio – showed a pair of sabots made with straw and latex. Since then, what everyone appreciates about this designer devoted to manual experimentation on the expressive potential of the most common materials is her ability to combine a typically Brazilian poetics with a more open, international vision of design, inherited from years of study at the Écal of Lausanne. Today Tetê presents a new project that reflects further evolution in her work, still connected to an artistic dimension but also, with greater evidence and credibility, to the logic of industrial production. It is called Passage, and it’s a lamp whose sculptural form conceals careful reflection on the dynamics of artificial lighting. The lamp has a very simple, industrial form, a U-shaped section in anodized aluminium whose inner surface is finished (directly by hand, by Tetê) with a yellow paint, covered with a layer of glass microspheres. A smaller aluminium section, at the center of the lamp, supports and conceals the LEDs that aim the light inside the concave yellow form; the presence of the glass spheres makes the light reflect in a varied way, through lots of little points – like marbles – along the axis eye, sphere, light source. Therefore the resulting light is indirect, soft, warm; it creates an intimate atmosphere, with an object that – unlike those designed by Tetê in the past – does not have naturalistic overtones, but reflects the frenzy and movement of metropolitan settings. “When I was little”, she explains, “my father would take us to the mountains on weekends in the summer. During the trip in the car I liked to look at the stripes on the road, some white, others yellow, some thin and short, like dotted lines, others double and continuous. Later, as a designer, I observed that thick mass, that shines, that can be seen from a distance but produces no glare, with a more analytical gaze. When the Ormond Gallery in Geneva asked me to work on this idea, the result was Passage”. Andrea Emilia Knecht confirms her capacity to look at everyday things in a poetic way, to capture the hidden essence of the most common objects. But this time she does it with a more detached approach, with the maturity of someone who knows how to project her imagination into the real world, with the awareness that even an artistic gesture, a one-off, a small edition can have a reason to exist in design.]]> 2009-05-07 17:54:14 Interni n°599 Giulio Iacchetti<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,571,intItemID,581,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi
 by Cristina Morozzi
 “When everything seems uncertain, the designer steps in. Our role is that of the observer, the catalyst. You need to pay attention to enter change. I think the time has come to dust off an old slogan: ‘power to imagination’.” Talking with Giulio Iacchetti makes you feel better. He has a humble wisdom that stimulates you to think about people and things in a more positive way. He’s a visionary, but he keeps an eye on the present. His convictions are firm, but he is always ready for a new challenge. He likes discussion and synergy: among colleagues, with entrepreneurs, with friends. “I seek discussion”, he says, “maybe because I come from a provincial situation. Keeping the connection, preserving one’s identity, helps everyone to grow”. He inspires trust because he offers concrete signs of hope. He doesn’t talk about himself, but about what can be done to improve our way of being, through design. Like a tree with solid, deep roots, ready to welcome many people, of all kinds, to the shade under its boughs. He believes in the values of the folk tradition, as the key to a sincere way of living. He loves “Italy, half duty, half luck... the Italy that resists”, as Francesco De Gregori sang (in “Viva l’Italia”). “Being fragile”, he says, “can also be a good thing”. This love of his country led to the book “Italianità”, published by Corraini in 2008, a choral effort on the symbols of Italian popular culture: Bucaneve cookies, Nutella, Panini collection cards, Coccoina... “I got the idea”, he confesses, “when I say an exhibition in Paris organized by VIA on French icons. I called on thirty people to comment on these symbols of ours that still exist, making them into a shared value”. He likes to organized group projects. After Coop Eureka, a collection of household objects sold in Coop supermarkets, designed by a group of young Italian designers, he has just launched another collective effort with Il Coccio, an Italian brand of humidifiers, revived by the entrepreneurial initiative of Fulvio Martini. As art director, he has called in other designers to work on the products, like Alberto Meda, Marco Ferreri, Denis Santachiara, Patricia Urquiola, Fernando Brizio, Monica Forster and Alfredo Häberli, asking them to make a traditional object more contemporary. The initiatives he cares about are the ones connected with the possibility of improvement, starting with little everyday things, like a ceramic humidifier to hang on radiators, that make air healthier without consuming energy. As a designer he feels responsible, also for the others. This is why he has launched (starting on 26 March 2009) an initiative for young people, in collaboration with the Design Library of Milan: Vitamin D, the one that helps growth. Each evening features three young designers, selected based on three criteria: they are under the age of 35, they have a website, and at least one of their objects has gone into production. They will talk about their work, in their own way, to let people know what they are doing and, perhaps, to find clients. “I believe”, says Iacchetti, “it is necessary to show your stuff, to learn how to present your projects. You have to take time to theorize about what you are doing”. As we chat Agata and Kumal, his cats, keep an eye on things. “They stay with me when I’m working”, he says, “and they make me feel good”. He adds: “You can always find a reason for feeling good. You have to be positive, it makes life much simpler!”. If those were just words they might seem banal. But instead they are a rule of living and working, which Giulio is capable of transmitting to those who work with him, spend time with him or just meet him. His personal charisma lies in this understated positive approach. And it can be seen in all his projects, all capable of reconciling their users with everyday life. He doesn’t spread ‘manifestos’, but plants seeds that grow, due to the warmth of his convictions. On the table lies the rough draft of a “sedicesimo”, to be published for the Salone del Mobile 2009, one of the little booklets Corraini publishes by design protagonists. Giulio has decided to include figurines that can be cut out. The booklet has two sides: on one side, classic little soldiers, and pacifists on the other side. “To represent the army and peace marches”, he comments, “is a way of introducing doubt. Doubt is part of the thrust I always put into design, which must propose thinking, and leave its mark. For example, Gold, designed for Guzzini, a mould for ice in the form of an ingot, conveys the idea that water is precious, like gold: this product won’t change the world, but it is a message!”. He certainly got started in the right way: with a Compasso d’Oro award in 2001, won together with Matteo Ragni for the Moscardino utensil designed for Pandora, a small company then making its debut. Not by chance, not by luck, but because he deserved it. Moscardino is an invention. A hybrid, half fork, half spoon, made with Mater-Bi, a plastic of natural origin, completely biodegradable. This item revolutionized the world of catering. “It was fantastic”, he says, without false modesty. “I understood that I would never get off the design merry-go-round. A job is a job if you can make a living from it, otherwise you have to change”. Speaking of change, it immediately comes to mind to ask him about the ‘crisis’. His answer is clear: “When everything seems uncertain, that’s the time for the design to step in. Batman comes out in the dark! Design has to look forward. It deciphers new needs. Our role is to be an observer, a catalyst”. “The first effect of the crisis”, he concludes, “is that there will be more time for yourself, for thinking.” For the exhibition Designcrisis, produced by JVLT+YtelMatilde for the FuoriSalone 2009, he has created a calendar: work days, shown in black, become red, and vice versa. Five days for thinking and two for working. One more question, a ritual: new projects? “A handle for carrying the magazine Interni around with you”, he responds, “made by Andriolo, an expert in producing anything in plastic, open to experimentation, capable of interpreting and realizing the ideas of designers who turn to him. I’m doing many experiments with him: blowing into tubes of plastic, as if it were glass. Who knows? Maybe something good will come out of it. Then there’s the Surfer Chair for Domodinamica, just one sheet of shaped aluminium; wiring channels for Caimi Brevetti, and an extensible table for Zeritalia. Also a small project for Lavazza. Virginio Briatore asked a group of designers to create promotional objects regarding the ritual of coffee, and Paradise (a reference to the familiar Lavazza TV commercials). I was pleased to work on a brand that is a symbol of Italian character. So I designed an espresso spoon with a grip in the form of a key”. Michel Maffesoli, in his recent essay on the crisis, “Apocalypse” (CNRS Editions, Paris, 2008), writes that the job of design is to make every day a Sunday. Giulio goes further: with his project for Lavazza, he suggests that design can even provide us with the keys to heaven!]]> 2009-05-07 18:06:54 Interni n°599 Love is the answer<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,571,intItemID,580,intLangID,2.html Olivia Cremascoli
 by Olivia Cremascoli
 The spirit of the times evolves (and involves) at a dizzying pace: from the oh-so-modest encounters between Maria Stella and her husband, the prince of Salina (The Leopard), to the briefcase for traveling sex-trade professionals a la Houellebecq (Platform). In the middle come the ‘normal people’, who during the latest FuoriSalone in Milan let designers teach them how to “put a tiger in their tank”. Say it, do it, kiss it: tell me what you want, do what you want, kiss as much as possible. This, more or less, is the message at the so-called University of Sex, in the Chueca district of Madrid, namely the first European academy of eros, founded by Tatiana Escobar, with fifteen years of experience in the publishing industry and, in 2004, a titillating leap into the contemporary sex industry, thanks to her shop in Madrid, La Jugueteria erotic toys, and above all thanks to the Universidad del Sexo, “a place of training and reflection on our sexuality, with the aim of making us into better lovers, informing about unfamiliar practices, and exploring themes connected with sexuality and eroticism”. Quite a program! But if Professor Escobar raises cries of “O tempore, o mores!”, the stripteaseuse Dita von Teese, who has revived the cabaret genre of the Burlesque, lets us know that in her upcoming book (she has already ‘written’ one called Fetish) she will give friendly advice on how to become a foxy lady on a budget: lingerie from Mr Pearl, 15 cm heels, lipstick, powder and a black dress. Maybe... After all, why be prudes? La Repubblica, on 6 March, sported the headline “Small shops close, only porno survives”, for those who still haven’t understood that Love Conquers All even when the stock markets are nosediving, as Carlo Rossella (Panorama 5-03-09) informed us to present Love, the new English biannual from Condé Nast. London also hatched Alex Comfort, the legendary doctor who in 1972 published The New Joy of Sex, a worldwide success story on free love, reprinted 37 years later, in a version revised and updated by the sexologist Susan Quilliam. Even the extremely erudite Jacques Attali, advisor to Mitterand and also to Sarkozy, in his essay Loves, talks about the precarious nature of relationships and the fact that ‘love’ is increasing understood an business+pleasure. Who knows? The ‘culture’ sector adds more thrust to the mainstream with the “spectacle that brings sex to the theater”, Sex Addict, “a work charged with eroticism, that investigates perversion in the dark mazes of desire”, promoted by the website Sexpol.it. Now they are pumping Naked Bodies, a dance performance “in which the nudity of the bodies is the starting point for an exploration of the soul”, as everyone knows. So what are those little angels, our designer friends, doing to try to feel cool? To cries of “less chairs, more dildos” they have gotten down to it designing ergonomic devices that are sold, at this point, even in family temples like Coin, to improve the quality of life, making it a pleasure, thanks to the added value of design that keeps you from blushing, even though you are clutching a hot potato, a dildo, in public! The power of design, especially in Holland and France, as demonstrated during the latest Milan Design Week (21-27 April), where visitors thronged to hot shows like the “Red light design event - Simply sensual” (inspired by the red light district in Amsterdam) and “Love design - 20 Designers about love” (produced by Exquise Design of Paris, with catalogue by Daab). We certainly miss François Truffaut, that charismatic French director, who in The Woman Next Door put these words into the mouth of Depardieu: “For many years I thought all kinds of extraordinary things happened under women’s skirts". Back then people didn’t need toys to get turned on, that’s for sure.]]> 2009-05-07 18:05:42 Interni n°599 CityCenter, a new center for Las Vegas http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,571,intItemID,579,intLangID,2.html Matteo Vercelloni
 text Matteo Vercelloni
 It’s the biggest privately financed development in the postwar history of the United States: CityCenter Las Vegas (1,600,000 square meters of construction), designed by world-famous architects, sets out to renew the city in Nevada on an international scale, underlining how the gambling capital has transformed this great modern oasis in the desert into a vacation spot for the whole family, and now also a ‘shopping mecca’, where games of chance are just a part of a wide selection of tourist attractions. ‘The oasis to end all oases’, Reyner Banham called it, in his “Scenes in America Deserta”, “the last sacred grove of the popular taste of the American middle class”, Las Vegas, sparking with a thousand neon colors in the night of the Nevada desert, has always been a sort of mirage city, a builder’s dream where everything is possible, a virgin terrain ready to accept any type of architectural expression, as long as it attracts a bigger, more varied audience. Maybe this condition, like that of the ‘theme park cities’ of the Arabian Gulf, is closely linked to the desert, “considered a keeper of secrets, a place suitable for extravagance, where all normal restrictions of laws and customs are suspended”, taken as a ‘void’ to be filled in a free, nonchalant manner, without being hampered by existing historical elements, traces of cities, monuments intrinsic to the memory of the site. It may be no coincidence that the CityCenter operation of Las Vegas is managed by a joint venture between MGM MIRAGE (two ‘historic’ names in the city) and Infinity World Development Corp, which reports to the bigger group called Dubai World. To understand the meaning of this vast project, inserted in the history of the city with a new urban approach, based on creating a new ‘center’ where no center existed, balanced between the reinterpretation of the American ‘downtown’ and the idea of the square found in historical European cities, we met with Sven Van Assche, Vice-President of Design of CityCenter, one of the men behind the whole operation and, above all, in charge of the selection of its protagonists in the areas of architecture and interior design. To explain the reasoning behind the project, Van Assche begins with the origins of Las Vegas, when the city was the “capital of sin in the western world”, and existed as a satellite of Los Angeles for weekends, all-male outings in search of illicit pleasures, in the widest sense of the term. This negative image of the city was improved toward the end of the 1980s when Steve Wynn built the Mirage, the hotel-casino whose Polynesian take on the mega-resort typology marked a breakthrough, helping to redeem the city and to open its doors to international tourism, welcoming entire families, complete with kids. At the start of the 1990s a building boom brought big ‘theme hotels’ (the pirates of Treasure Island, the Egypt of the Luxor, and so on), successful products of architectural marketing capable of responding to the desires of families of baby boomers, who together with a vacation with their offspring also wanted to play poker, or to try their luck at roulette. But for Van Assche, the formula of the ‘theme hotel’ is now finished; the first signals of its demise came at the end of the 1990s, with the construction of the Bellagio, a big hotel-casino devoted not so much to selfspectacularizing (in spite of the water effects activated in the ‘lake’ facing the Strip) as to the idea of a new luxury based on ‘doing it better’, providing a resort destination that includes gourmet restaurants with a high level of design content, the best fashion names, sumptuous rooms, impeccable service and atmospheric spas, all seasoned with a dash of art and ‘culture’. Along this historical path, and in this urban development open to tourism from all over the world, the CityCenter appears as a new breakthrough on the global market. First of all, beyond the functions offered and the architectural image conveyed in new modern, luxurious curtain wall that reflects the sky, the main objective of the project is to create a ‘place’, a multifunctional center for the city, facing the Strip halfway between the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo, in a geography of images marked by names that trigger dreams in every visitor. CityCenter, unlike the downtowns of other American cities, will contain no offices. The towers are for exclusive residences and an exceptional hotel-casino designed by the likes of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, Rafael Viñoly, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Foster+Partners and Helmut Jahn, while at the base Crystals by Daniel Libeskind, the heart of the new settlement, will offer the most exclusive shopping and recreation center in the city, with interiors designed by David Rockwell. Plenty of space has been set aside for art (with works by contemporary talents like Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg, Nancy Rubins), which will invade the buildings and the new public space, whose concentric arches, like a drop of water falling in a pool, determine the forms and footprints of the buildings. The aim is to design a unified identity in different architectural solutions, in an effective multifunctional mix, to give a center to a city that never had one before. The opening is planned for December 2009, so as not to miss the period of Christmas shopping, crisis permitting.]]> 2009-05-07 18:04:02 Interni n°599 Neues Museum<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,571,intItemID,578,intLangID,2.html David Chipperfield Architects with Julian Harrap Architects
photos Nicolò Lanfranchi
text Matteo Vercelloni
 project David Chipperfield Architects with Julian Harrap Architects
photos Nicolò Lanfranchi
text Matteo Vercelloni On the Museum Island in Berlin, a new/antique museum structure has been completed and opened, indicating an innovative way of operating between history and modernity. The skillful rapport with the ‘ruin’ combines traces of the past with contemporary intervention. The project was the winner of an international competition in 1997. Today, after 11 years of work, the Neues Museum is now open, though the precious Egyptian collections and prehistoric relics will not arrive until the fall. This work completes that formidable citadel of culture composed of the Neues and the Alte National Galerie, the Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum. The Neues is the last piece of what has been called a secular Acropolis, and it is the result of a reconstruction project that was presented to the populace – which diligently formed a line almost one kilometer in length – only as a structure, without exhibits, underscoring the value of a method, an architectural and ‘archeological’ approach that can be taken as an exemplary point of reference for the practice of ‘building on what has been built’. The architecture of the Neues, constructed in 1859 by Friedrich Stüler and originally conceived as an extension of the Altes Museum designed by his teacher, Karl Friedrick Schinkel, was severely damaged by allied bombing and then left in a state of ruin for many years in East Berlin. The architect has come to terms with these factors; instead of erasing the signs of this troubled history, in a stylistic reconstruction of ‘what it was, where it was’, Chipperfield has made these vicissitudes into ‘compositional elements’ of a detailed reconstruction project. While the long project history reflects a delicate capacity for reinterpretation of the finest romantic sensibility with respect to the theme of the ruin, in this case the ruin becomes a historical fragment, bearing real witness to the passage of time, in relation to eloquent, effective new parts, clear geometries that precisely, elegantly remove any temptation of imitation of the past. The formidable compositional collage created by the studios of Chipperfield and Julian Harrap reassembles fragments in a grand architectural organism, salvaging segments of plaster and frescoes that mingle with restored and reconstructed walls, columns bearing the signs of bullets, beautiful decorations broken by explosions and exposure to the elements. A pattern of pieces collected and catalogued to be reassembled, in a surprising harmonious synthesis with the ‘new’ (neues). The lucid symmetrical tension of the large entrance staircase is like a programmatic statement, perfectly concluded by severe existing Doric columns. The complaints of purists are hard to grasp in this case: “the continuation of English bombing by other means”. Instead, in this project for Berlin we can see not only the successful reconstruction of a great work of architecture from the past, but also a new method of restoration, open to the messages of memory, projected toward an idea of modernity that replaces nostalgia with optimism.]]> 2009-05-07 18:02:48 Interni n°599 Putney House<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,571,intItemID,577,intLangID,2.html Kyu Sung Woo Architects
photos Timothy Hursley - The Arkansas Office
text Alessandro Rocca
 project Kyu Sung Woo Architects
photos Timothy Hursley - The Arkansas Office
text Alessandro Rocca An American architect of Korean origin plays with the enchanted landscape of the forests of Vermont, organizing a small, practical village full of personality and rhythm, syncopated like ragtime. The house develops the prototype of the “cabin”, the essential woodsman’s shelter, in a cozy cottage that deconstructs the landscape in a series of partial views and perspectives. Far West and Far East share a tradition and a contemporary form of know-how regarding light, economical architecture composed of industrial parts and crafts, prefabricated and assembled on site in a simple, quick way. It is logical that this approach belongs to two countries of great industrial development, but it is also paradoxical that the richest countries are the ones capable of producing low-budget, low-tech quality architecture, achieving great results in terms of design and comfort, without sacrificing the idea of simple living, in contact and harmony with nature. Today messages are arriving from all sides, but above all from North America and Japan, regarding this kind of ‘humble’ architecture characterized by strong formal invention, original use of materials, and the most simple, conventional technical solutions. The house built by Kyu Sung Woo on the wooded slopes of Mt. Putney, in Vermont, develops the cabin prototype, the essential forest shelter, into a cottage that combines the pleasure of live, rustic, welcoming material with an original layout that plays with views, glimpses, segments of landscape. The house has been designed to organize the various views and to become a landscape in its own right, with three pavilions: an office, more isolated, with a workshop and bathrooms, and two volumes connected by the entrance for the spaces of the home. On one side, places for living together; on the other, spaces for study and meditation. The two volumes of the house are separated and differentiated, above all through the profiles of the roofs, and the decisive manipulation of the volumes, so that the group formed by these small constructions seems like a tiny, very unusual rural village, mixing traditional elements with a daring assemblage of volumes with an almost industrial character. The main volume, which also contains the garage, contains a large space for the kitchen and living areas, a convivial center for the three generations of the Woo family, who all gather here every weekend: the architect, his wife (the pianist Jung-Ja Kim), and their son, his wife and two grandchildren. The relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces in the various parts of the house takes on different forms: the studio, for example, has a certain amount of privacy, screened by a porch that occupies one entire wall and frames the view to the west. The sides exposed to the cold north winds have been clad in corrugated sheet metal, while the more sheltered sides are in natural cedar board, colored green in some cases, or treated with shellac.]]> 2009-05-07 18:01:55 Interni n°599 American Color http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,571,intItemID,575,intLangID,2.html Pierre Bouguennec/Boum Design
photos Simone Barberis
text Antonella Boisi project Pierre Bouguennec/Boum Design
photos Simone Barberis
text Antonella Boisi Southampton, Long Island, east of New York City. In Sagaponac, a vacation home where landscape, architecture and interior design blend, in minimal graphic expression charged with color, organic forms for the furnishings, and skillfully modulated lighting that suggests a different spectacle every evening. Outside, a modernist piece from the late 1960s, with roof terrace, white facades, big windows, entire two-storey glass walls for absolute transparency. Three slightly staggered rectangular volumes, along a central axis of symmetry, raised on a platform with steps, surrounded by nature. Fluid, continuous interiors, enclosed by rigorously orthogonal three-dimensional forms, with a spacious feel thanks to a limited range of materials, the use of total white for the surfaces, with contrasting furnishings in red. This is the vacation home in Southampton of a family with four children, after a radical renovation project guided by Pierre Bouguennec, at the helm of the studio Boum Design. It is located along the white expanse of beaches and oak woods of Sagaponac, a town punctuated to the north with luxurious works of architecture by starchitects and emerging talents – from Henry N. Cobb to Zaha Hadid, Richard Meier to Steven Holl – on the Long Island Peninsula, east of New York City. But here, instead, we are to the south of the legendary Route 27 Montauk Highway, 400 meters from the beach and the ocean. And the narrative finds its precise character in the landscape design, organizing green areas, terraces and a swimming pool to emphasize indooroutdoor dialogue, re-composing lines, geometries and fragments of spaces in a unity free of preconceived schemes. Once inside, the gaze is attracted outward by multiple views and perspectives: the starting point of the project, in fact, was the total reconfiguration, inside and out, of the ground floor, made as open as possible, with a continuous layout, thanks to the removal of walls and dividers, and thanks to new custom furnishing solutions. The central living area with fireplace, a more intimate sitting room to the right, the dining-kitchen area to the left: in the perception of a unified environment and a relaxed, informal lifestyle, the protagonists become the islands formed by furnishings conceived as oases, each with its own distinct character, featuring sculptural seating, bag sofas, divans with soft curves in pearl-tone glossy resin. The Seventies atmosphere and the tactile surface values of the era’s outstanding material – plastic – seem to inform the entire architectural composition, starting with the chromatic skin of resin chosen for all the floors, in a bright, primary, reflecting red that accentuates sensorial engagement stimulated by the organic forms of the furnishings. The ordering element and focal point of the construction is the two-storey portal, containing the accessorized wall for the ‘invisible’ kitchen on the ground floor, and a sculpture of a large fish in polychrome fiberglass, a work by Ed Koehler, on the entire wall of the upper level. The first floor contains six bedrooms, each with its own bath and large closet. Access is provided by a modular staircase with an innovative design, with wooden steps and empty spaces between them, underscoring the graphic, synthetic character of the design narrative. Light ignites the setting, with its fundamental choreography, shaping internal space and becoming a material to be shaped in its own right, emphasizing furniture and objects with shiny finishes, and the intense color that updates the gilded vacation lifestyle of the Hamptons. A new American dream?]]> 2009-05-05 18:20:01 Interni n°599 Armani 5th Avenue http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,571,intItemID,574,intLangID,2.html Doriana & Massimiliano Fuksas
lighting design consultant Speirs & Major Associates
photos Ramon Prat/courtesy studio Fuksas project Doriana & Massimiliano Fuksas
lighting design consultant Speirs & Major Associates
photos Ramon Prat/courtesy studio Fuksas In New York, on Fifth Avenue, the new Armani Store is a space in perpetual motion, thanks to a staircase-protagonist that makes shopping a sensorial experience, capturing and freeing, in its curves, the various lifestyle collections of the Armani universe. Hong Kong, Tokyo and now New York: the trilogy of Armani Stores designed by the Fuksases for the stylist is now complete. The new store is inside a building with an impressive glass facade, one of the first examples of the International Style, on a street that needs no introduction. Fifth Avenue, the location for films or novels like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, home to buildings like the Empire State or the New York Public Library, and a series of museums beside Central Park, known as the Museum Mile. “It was important to understand that the outside is New York, and the inside had to be an intuition”, the architects explain. The intuition takes the form of the staircase, a calendared structure in steel, clad with plastic, that connects two of the four levels (plus basement) of the store, becoming an element of visual and emotional reference, inside a space that conveys innovative contents: “It’s the first concept store”, the designers continue, “in which all the Armani products are shown in a space marked by uniformity of forms, materials and colors, a unified, fluid space, without clear distinctions, capable of emphasizing the value of the products on display”. So the staircase is the generating point of attractive force inside the store, the dynamic, sculptural sign that connects the slightly staggered levels for the various lines, touching on vertical surfaces and conveying, in the movement of its ribbons, joints and twistings, “an imperceptible grazing that denies the possibility of recognizing its geometry and its support structure”. Nothing remains extraneous to the intrinsic movement suggested by the design of the staircase. So while the layout of each level develops in areas with different curves, with continuous ribbon dividers in monochrome painted wood, bends and folds set aside for displays, desks, seating, fitting rooms and paths, “the outer facade, though aligned with the rigid orthogonal grid of Manhattan, simulates the movement through images and shadings projected on a series of LED wires”, in an open tribute to the vivacity of the city. Inside, the lighting enhances the sinuous character of the spaces, reflecting its glow on smooth walls and painted wooden furniture, in contrast with the black of the marble floors and suspended ceilings, while a more playful atmosphere is generated in the café and restaurant areas, clad in curved and bent bronze. In these spaces the nuances seem to be tinged with amber, less pure, to interact with the changing tones of the background, the peerless ‘window’ on Central Park.]]> 2009-05-05 18:22:36 Interni n°599 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,571,intItemID,573,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi ...needs to listen, to observe, to try to understand...to move toward many little partial solutions and temporary verities.Expressing the new and coming to terms with tradition. This dichotomy, basically the reason and motivation behind design activity in all eras, forms the idea of continuity among the projects illustrated in this issue. The theme is more timely than ever. Moments of crisis and uncertainty inevitably prompt a review of the teachings of the great masters of architecture and design, showing us that innovation means constructive dialogue with the soul of places, the deeply rooted habits of human beings, their most hidden, unexpressed needs. Without trying to impose things on society with flights of fancy, but returning to the humility of a craft that before announcing its presence needs to listen, to observe, to try to understand, accepting the fact that it is no longer possible to find clear, immutable truths, but it is possible – and stimulating, in some ways – to move toward many little partial solutions and temporary verities. It is no coincidence that our cover this month features Giulio Iacchetti, a personality of reference for a new generation of Italian designers. In continuous dialogue, in collective projects, he returns to the values of the folk tradition, making this a distinctive characteristic of his work. The fact that design is now moving toward a more intimate, reflective vision of everyday living is demonstrated by the other themes discussed in this issue, starting with the ceramic works of the Danish duo Claydies, based on original hairstyles, moving on to the signage-lamps that give form to childhood memories, of Brazil’s Tetê Knecht, all the way to new materic combinations that ease our approach to the most advanced technologies, while giving furnishings an original hybrid image. Even when design plays with color and form, it does so in a quieter way than in the past, looking back, with respect and admiration, at the work of illustrious predecessors – the Futurists, for example. It is only fitting to remember that the ultimate goal of design is not recognition of a sign or a personality in everyday life, but the functional response of things to the needs of the people who use them.
Gilda Bojardi]]> 2009-05-05 18:15:41 Interni n°599 Summary http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,571,intItemID,572,intLangID,2.html  
 

NEWS

IN PRODUCTION
Jurassic Design, Berti Pavimenti Legno,
Concrete Look, De Majo, Thomson

IN FAIRS

COMMUNICATION
Spazio Chorus updates
Jewelry on display
Dialogues on appliances
Partners for growth
The new Belvedere of the Pirelli tower in Milan

PRIZES AND COMPETITIONS
Lucky Strike Designer Award Italy

SHOWROOM
Kvadrat in Londra
Molteni&C - Dada in New York
Droog in New York
Artemide in Taiwan
Donghia in Parigi


IN EXHIBITION

LANDSCAPE

SUSTAINABILITY

CITY PROJECT

IN BOOKSTORE

FASHION FILE

INFO & TECH

CONTRACT & OFFICE

CINEMA

TRANSLATIONS





 EDITORIAL

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
WAYS OF LIVING IN NEW YORK AND THE STATES
edited by Antonella Boisi

New York, Armani 5th Avenue
design by Doriana & Massimiliano Fuksas
photos by Ramon Prat - text by Antonella Boisi

Dallas, The Joule, boutique-hotel
design by Adam D.Tihany con Giselle Ceniza
photos by Eric Laignel - text by Matteo Vercelloni
Los Angeles, Skyline Residence & Drive In
design by Belzberg Architects
photos by Benny Chan/Fotoworks - text by Alessandro Rocca

Long Island, Southampton, American Color
design by Pierre Bouguennec/Boum Design
photos by Simone Barberis - text by Antonella Boisi

Reno, Nevada, Feigin Residence
design by Will Bruder Architects
photos by Undine Pröhl - text by Antonella Boisi
Vermont, Putney House
design by Kyu Sung Woo Architects
photos by Timothy Hursley - text by Alessandro Rocca

Berlino, Neues Museum
design by  David Chipperfield Architects
with Julian Harrap Architects
photos by Nicolò Lanfranchi - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Graz, Austria, Mumuth
design by UNstudio, Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos
photos by Christian Richters - text by Francesco Vertunni


THE ENCOUNTER
Pierre-Alexis Dumas
by Gilda Bojardi













 TIMELY TOPICS
Las Vegas, CityCenter
by  Matteo Vercelloni

Love is the answer
by Olivia Cremascoli


THE OPINION
Una generazione di pre-socratici
by Andrea Branzi


ART
Anish Kapoor: inside/outside the vortex
by Germano Celan

THE CENTRAL THEME
Futurcolors
by Nadia Lionello
photos by Miro Zagnoli

Styles of relaxation
by Nadia Lionello
images processing Enrico Suà Ummarino

PORTRAIT
Giulio Iacchetti text by Cristina Morozzi

DESIGN PROJECT
Franco Albini, design as architecture
text by  Matteo Vercelloni

Signal lights
design by Tetê Knecht
by Maddalena Padovani - photos by Andrés Otero

Headed for the table
design by Claydies
by Odoardo Fioravanti
photos by Lars Gundersen e Morganmorell


REPERTORY
Materials meet
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

On the cover: seated on the Surfer Chair, the new item designed
for Domodinamica, Giulio Iacchetti meditates in the company of some
of his most recent or best-known projects: the Tropico lamp by Foscarini, the
Bek outdoor table for Casamania, the Moscardino hybrid utensil by Pandora.
]]> 2009-05-05 16:29:43 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,52,intIssueID,534,intItemID,547,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-16 10:06:44 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,534,intItemID,545,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-15 17:43:55 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only.<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,534,intItemID,544,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-15 17:43:10 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,534,intItemID,543,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-15 16:45:52 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,534,intItemID,541,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-15 15:50:09 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,534,intItemID,535,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-15 15:23:42 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,534,intItemID,532,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-04-15 12:31:09 Interni n°599 Summary http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,451,intItemID,530,intLangID,2.html  
 

NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNER
Rodrigo Torres, el niño del design

IN PRODUCTION
Alessi, Marazzi Tecnica, Minimalux, Molteni & C, Triflow Concepts
Design labyrinth
In praise of lightness
Gio Ponti: the timeliness of a master

SHOWROOM
Bisazza in Anversa e Tokyo, Gandia Blasco in Milano,
Ingo Maurer in Monaco, Minotti in Londra,
Poltrona Frau Group Design Center in Abu Dhabi

COMMUNICATION
Pirelli Re-Edificio 16 factory-loft
Arjowigging Graphics: 6 milliards d’autres

ANNIVERSARIES
Davide Groppi a voyage in light
Minotti Cucine is 60

IN FAIRS
IMM Köln 2009
Maison&Objet Paris
Dublino: 32° Showcase Ireland

PRIZES AND COMPETITIONS
Il Mobile Significante 2009, Il rame e la casa 2008,
Promosedia Design Competition


IN EXHIBITION

CITY PROJECT

SUSTAINABILITY

IN BOOKSTORE

INFO & TECH

CINEMA

FASHION FILE

READING

EVENT

TRANSLATIONS






 EDITORIAL

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
SIGNATURE HOMES
edited by Antonella Boisi

Forte dei Marmi, italian style
design by studio Dordoni Architetti
photos by Pietro Savorelli - text by Alessandro Rocca

Bandol, (sud Francia), reinforced concrete
architectonic project by Rudy Ricciotti
interior desig by Marchi Architectes
photos by FG+SG Fotografia de Arquitectura
text by Matteo Vercelloni

Londra, a home, not a museum
design by Pip Horne
photos by Chris Gascoigne - text by Antonella Boisi

Milano, like a boat
design by Marco Vigo with Francesca Attolini
photos by Alberto Ferrero - text by Antonella Boisi

Barcellona, in the woods
design by Quim Larrea and Katherine Bedwell
photos by Rafael Vargas - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Milano, orthogonal gazes
design by Claudio La Viola, Massimo Reccanello and Associati
 photos by Alberto Ferrero - text by Francesco Vertunni

TIMELY TOPICS
Triennale Design Museum, Serie Fuori Serie
edited by Antonella Boisi

Liberating the possible
by Stefano Caggiano

Iconoclash
by Cristina Morozzi

For just a few
by Laura Traldi












 MASTERS
Angelo Mangiarotti: material as program
by Matteo Vercelloni

THE ENCOUNTER
Gillo Dorfles
by Cristina Morozzi

THE OPINION
The world (was) flat
by Andrea Branzi

ART
Cloning Sherman by Germano Celant

THE CENTRAL THEME
Cirque du Dessin
by  Ravaioli Silenzi Studio - photos by Gionata Xerra

Signature plots
by Margherita Helzel - photos by Simone Barberis

Light is Energy
by Andrea Pirruccio
images processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino

PORTRAIT
Riccardo Blumer
text by Cristina Morozzi

DESIGN PROJECT
Modular refractions
design by Francisco Gomez Paz/Paolo Rizzatto
text by  Francesco Massoni - photos by  Miro Zagnoli

Structural organicism
design by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
by Maddalena Padovani
photos by Paul Tahon and R&E Bouroullec

New Danish Modern
by Odoardo Fioravanti

Crystal fables
design by Jaime Hayon
by Maddalena Padovani

Dream Nature
design by Jella Jongerius
by Laura Traldi

Geometries en plein air
design by Carlo Colombo
by  Maddalena Padovani

OBSERVATORY
Present imperfect
by Laura Traldi

REPERTORY
Slopes
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

On the cover: Riccardo Blumer demonstrates the particular lightness of the Rem bed
he has designed for Flou. The project comes from experimentation conducted by the
architect-designer on hypostructures, and the resulting formulation of tensile structures
with exceptional load-bearing performance with respect to their weight. That of the
Rem bed is composed of four reticular bridge-beams with an elastic fabric, specially
produced by Flou, to display the tension and force of the structural parts.
Foto di/photo by Enrico Conti
 ]]> 2009-04-07 17:40:58 Interni n°599 Slopes http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,70,intIssueID,451,intItemID,529,intLangID,2.html Katrin Cosseta by Katrin Cosseta Furniture that defines gravity in an image of fragile equilibrium. Design explores a new dynamic sense, with original oblique geometries, diagonal, diverging or broken lines. Structures display the play of forces in theatrical tension.]]> 2009-04-07 12:38:52 Interni n°599 Jaime Hayon: crystal fables http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,451,intItemID,528,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani by Maddalena Padovani The encounter between the dreamy creativity of the Madrid-based designer and the great tradition of Baccarat generates Crystal Candy Set, a collection of numbered objects that reinvent the materic sensory effect of crystal and the very meaning of precious objects. Unlike many other designers who only today have succumbed to the lure of the art design market, Jaime Hayon has always advertised his vocation as an artist-designer. This has been the key to his success, in fact, even in the fields of interior design, furnishings and fashion, where he always finds a purely image-based dimension, conveying values of originality and innovation. All his creations belong to a single, explosive and highly recognizable ‘Hayon world’, made of fables, poetic metaphors, dreamy visions. A sort of “personal cosmology” he applies with nonchalant eclecticism and almost schizophrenic speed, disrupting the forms of reality and giving them a new life. As well as a new expressive meaning, often translated into the invention of unexpected functions. This talented imp whose playful creations have quickly convinced an audience sick of standardized production has now created a new collection for Baccarat. It’s called Crystal Candy Set and it is composed of nine vases, all limited editions, whose names already announce a very different scenario from the usual formal pomp of the traditional crystal of this renowned Parisian maison. Piña Passion, Blackberry Freeze, Nuclear Pomegranate, Bon Bon Treasure... this time the tale is one of exotic overtones. Inspired by the strong flavors and bright colors of tropical fruit, but also by a wide range of bizarre things –golf balls, clover, drops of water – the designer seems to randomly catch things for fun, pulled from a fervid imagination, like a magician who pulls surprises out of his hat. The design is guided by purely sensorial factors, in research conducted with the aim of bringing out the materic qualities of crystal, its geometric nature, its chromatic richness, its refraction of light. The idea of the Spanish designer was to take maximum advantage of the great skill of Baccarat, but presenting the results in a new, unconventional way. So Hayon has decided to combine crystal with other, contrasting materials like ceramic, opaque, dense, visually heavy. In some pieces the ceramic is enhanced by a copper finish that makes it shine, almost like a mirror; in others it is used without color and finish, almost in a raw state; in others still it is all white, but enriched with a soft, silky texture. In this unusual combination, further enhanced by the figurative contrast between the classic citations of the crystal and the more terse, contemporary forms of the ceramic, the precious material of Baccarat changes its image and meaning. “There are objects,” Jaime Hayon remarks, “whose mission is to make our everyday life easier and more comfortable. Others can be compared to stories that tell us about ourselves and our roots. Others still pursue the ultimate goal of beauty and art. The Crystal Candy Set is not a collection of functional objects. It is composed of pieces that exist to be admired and to make you dream. Today, more than ever, we need smiles, we need to recoup the free imagination of children. I cannot imagine that things should belong only to a gray, square world”.]]> 2009-04-07 11:17:13 Interni n°599 The structural organicism of Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,451,intItemID,527,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani
photos Paul Tahon and R&E Bouroullec by Maddalena Padovani
photos Paul Tahon and R&E Bouroullec A system of textile tiles that go together like a climbing plant, a chair conceived as a botanical structure that freely grows in three dimensions. In the latest projects developed for Kvadrat and Vitra the Breton brothers focus on the idea of fluid, open, mobile space that grows and takes form in an organic way. This is an interesting moment for Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, in which they are presenting particularly innovative projects. For Kvadrat, they have created the Clouds fabric tiles, pieces that can be attached together, an industrial, ‘democratic’ version of the space division system proposed a few years ago with textile bricks designed for the same company. Soft, modular elements, for combinations in any direction, that lay the groundwork for a process of deconstruction of space. Clouds is the culmination, with its interpretation of the principle of the free, flexible growth of climbing plants. And the botanical world returns in the design of the Vegetal chair for Vitra: more than a seat, this is a structure and a construction method – based on four years of research – that shifts the process of growth of trees onto an industrial scale. Thanks to injection moulding, slender strips of polyamide are asymmetrically woven like branches to form a nest supported by four leg-trunks. The result is highly innovative: not a traditional chassis, but a three-dimensional structure, like a leaf, flat on the upper side, to guarantee comfort, with relief ribbing on the lower side, for strength. Nature provides the guidelines for a new, complex process that uses an artificial material, in the logic of industrial production. The result is a product of great aesthetic impact, whose form comes directly from an operation of ‘adjustment’ of the ramified frame for ergonomic adaptation, and to guarantee easy stacking, stability, safety. And last but not least, an affordable price.

What lies behind this organic approach to design of spaces and objects?
“Everything started with the study of plant structures. We were interested in understanding how knowledge of growth processes could help in our work as designers. One of the main properties of plant structures is their great capacity to adapt to space. Just think about the different configurations of trees, in windy places or sheltered places. This principle of flexible structure, adapting freely to different situations, is the basis of the Clouds project. Our aim was not just to create a very pliant spatial divider system, but also to propose a new model of architectural space, no longer just white, geometric, squared, but inspired by the organic world. At the same time, the idea of steering the growth of a structure in one direction or another made us think about new, varied ways to define the geometry of a seat. That led to Vegetal”.

Tell us about the long research process behind this chair...
“The Vegetal chair is a product of the present. Just ten years ago it would have been impossible or at least very hard to make it, in technical terms. It is the result of a design process that required lots of time. Until a few years ago designers created the form of objects; then the engineers came in and did the actual product design. Vegetal, on the other hand, came from an idea the technicians at Vitra couldn’t even imagine, at first. We had to make many models to explain our project and to test its feasibility in technological and functional terms”.

What is innovative about this project?
“The originality of the chair lies in the structure, certainly different from traditional ones, which breaks up the scheme of orthogonal geometry. The innovations are not ergonomic as much as linguistic. Vegetal is a surprising object that encourages the user to look at how it is made, and to think about how it can be inserted in the domestic environment”.

All our works stand out for bright colors, but they are always solid colors. Why?
“We usually choose solid colors because we don’t want color to add complexity, or to confuse the image. We like to help people to understand how a product is made. When it is composed of materials we tend to use two different solid colors, to show the specific characteristics”.]]> 2009-04-07 10:53:49 Interni n°599 Gomez Paz-Rizzatto Modular refractions http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,451,intItemID,526,intLangID,2.html Francesco Massoni
photos Miro Zagnoli text  Francesco Massoni
photos Miro Zagnoli The ecosustainable design of the Serenissima lamp by Luceplan reveals that it is possible to update the typology of the traditional chandelier, adding something to its aura.The spark of design innovation doesn’t happen by chance, but as the result of a long process of gestation that clicks into place when all the conditions are right: technical, productive, commercial conditions and – why not – even cultural factors. If we shift this thinking into the world of lighting the adventure is even more intriguing. The example is a project based on the desire to add some glow to the already resplendent history of a typological icon that has emerged across the centuries, starting with the original lamp of candles and evolving in electric armed chandeliers, using fine Murano glass or Bohemian crystal. A solemn, aristocratic archetype, faithful to an illustrious crafts tradition, rare and identified with luxury, though also threatened by its own kitsch imitations. The exact opposite of the abat-jour, with its dusky, petit bourgeois connotations. The right man for the job was obviously Paolo Rizzatto, who has already updated the classic lampshade, converting it to the reasoning of design, under the name Costanza. “I had been thinking about the theme of the chandelier for years,” says the Milanese architect and designer, co-founder of Luceplan, “but I wanted to approach it in a truly innovative way, without removing its magic, but making it more affordable thanks to industrialization”. Not nostalgic restyling, but patient, careful linguistic and formal revision, conducted on the basis of the knowledge and technology available today, faithful to the tenets of the purest industrial design. “By subtraction,” Rizzatto explains, after looking for just the right moment to approach this critical reinterpretation, in keeping with the philosophy of Luceplan, focusing on environmental sustainability. The spark finally appeared when Rizzatto met the Argentine designer Francisco Gomez Paz, who brought lively intuition and great ability to the project. A fertile dialogue between two design generations that led, two years ago, to the co-creation of “a plastic chandelier, light, unbreakable, with low environmental impact, not very cumbersome, easy to assemble and disassemble, with a lower cost than its more illustrious forebears, but still capable of lighting, furnishing and astonishing”. The initial idea was to generate, starting with a single light source, a multiplication of luminous points, like the reflection and refraction effects produced by real glass and crystal in classic chandeliers, while avoiding glare. “This is why,” Gomez Paz explains, “we thought of using the same principle as Fresnel lenses”.
These lenses, named for their inventor, the physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, make it possible to reduce size, thickness and weight of spherical lenses, while conserving their power. “The problem,” Rizzatto adds, “was to find the technology suitable for the required optical quality”. The solution was achieved with the collaboration of a specialized company that employs technicians from Carl Zeiss. “Taking advantage of the technologies developed for the production of Fresnel lenses and mirrors for luminous panels, we came up with special processes for two types of polycarbonate film with a thickness of just one millimeter, a flat surface for microprisms, at intervals of 8/10 of a millimeter”. These lenses reduce the image of the light source to 1/5, attenuating glare. The chandelier, known as Serenissima, is composed of three elements arranged in sequence around a single central bulb: a light but solid structure in cut and bent sheet steel; a variable number of removable arms in injection-moulded polycarbonate; a series thin, flat Fresnel reducing lenses, obtained through the process described above. Assembly is easy, like a puzzle, and can be done directly by the customer. The structure with the bulb is suspended at the desired height. Two lenses of different sizes snap on to each arm, giving the polycarbonate sheets a slight curve that makes them sturdier.
Then the arms are applied to the structure. The result is a refined work of architecture that expands outward, from the nucleus, in branches and leaves, gradually dematerializing. “To develop this radiant form we looked at micro-organisms, single-celled algae enclosed in a transparent wrapper”, says Francisco Gomez Paz. For the moment the project has led to two different versions, small and medium (diameter 64 and 72 cm, with 12 or 18 branches, each with one large and one small leaf ), but the models will increase to generate an entire family of lamp models. The packaging is also practical, light and ecocompatible: a cubical cardboard box, about 35 cm on each side, for an overall weight of no more than 2 kg.]]> 2009-04-07 10:54:33 Interni n°599 Riccardo Blumer http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,451,intItemID,525,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi text Cristina Morozzi “To make design”, Riccardo Blumer says, “you have to take risks, and to always study all the sciences”. He teaches with commitment, works as an architect and designer, but always sets aside time for study. “I’m fifty”, he says, “but I’m not afraid to reach seventy, because I know I have 20 years of training ahead of me!”I met with Riccardo Blumer in Milan at Galleria Luisa delle Piane, which will host, during Design Week, an exhibition on works in leather by students in the “Workshop on the three-dimensional design” he teaches at the Università degli Studi of the Republic of San Marino (2008). We talked about biology, physics, structural engineering, strains, compressions, extensions, dilations, skin, atmospheric pressure... Not about design, in the usual sense of the term. The day after our meeting Riccardo Blumer sent me a letter that says a lot about him and his special professional commitment. “I’m writing to underline my teaching activities, because today, perhaps as never before, I believe design needs to rethink its approach, focusing on our needs, and education must be a place for reflection, a quality the universities, in general, have transformed into managerial technique of institutional powers... I am starting to be seriously worried. Perhaps at this coming Salone we should start to take steps, maybe we should stop eating. Knowledge, above all, is a physical experience. Otto Frei (the German architect born in 1925, exponent of structuralism and biomorphic forms in architecture, ed.) says that the senses are all we have”. “Touch, for example,” Riccardo continues, “is not prejudiced. Before touching you cannot perceive. Shaking hands without seeing the other person is scary! When I work on leather and cowhide I play with touch, trying to amplify the ‘sensual’ qualities of the material, including its sound”. Working with skin, as he has explained to his students in San Marino, means working on the borderline between inside and outside, if we think about the human body. Furthermore, the skin is a sort of map of our emotions and physical states. It is the meeting place of physical and psychic phenomena. Cowhide is elastic. It is composed of irregular, very strong fibers, that can stretch by 30-40%, taking on forms like plastic materials. The BB chair designed for Poliform (2007), with no rigid internal structure, padded with polyurethane directly injected in the covering, shows us that if the structure is right, cowhide not only adapts, it can also support itself. Blumer’s most interesting experiments are with seating. Again with the students at San Marino (2007), he has built chairs from stale bread, rice, glue, seats with vegetable fibers and licorice roots. “After all”, he says, “the first chemical processes happen in the kitchen. Foods, especially pastries, are always structural”.
His first chair, the Laleggera, created for Alias in 1996 and winner of the Compasso d’Oro in 1998, is the lightest: 1350 grams, as opposed to the 1750 grams of the Superleggera by Gio Ponti. “It came instinctively”, Blumer says, “I wanted a unified, efficient chair. After having studied Otto Frei, I know why: efficiency is the right measure of quantity of material, strength and the various processes that give rise to beauty. Nature, in fact, is always efficient in reproducing itself ”. 200 Laleggera chairs were protagonists at the Milan Triennale, during the Salone del Mobile, in the installation by Michelangelo Pistoletto, “Mari mediterranei”. The new chair for Alias is dynamic, constructed to make certain neglected muscles do some work. “The body”, Blumer points out, “is a movement machine. This is why I thought of a chair that makes you do exercises”. With Flou, at the Salone del Mobile 2009 he will present a bed based on a hypocompressed structure: the external resin-fabric skin becomes rigid, turning into a structural part.
With the students at the ISAI (Istituto Superiore Architettura d’Interni) of Vicenza, he has focused on sentiments (2008) like welcome, courage, jealousy, envy, mothering instinct, pride, fear and anger, for which the students imagined containers. “Sentiments”, he comments, “should be distinguished from emotions, which are occasional, temporary and always provoked by some external phenomenon. The sentiments, on the other hand, cannot be artificially provoked… love is the best example of this. They are not limited in time, but generally connected to our whole life. At the same time, they cannot be deciphered rationally or logically. Since they are not just occasional, one of the tasks of the designer is to pay attention to them”. He teaches his students, first of all, to distinguish between objects, finding the ones that have sentiment. These are objects that have self-awareness, not just transformers, like a hard disk that stores signals. He regrets the fact that in the rush to focus on emotions, the sentiment has been lost that objects should have a function, a duration… And he in indicates, as objects with sentiment, the functional objects of modernism, because they express the pleasure and purity of function. For Luxottica (2008) he has explored the theme of visual perception, starting with analysis of the different ways of seeing of people and animals. Man sees only in front of him, therefore he is a predator. Hens, on the other hand, see 180 degrees from each eye, but not in front, so they are prey. The partridge is a special case, because it looks forward… You never stop learning if you listen to Blumer. You realize that our senses are not trained, because we are increasingly replacing them with artificial things. You realize that design is no longer responsible when it comes to objects, because it cannot discern their sentiments. You understand that design is a very serious thing that has to do with the wonder of efficiency; that it is a wide ranging job that touches on physics, biology, chemistry, neurology, psychology, reason and sentiment. Riccardo always challenges himself. He starts over, from scratch, every time, delving into new disciplines. When he finds a solution he doesn’t repeat it, he invents a new one. Maybe he is one of the few who can refrain from “fasting” during the Salone, because he “takes steps” every day, with his teaching, his design of self-aware objects, generated by intelligent processes. He is pleased to be starting a Masters program in design at the Architecture Academy of Mendrisio, focusing on three themes, each of which is related to the activity described by verb pairs: cut-sew; open-close; slide-brake.
“Architecture can learn a lot from design”, he concludes, “because, as Otto Frei said, its job is to construct places for happy living”. Every summer, during the month of August, in the former church of San Giovanni at Casciago (Varese), where he lives and works, he organizes architecture workshops. On other occasions he conducts “physical design exercises”: performances to narrate invisible things. These are shows, a bit like Castiglioni, where Blumer arrives with suitcases full of tools, called “machines for design”, ready to perform experiments, like that of making an egg stand up to 35 kg of weight. Not a miracle, but the result of a law of physics, like all his projects: the programmable consequence of the nature of the material and of a coherent process.]]> 2009-04-06 18:22:41 Interni n°599 Light is Energy http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,451,intItemID,524,intLangID,2.html Andrea Pirruccio
image processing Enrico Suà Ummarino by Andrea Pirruccio
image processing Enrico Suà Ummarino Technological sculptures of environmental light in ‘places of energy’: views of Enel plants with dramatic industrial architecture. A game of visual reminders, in which lamps suspended between design and technology are hosted in spaces for the production of an element that is as immaterial as it is indispensable.]]> 2009-04-06 17:13:55 Interni n°599 Cirque du Dessin http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,451,intItemID,523,intLangID,2.html Ravaioli Silenzi
Studio photos Gionata Xerra by Ravaioli Silenzi
Studio photos Gionata Xerra A playful interpretation for colored pieces. Captivating volumes, bright colors, wheels, pins, trapezes, surreal animals… Time for fun at the design circus!]]> 2009-04-06 16:07:21 Interni n°599 Gillo Dorfles http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,97,intIssueID,451,intItemID,522,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi text by Cristina Morozzi Heading for his 100th birthday, he still has the same sense of wonder and insatiable curiosity regarding contemporary ‘ways and fashions’. His acute gaze has explored every sphere of creativity. His passionate study delves into customs and objects, offering biting criticism of all kinds of modern manias and weaknesses. He pays attention to all the arts, aware of their history and their progress. He crosses them, tracing connections, parallels, intersections. He ranges from theory to anecdote, lightening the weight of theory with the levity of sharp irony. He scans every angle of everyday life, making it the playground for his many reflections.On a cloudy afternoon in October, I went to visit Gillo Dorfles at his home in Milan, on Piazza Lavater, a house filled with the things of a lifetime, packed with books. The apartment reveals his personal taste: the modern mingles with memory, art with souvenirs. He welcomed me into the living room: in front of the divan, a custom carpet he designed himself; low tables, a bowl of chocolates. He insists I take some, and a glass of spirits. After our chat he pauses to show me, on a shelf amidst books, a small marble sculpture by Angelo Mangiarotti, which he caresses with one hand. The conversation begins with the Venice Architecture Biennial, directed by Aaron Betsky, which was still in progress. I offer my compliments for his lucid article published by Corriere della Sera on 18 September. It begins: “In architecture there is an excess of formalism. Frank Gehry is formidable, but his imitators are dangerous! Today we are seeing abuse of exceptionalism”.

Is the same thing happening in design?
“Patricia Urquiola, for example, is an excellent designer: so why add colored superstructures? And Philippe Starck? Why go to the lengths of designing garden dwarfs? There is undoubtedly an excessive desire to épater les bourgeois”.

Don’t you think critics have some responsibility, because they always want, as they say at newspapers, to find a ‘monster’ for the front page?
“No, critics are not at fault. Today, the spectacular element with advertising impact is also fundamental for the market, and all this influences creativity, at least by 50%. In the 1950s rigor was the advertising method. Today it’s the opposite. In design, by now, it is taken for granted that form follows function and that there is consistent use of material. So to make a name, you need to be spectacular”.

I think certain celebrations are acritical, even excessive. Why does it get harder and harder to speak the truth?
“Behind certain celebrations there are advertising motives. The reasons are always hedonistic, venal. I don’t pay attention to such strategies, but I try never to be offensive. There are certain things you just cannot say. It’s a healthy form of self-censorship. If I always said what I thought they would have shot me at least ten times! Even in my book “Lacerti della memoria” (Compositori, Bologna, 2007), I left out the most important things. Truth is not for this world. We have to lie all the time. Sometimes, I’ll admit it, I lie on purpose. I don’t like to say how things really are. I amuse myself by inventing”.

In art, as in design, there are sacred cows. At the same time, others are overlooked, or even persecuted…
“Much also depends on the personality of the creative talent, on knowing how to inspire trust. It is a question of charisma. It has always been like that. Every period has its own charisma: today’s is histrionic”.

Are myths also useful for design? “We always need myths. But it is absurd when something becomes a myth without deserving it. There are lots of idiotic things in circulation, we’re full of false myths. But there are also correct myths. I’m in favor, for example, of reissues of historic pieces. Certain furniture deserves to be treated as myth. That of Carlo Mollino, or the pieces by Charles & Ray Eames, for example. I think it is a very good thing that Cassina recently reissued some furniture by Franco Albini. Albini, for example, has become a myth only later, a posteriori”.

In July 2008 the British design monthly Icon published a ranking of “design atrocities” to indicate the advent of an aesthetic of ugliness...
“Certain designers like Fernando & Humberto Campana are interesting in their own way. I like their work. I think the old story of kitsch is coming back, though in forms that seem extraneous to those encoded in the past. People are attracted by the unusual and the unpleasant. Kitsch in all its expressions, even the crudest, is consoling. Just look at fashion, where it is frequent. In this area, disarray has its own particular appeal”.

Is creativity in good health, or are we in a period of decadence?
“Italy keeps its head above water due to its vein of imagination and free invention, that the others do not have. Of course there is a lack, today, of designers at the level of the great masters. But the historical conditions have changed. At the time, the task was to reconstruct, to invent. The Italy of the 1950s created things by starting from scratch. It didn’t have an Arts and Crafts movement on which to build, as in other countries. That situation cannot be reproduced. We are seeing the collapse of Italian higher education. There is a widespread lack of rigor and discipline. I did a lecture at the Milan Polytechnic: the general ignorance is amazing. No one knows anything, not even the basic stuff. Design schools should be fewer, and more rigorous. Three-year courses are enough to become a graphic designer, but they cannot train real design professionals. There are too many little schools, and the mechanisms for the selection of faculty are absurd…”.]]> 2009-04-06 15:18:09 Interni n°599 Angelo Mangiarotti <br /> Material as program http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,96,intIssueID,451,intItemID,521,intLangID,2.html Matteo Vercelloni by Matteo Vercelloni A multidisciplinary approach that combines multiple levels of the concept of ‘synthesis of the arts’, as in the programs of the historical avantgardes. This is how Angelo Mangiarotti approaches the theme of design, since the 1950s. Design and sculpture, interiors and works of architecture combine in a single, rational creative sum, guided by the conviction that “thought does not use material, material uses thought”. Looking at the work of Angelo Mangiarotti today means discovering the dense path of a protagonist of (not just Italian) design culture of the postwar era, but also a ‘method’, a way of listening to and knowing about materials. Experimentation that ranges from the invention of new living typologies and useful objects to the stringent logic of the ‘system’, without overlooking sculptural and formal aspects. In many ways, his work has been a forerunner of the fashionable expressions of today’s ‘non-Euclidean’ architecture. His professional biography starts in America, at the beginning of 1954, where he encounters great masters like Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Konrad Wachsmann, and then moves, at the end of the 1980s, toward Japan. But he always returns to Italy, to Milan, the capital of design, where with Bruno Morassutti Mangiarotti shared, from 1955 to 1960, a studio and important experiences in architecture and the design of useful objects. The lucid rationality of his career (Mangiarotti is an architect, but he also received an honorary degree in engineering in Germany) can be seen on all scales, mixed with an aesthetic sensibility far from any mechanicism and any ideological prejudice. Whether in interiors – from the Bignardi house in Milan (1952) with its pivoting wings conceived as a domestic mechanism and a large mobile painting, to the furnishings of the villa of La Chaux de Fonds of Le Corbusier (1954-1960, with B. Morassutti), to the ‘monumental’ and public underground spaces of the Milanese Passante Ferroviario (1982-98) – or in larger works of architecture, from residences to prefabricated industrial and exhibition structures; or, finally, in the design of useful objects, the work of Mangiarotti is always conceived in an industrial key that does not overlook the dimension of crafts. Just look at the bronze vases dated 1961, a sort of timeless yet contemporary archetype, like the sculptures of Brancusi, sculptural elements on a domestic scale, things that could be industrially produced, but also unique, one-of-a-kind items.
They also express the concept of the ‘system’, which Mangiarotti sees as a guarantee of rationality in constructive and formal solutions, while permitting continuing research in the field of materials, approaching new typologies and the evolution of individual components that offer new solutions for building. In terms of typological invention Mangiarotti, like other designers in the 1960s, designs, to some extent, ‘what is lacking’; not privately felt needs, like Joe Colombo’s flat pipe that stands on the table, but ‘collective’ needs sensed in his own time. In the field of residential architecture works like the “three-cylinder house” on Via Gavirate in Milan (a typological invention with a circular plan, suspended on a central pillar, 1959-61), the house on Via Quadronno (1956-63), both designed with Bruno Morassutti and the structural engineer Favini, the apartment house in Monza (1970) and other later constructions, combine freedom of choice in the arrangement of interiors on the part of end users with the idea of a flexible facade, a multimateric modular screen of controlled alternations, whose variability still maintains the overall architectural image. The Mater Misericordiae church at Baranzate (Milan, 1956- 58), also with Morassutti and Favini, remains one of the recognized masterpieces of contemporary architecture, with its essential mixture of a prestressed reinforced concrete structure and walls made with double panes of glass, defining a pure volume of perfect proportions.
Another work of reference is the Pavilion at the Fiera del Mare of Genoa (1963), unfortunately destroyed, which was a surprisingly modern work formed by an underground hall and an ‘elementary’ outer structure, with four truncated conical pillars supporting a ‘shell’ composed of sheet metal held in tension and compressed around a reticular structure. The ‘system’ of the facade grids was transformed into a true construction process in the field of prefabrication. This can be seen in the FACEP 1964, U70 ISOCELL (1969), BRIONA (1972) and FACEP 1976 systems, where the archetypes of architecture (beams, pillars, roof ) are combined in a ‘serial’ design dimension, with sculptural results in the formal solutions. A compositional synthesis in three dimensions of Mangiarotti’s approach is clearly evident in the pavilion for the 14th Milan Triennale in 1968 (never built), directly showing the focus on the possibilities offered by material (polyurethane resin, in this case) in an amorphous image that predicts, fifty years ahead of its time, the possibilities offered by CAD in the architecture of recent decades. Again in this case, the organic, sculptural solution of the whole is not gratuitous or self-referential, but responds to the need to insert the structure in the park without cutting down any trees. Material and ‘system’ are also keys to the entire series of objects designed by this master, from the Salmoiraghi sewing machine to the Secticon timepiece, which is still on the market (both with Morassutti,1956-58). The solution of the face, in which the progress of the numbers is indicated by a progressive enlargement, also shows Mangiarotti’s skill in the field of graphics. The shiny, shell-like form is in tune with the plastic material, an attitude also found in the Conduttore di Luce lamp in 1962, where the perspex tube is exploited as an element capable of bringing the light source from one end to the other. Glass is used in many different solutions, from the Lesbo lamp in 1966, in blown glass shaded at the base to disguise the light source, to the evergreen hanging system for Vistosi (1967), capable of constructing magical screens of all sizes, thanks to infinite combinations of a single ring of glass bent like a hook. Mangiarotti has also created many objects in crystal: 800 projects, including glasses, carafes, ampules and centerpieces, where the functional aspect and the typological invention combine with sculptural tension (like the Glass Hand Stopper in 1993, conceived ergonomically for a safe grip, and capable of ‘stopping’ the ice during drinking).
Marble is the material with which Mangiarotti moves in an explicit way, and with equal creative intensity, from the world of design to that of sculpture; while the Clizia seat (1990) and the Eros tables (1971) can be considered ‘functional sculptures’, the actual marble sculptures, cut by numerically controlled machines, maintain the same focus on the overall figure, but in a pure, abstract sense, ‘without function’ except that of producing emotions and memories (like the Corten sheet of the monument made in 2000 to commemorate the massacre of Sant’Anna di Stazzema) or configuring a new relationship with the landscape, as in the project for a double pedestrian bridge in marble for Riomaggiore (1997).]]> 2009-04-07 14:43:02 Interni n°599 Iconoclash<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,451,intItemID,519,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi by Cristina Morozzi Disrupting codes, rediscovering figurativism, daring to be anthropomorphic, redesigning style in a pop key, making audacious things in the typically ‘feminine’ arts, breaking up symmetries, breaking down geometries. These are the rules of a design that confronts crisis, trying new paths, in complete freedom.Antidotes is the name of the 14th Cahier d’Inspiration proposed by Maison&Objet (January 2009). And not by chance. The aim is to suggest decorative trends to combat the phantoms of the economic slump. “To get over the crisis,” says the architect-philosopher Paul Virilio, “intelligence is a must.” Not only that. You also need fantasy, humor and daring. You have to overturn the codes that have governed styles, and demolish the icons of the politically correct. Iconoclash, with exhibit design by Vincent Gregoire (studio Nelly Rodi), represented, in a whirlwind of forms and colors, the outlook of a new stylistic freedom. So we have borrowed its emblematic title to propose our own anticrisis recipe. The same irreverent mood, but with different tones and pieces, all selected from recent creations. Designers, before the sociologists, sense signals of change. They can’t wait for change to come along, to let them burst forth with new mirages. In troubled times the most courageous, the most open, unleash their imagination. A figurative component returns, in anthropomorphic expressions. Anatomy seems to be calling the shots. Table lamps get nice legs; chairs look solid, resting on four feet; ceramic legs and arms of dolls intertwine to create an unusual centerpiece; chair backs and seats look like lungs. The use of lively colors and shiny finishes avoids depression, banishing the threat of kitsch. Gone are the days of romantic indulgence based on embroidered surfaces and carved profiles. A plastic trend is back. Objects have volumes, planes are deformed, almost like plaster casts. Just look at the shoe closet, a diploma project (October 2008) by at student at the Academy of Eindhoven, with moulded polyurethane doors reproducing shoes in relief. In parallel, decoration shifts from calligraphy to painting, with big brushstrokes, as in the carpet by Christian Lacroix, proposed by the Parisian Tools gallery (January 2009). Stylish furniture abandons baroque volutes to rediscover the figurativism of “magnificence”, daring to use lion’s paws or winged figures. Handmade things make a decisive comeback, with daring subjects. Clemance Daumont, one of the Talents à la carte of Maison&Objet, does bodybuilders in needlepoint: 450 hours of work for a tapestry. Hannes Grebit, to redesign the classic German sitting room of the Sixties, breaks down and reassembles the geometries of divans, armchairs and credenzas of the Cosy series, in a game of evocative asymmetry, underscored by retro details and coverings. While the Dutch studio Makkink&Bey cuts up the profile of chairs to produce a pixel effect that defies the principles of geometry. The recipe, then, calls for more than a dash of eclecticism. Each designer tells his own story, with impudence, starting with his own cultural roots and expanding on personal creative methods: from redesign to transformation, revisitation to virtuoso craftsmanship.]]> 2009-04-06 12:40:40 Interni n°599 Triennale Design Museum, Serie Fuori Serie<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,451,intItemID,517,intLangID,2.html ]]> 2009-04-03 19:02:29 Interni n°599 Milan, orthogonal gazes<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,451,intItemID,516,intLangID,2.html photos by Alberto Ferrero - text by Francesco Vertunni
 design by Claudio La Viola, Massimo Reccanello e Associati
photos by Alberto Ferrero - text by Francesco Vertunni  In the center of Milan a radical renovation based on new geometries. Domestic spaces that adapt to everyday family life and provide a welcoming private stage for entertaining friends and guests. Originally two apartments on one level of a building, separated by an internal landing, two traditional domestic situations, each with just one exposure, one toward the internal garden, the other toward the street. Having freed the whole floor of its dividers and exposed the nude structure, it became possible to create visual connections between the two facades with windows. The spaces are no organized substantially along two orthogonal axes. The two sign-paths start at the entrance, and besides functioning as access corridors emphasize their extension thanks to a sum of materic and compositional devices, and a series of technical lighting solutions that underscore the rigorous geometries of the whole. The house is divided into two distinct sectors, ‘public’ and private, separated by a sliding door that opens to create a long perspective, marked by a stone inlay in the wood flooring, which from the master bedroom reaches the living area, connecting two narrow facade balconies transformed into effective installations of ‘contemplative greenery’, botanical wings to screen the view from the outside. The living area is placed to the right of the entrance, conceived as a small foyer, where a gilded console is joined by a mosaic of the same material on the floor. The living room is a sequence of independent compositional episodes that form a single, highly expressive space. An initial recessed part, marked by a pillar partially clad in mirrors and partially in stone, leads to the luminous living area open on one side toward the dining room, which can be separated by two full-height vanishing panels. On the opposite side, the home theater zone is like a ‘room within a room’, where a violet surface rises vertically to the ceiling and then turns by 90° to continue until it reaches the facing wall, creating a suspended horizontal wing, interrupted at the edges by effective openings for light. Beside the dining area a small niche contains a space for reading, a sort of alcove for isolation, but without separation from the overall setting. Along the side open to the balcony-garden, the level shift is resolved by transforming the step into a continuous overhanging wooden bench that continues outside, forming short paths in the greenery. The services are located behind the living area, along the axis that connects the guest bath to the kitchen, a large space with custom furnishings, connected by means of a vertical glazing to the wine cooler and pantry, permitting use as an everyday family dining zone, without having to carry meals to the main dining room adjacent to the daytime area. The nighttime zone is marked by the perspective of the long corridor with a sequence of custom sliding doors, and a ceiling with an inclined opening used as a light source. A studio bedroom and two rooms for the children, with bath, come before the master bedroom zone, which can be totally isolated by means of a sliding door. Here the large bedroom, also with luminous openings in the back wall, is separated from a fitness room by a modular wall marked by a central cowhide band that conceals the function and figure of the door in its overall geometric design. The small gym underlines the character of a chamber for the care of the body, also due to the direct connection to the large bathroom, clad in stone – worked by hand to create a designed texture – conceived as a precious spa structure on a domestic scale.]]> 2009-04-03 18:38:04 Interni n°599 London, a home, not a museum<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,451,intItemID,515,intLangID,2.html photos by Chris Gascoigne - text by Antonella Boisi
 design by Pip Horne
photos by Chris Gascoigne - text by Antonella Boisi  In London, the dwelling of Rumi, a collector of tableware and the owner of Thomas Goode. The house, a minimal, white, luminous sculpture, was designed for Anish Kapoor. Today it is also a world, of nature, water, fire, stone and wood, of purified rigor, a sense of community and high-tech accents. The key to understanding this project lies in its coordinates. Because Rumi (the client) is a collector of fine tableware, a lifelong passion that accompanies his interest in architecture and social projects. “A table setting,” he explains, “is a form of interior decoration and of welcome, because a well-set table is a pleasure for the eyes as well as the palate”. Ever since his encounter, in 1997, with Thomas Goode – the cult address, since 1827, for royalty from all over the world, who find accessories for their dining tables at the shop in Mayfair (there is also a HighGrove collection, named for the residence of Prince Charles) – he has done more: he has applied his cosmopolitan culture and taste (Indian origins, education in Uganda and England), his creativity and savoir faire, to table settings: or how to prepare a perfect table for any occasion and any style, from breakfast to supper, friendly lunches to formal receptions. In his settings, that are always different, bone china, silver, linens, crystal, flowers and lights feature both avant-garde products (from Danny Lane to Paul Smith, De Vecchi to Carlo Moretti, Redaelli to Richard Ginori, San Lorenzo to Sawaya&Moroni) and erudite historical references. Just take a look at the archives of Thomas Goode: precious strata containing incredible projects by atypical designers, like the painted designs for the tableware of Czar Alexander II in 1870, with minute decorative motifs and precise color effects. “Every table,” he says, “is a landscape and should be prepared with architectural principles. Your table reflects who you are, your culture”. Getting back to the house, the subject of this article, the refrain of ‘you are the way you live’ lends itself to parallel interpretations and dynamic contrasts that meet only in the extreme attention to detail. Do you imagine that Mr. Rumi might live in a Victorian abode, in spaces packed with objects, lined with damask, antiques, artworks? Nothing could be further from the truth. His house is in the heart of the London melting pot, in the lively zone of Portobello Market, near Notting Hill. It appears only after you have walked down a secluded street, at the end of a cul-de-sac, beyond a wooden gate and a white path, where you enter a garden-enclave in front of the colored facades of a cluster of neighboring houses, each different from the others. It is another world, one of nature, water, fire, stone and wood, of purified rigor (the most authentic of Victorian values), of a sense of community (that of the market, seen from the bedroom) and of high-tech accents: the main elements of a personal entropy coherently reflected in the project by Pip Horne. Mr. Rumi’s castle is a landscape of many dimensions, like an artwork in which to dwell, utterly contemporary. “I appreciate this house,” he explains, “because it stimulates my sensibilities and my thoughts, it is a welcoming, protective shell, an oasis of relaxation that gives me energy, concentration and the possibility of contemplation”. One fact should not be overlooked: until four years ago this was the home of the artist Anish Kapoor. We should also remember that the architecture of yesterday and that of today have the same signature: that of the London-based architect Pip Horne, who has a specially relationship with artistic clients (he has also married an artist, the Iranian Shirazeh). “The original project created for Kapoor was a sculptural concept, minimal and essential,” Horne points out. “It has been adapted to new needs, without altering its spirit. A house is not a museum: more attention must be paid to private spaces and functional parameters, with service areas positioned at the center of a rectangular layout, together with the slim, linear staircase that connects the four levels of the house. In the end, though, the substance remains the same: the quality of this new living experience is still based on a narrative composed of immaculate, large spaces, dominated by light, that spreads through openings in the design of the facades and through the incisive cuts in the slabs of the ground floor and the roof ”. In the mixture of grafts of curved and straight lines connecting the spaces, of vertical-horizontal axes of internal layout, of fine materials (wengé, travertine, white cement) and attention to detail (flush-mounted doors, invisible handles), the design stands out for the dialogue between the interiors and the carefully tended garden, which becomes an essential living space. A large window on the garden forms a mutable natural painting for the ground floor living area, a white, empty space for socializing, in dialogue with the opposite wall to the north, totally closed and marked by a central niche, like a place for meditation. The rarefied, dilated atmosphere is like that of an art gallery, warmed by the oblique lighting of optical fibers, and accepting just one vivid presence: a long table (actually two tables put together) in metal, made in Italy, so that even the selected pieces of the personal tableware of Rumi seem to dematerialize, concealed behind the architectural panel of a cabinetwing positioned in a corner of passage toward the kitchen, the space that completes the ground floor, together with the auxiliary bath and the entrance area. Between them, as central as an axis of symmetry, the staircase enclosed in a curved volume connects the various levels. The first floor contains more living space, that opens with a theatrical balcony-belvedere to the flow of light and the activities in the living area below, respecting the dizzying height of the volume. But in this area the feeling is more intimate, focused on the presence of a fireplace around which to arrange classic divans designed by Christian Liaigre and a selection of art objects, including some antique Japanese pottery. The precious paneling in bordeaux leather accompanies the passage toward the library and the studio that complete this level. Further up there are more private spaces, the nighttime islands that develop on the upper level of the house, where the language becomes even more personal, relaxed, but full of special effects. It’s a bit like being in the home of James Bond, when you touch a button, in the zone of passage between the bed, the closet and the bath, and a large skylight opens, over the square wooden tub, to allow rain to enter in the summer. Wonders of digital technology are also found in the Japanese garden on the terrace connected to the master bedroom. Here the poetry of spurts of water amidst bonsai plants buffers the view of Portobello Road, while speakers do the rest. Especially when you can hear the breathing from the dynamic painting by Shirazeh hung in the kitchen: a composition of talking books, a tribute to peace and dialogue among religions.]]> 2009-04-03 18:07:06 Interni n°599 Bandol, south of France, reinforced concrete<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,451,intItemID,514,intLangID,2.html interior design by Marchi Architectes
photos by FG+SG Fotografia de Arquitectura text by Matteo Vercelloni
 architectonic project by Rudy Ricciotti
interior design by Marchi Architectes
photos by FG+SG Fotografia de Arquitectura text by Matteo Vercelloni Wide-ranging action to re-establish architecture, against the most fashionable environmentalism and globalization, “the mirror of cultural underdevelopment” Rudy Ricciotti is convinced that reinforced concrete, part of chain of territorial production, is a sign of true environmental awareness. He met with us at Bandol, in the south of France, to demonstrate that the cultural partnership between the architect and the engineer can product residential results that defy all stylistic and environmental rhetoric. We met Rudy Ricciotti – architect and engineer, born in 1952, Officier des Arts e des Lettres, Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, Grand prix national d’architecture for the year 2006 – in his studio at Bandol, to find out more about his position in the contemporary architectural debate. He is one of its protagonists, with projects scattered all over France, including the Département des arts de l’Islam at the Louvre Museum in Paris (with Mario Bellini), and in Italy, where he has won the competition for the design of the Nuovo Palazzo del Cinema at the Venice Lido (with 5+1AA). Both projects are now being built. His approach is both rigorous and radical, based on reflections of great timeliness in our era, with its focus on environmental sustainability. At first glance his publications seem very irreverent and provocative, but if we read them more carefully his observations also seem serious, based on clear reasoning. “An untouchable argument, environmental needs quickly deplete critical energies, with the paramilitary effectiveness of a new dictatorship of thought. The anaesthetizing character of a botanical wall irrigated drip by drip is the most cynical and intolerant form of the HQE (high environmental quality) doctrine, the future urban opium”. Ricciotti’s architecture is impatient, and the partnership of architecture and engineering takes it beyond ordinary construction, rejecting stylistic and environmental rhetoric, attacking the “vulgarity of globalization and the politically correct”. His reinforced concrete is one of values that go beyond the ‘mere’ dimension of construction to embrace a focus on the production cycle and the territory; “the in situ character of concrete, the territorialization of its chain of production, make it an example of citizenship, resolving problems of cleanliness through local production. […] So some people say that concrete is fascist and transparent glass is more democratic? I am deeply convinced that we need to work on concrete structures, because they are ecological. Concrete requires a short production chain, so it leads to economies of transport. There is no need to go pollute African mines. Concrete is homemade, it needs people, hands, carpenters, a cooperative spirit, a transversal logic”. Against the infantile versions of environmentalism, against architecture seen as the “aesthetic shadow of politics”, Rudy Ricciotti launches a warning from the south of France to watch out for architectural ‘seasons’, whether they are sugary, minimalist or late-post-modern, and ecological ‘fashions’, where the “Khmer Verde” (a definition coined by Philippe Tretiack) becomes the “rigid defender and nitpicking guardian of affluent quarters that only needed to be made into pedestrian zones to guarantee their urban isolation, a planters as a sign of their cultural distinction”. The translation of these principles into architecture is conducted by Ricciotti with great lucidity and conviction, without avoiding the “baroque”, where the term is a direct expression of the “rigor of romantic excess” in a contemporary key. After the ‘black pavilion’ of the Centre National de Choréographie in Aix en Provence (1999), a ‘nest’ of reinforced concrete that came a few years before the concept of the stadium of Beijing; after the rock concert hall at Vitrolles (1990-94), just to name a couple of works where reinforced concrete also becomes an expressive material, this house on the hills of Bandol (2005) sums up, in a ‘private’ setting, the guiding tenets of Ricciotti. First of all, the fact of being ‘southern’, of understanding the world of his origins, accepting the dialogue with the site and the different modes of narrative of an architectural project. The house is on a hillside, conforming to the topography, and creating a series of spaces in a sequence along an embankment wall in exposed concrete, arranged at different levels and connected by linear staircases. The path through the domestic spaces starts from above, entering the living area under a long glass roof that captures zenithal light; a view of the sky, a horizontal cut beside the one that frames the landscape offered by the continuous full-height glazing beside the long swimming pool, creates a ‘natural’ extension of internal space. The decks on the flat roofs of the lateral spaces below also offer outdoor living spaces, while the two walls accessorized with the parts of the kitchen separate a corner guestroom with its own bath from the dining area. The playroom is located below the level of the living area, and opens with large windows to the pool, taken as an unusual ‘liquid facade’, a sort of aquarium from which to observe the trees of the surroundings, in a view filtered by the water. Here the intervention on the ‘internal skin’ by the young Parisian studio Marchi Architects attempts, with a wall system of variable wooden planks that host furnishings, closets and functions, to re-create the idea of an inhabitable rock, the theme of the entire architectural composition. Another lower level contains the nighttime zone, with a large master bedroom and a zone that can be divided for the children, facing a wooden terrace beside the pool and a roof garden, which like that of the living area is perfectly integrated with the surrounding nature.]]> 2009-04-03 17:35:09 Interni n°599 Forte dei Marmi, Italian style<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,451,intItemID,512,intLangID,2.html photo by Pietro Savorelli text by Alessandro Rocca design by Studio Dordoni Architetti (Alessandro Acerbi, Rodolfo Dordoni, Luca Zaniboni) with Chiara Costanzelli, Matteo Moretti
photo by Pietro Savorelli text by Alessandro Rocca  A villa in Versilia that displays typically Italian balance between luxury and sobriety, elegance and a sense of measure, rich materials and attention to detail, in the rigor of an essential atmosphere. The perfect enclosure opens to the landscape, crossed by the fluid space that includes the living area, the garden and the swimming pool in a single environment. Architecture and design in close collaboration: the modernist matrix is the setting for the images and seduction of contemporary comfort. A protagonist of the society of spectacle, international architecture simplifies things, looking for striking gestures that give sense and image to entire buildings. It chooses an idea – the so-called concept – that becomes the theme, the seductive ploy: a single material, an unusual form, a structural paradox, the elimination of something customary. The strategy of the pure sign once found only in skyscrapers and monuments functions on all scales today, and for all pocketbooks: for the most important museums and theaters in America and Europe, for luxury villas, for Japanese minimal houses, for cabins in the woods of North America. Italy, and above all Milan, the capital of design and fashion, are exceptions. Our designers reject the neo-avant brutality of the starchitects and continue to practice architectural design that responds to needs, to simple but fundamental aspirations like beauty, luxury and comfort. There is a specific design culture of Milanese modernism that acknowledges the balance between elegance and technical progress, between ostentation and sobriety, international timeliness and respect for one’s own genetic code. The best example of this line of reasoning was Ignazio Gardella, who combined rationalist rigor with the hedonism of refined materials, austerity with joie de vivre, lightness and sturdiness. The villa at Forte dei Marmi designed by the studio Dordoni Architetti of Milan (Rodolfo Dordoni, Luca Zaniboni and Alessandro Acerbi) looks to the lesson of Gardella for the ideal of evident but always measured elegance, skillful mixing of geometric rigor, classical memories and ironic, spectacular décor. Inspired by the Roman villas of Versilia, the path of access is formed by slabs of Travertine, simply resting on the ground. The ground floor, clad in the same stone, is lightened by the large opening of the living area, facing the water, with three white metal frames, classic icons of Milanese modernism, organizing the undivided space of the kitchen, living room and dining area. Refined materials and details, like the vanishing guides of the casements, enhance all the spaces: the staircase is a zone of great emotional impact, while the studio is covered in teak. Every bath is faced with a different type of marble. The basement contains a fitness area, a spa and a wine cellar, a place for meditation covered in teak.]]> 2009-04-03 17:03:59 Interni n°599 Editorial<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,451,intItemID,509,intLangID,2.html  Editorial by Gilda Bojardi “To make design you have to take risks, break the rules, experience the anguish of unfamiliar things” These are the words of Riccardo Blumer, the protagonist of our cover, to introduce the April issue for 2009, an April that will undoubtedly be different from all previous Aprils. The main Milanese event of encounter and debate on design is right around the corner, but it is threatened by the dark clouds of a crisis that looks precisely to design culture for some ideas regarding a possible way out. This year, as never before, architects, designers and companies will be trying to add ‘content’ to their participation in this big event. The same is true of the designers who have created the products shown, once again providing proof of linguistic pluralism, a wide range of forms and meanings in research that aims, in all cases, at making a better tomorrow. Starting with Rudy Ricciotti, Dordoni Architetti, Claudio La Viola, Quim Larrea, then moving on to Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Hella Jongerius, Jaime Hayon, Francisco Gomez Paz and Paolo Rizzatto, what emerges is the need to take design and architecture back toward a direct, empathetic relationship with reality, matter, the sciences, the problematic issues of everyday existence. Like them – and before them, in the case of Angelo Mangiarotti, the great master of modernity whose always timely lessons are worth remembering today – there are many other designers in recent years who have abandoned pure formal gestures and rediscovered the importance of physical experience of things, in order to understand them and update them. It is no coincidence that the Triennale Design Museum has opened its second show with the theme of “Serie Fuori Serie”, the relationship between mass production and limited editions or one-offs, bringing out a methodological factor that has contributed to the success of Italian design and still links, in a dynamic, fertile relationship, industrial production to free experimentation. Starting with this principle, the event Interni Design Energies focuses on the theme of energy, seen in terms of intelligent and sustainable use of resources, with particular focus on the home, the city and the landscape; but also energy as a creative process, a project attitude that no longer belongs to just one category of professionals, but has become a shared way of thinking. This, in fact, is the condition required to change our vantage point on things, attributing value not to what they seem, but to what they should be.

Gilda Bojardi]]> 2009-04-03 16:20:07 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,440,intItemID,449,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:38:10 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,440,intItemID,448,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:42:51 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,440,intItemID,447,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:38:36 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,440,intItemID,445,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:37:42 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,52,intIssueID,440,intItemID,443,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:44:01 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,440,intItemID,442,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:37:19 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,440,intItemID,441,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-03-13 15:40:22 Interni n°599 Mass Moca: the biggest museum in the USA http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,86,intIssueID,428,intItemID,439,intLangID,2.html Olivia Cremascoli
photos Sergio Anelli by Olivia Cremascoli
photos Sergio Anelli In North Adams, in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, a charming area of industrial archaeology hosts the largest contemporary art museum in the United States, the Mass Moca, whose presence has transformed the town. Hospitality infrastructures for artists and visitors are being built in the vicinity, for a facility with an unprecedented cultural policy, including features like exhibitions that last 25 years.The relatively unknown town of North Adams (Massachusetts, New England), always a sober and rather industrious place, would still be a quiet haven, were it not for the fact that Thomas Krens, now director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, when he was director of the Williams College Museum of Art, also in the Berkshires, got a utopian idea about an abandoned 19th-century factory in North Adams, the former Arnold Print Works (1860–1942), later the home of Sprague Electric (1942–1985), a complex of industrial archaeology composed of 26 buildings with an enormous area (13 acres, one third of the industrial zone of the city). Thomas Krens headed for New York, but his initial project was picked up by others, leading to the opening – in 1999 – of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMoca), about to celebrate its 10th birthday. Like all major American contemporary culture institutions, this is a center and experimental laboratory not only for the visual arts but also for the performing arts (theater, cinema, music, dance), and one of its goals is “the creation and presentation of innovative works of visual and performing art, and works that break down the conventional separations between artistic disciplines”. Luckily the project has been a success, and North Adams has become a destination for cultural tourism, a magnet for art addicts (after moving here from Washington D.C., Eric Rudd, a well-known artist with a talent for real estate speculation, purchased two very big abandoned industrial buildings, the Eclipse Mill and the historic Beaver Mill, and restructured them to make ateliers and lofts to be sold or rented to the growing local art community), because the initial cost of the museum project – which also included a feasibility study by the likes of Frank O. Gehry, Robert Venturi, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and an environmental engineering study – was 31.4 million dollars, including subsidies from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the contributions of private investors. In 2000 Mass Moca published a book, From Mill to Museum, on its history. With all that space – part of it still remains to be utilized – the museum has all kinds of facilities: 19 galleries, for a total of 150,000 sq. feet of exhibition space, including one that is “as long as a football field”, as well as a theater lab measuring 3500 sq. feet, an open-air cinema with a megascreen, and two outdoor courtyards for performances. These are joined by a construction workshop, shops, a bar and restaurants, forming a true museum citadel. Right in front of Mass Moca, former lodgings for mill workers have been renovated to make the Porches Inn, which is now the coolest hotel in North Adams, and participates in museum activities (Travel Light by Mike Glier, a ceramic work, is visible from the street on the three facades of the gardener’s house at the Porches).
The experimental drive of Mass Moca has also revolutionized the temporal side of exhibitions: in November, at Building 7 (27,000 sq. feet on three levels), the museum opened the show “Sol LeWitt: a walldrawing retrospective”, 105 wall paintings by the great, recently deceased artist. The show will last for 25 years. A sort of last will and testament of Sol LeWitt (Hartford, 1928 - New York City, 2007), who in collaboration with the architects Bruner/Cott of Cambridge worked on the show from 2005 until his death, renovating the building in a project that cost about three million dollars, requiring six months of work and an amazing number of assistants and university students, not to mention the prodigious amounts of graphite, colored chalk, sheets of paper, liters of acrylic paint. First Bruner/Cott had to integrate Building 7 with the heart of the museum, connecting it with colorful raised walkways (visibly industrial tunnels that have become distinctive signs in the landscape), staircases and elevators. Then, around the three exhibition levels, they created a perimeter path of natural light, in contrast with the artificially lit zones with long fluorescent tubes. Based on an idea of the Yale University Gallery, to which LeWitt donated the archive of his wall drawings and most of the realized works, this incredible retrospective that will last 25 years includes works from public and private collections from all over the world. There was no space big enough in New Haven (Connecticut), the location of Yale, so Jack Reynolds, director of the Yale University Gallery, turned to Joseph C. Thompson, director of Mass Moca, who in collaboration with the nearby Williams College Museum of Art immediately came to the rescue, organizing these unprecedented show. In 2010 Yale University Press will publish “Sol LeWitt walldrawings: a catalogue raisonné”. One final curiosity: from Boston, the road that leads to the Mass Moca is the Mohawk Trail, an ancient Indian path “over the river and through the woods”. For info: www.massmoca.org; www.massvacation.it]]> 2009-02-20 17:29:55 Interni n°599 Denis Santachiara http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,428,intItemID,438,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi by Cristina Morozzi Expanding design: this is the goal of Denis Santachiara. To give it sound, to make it mobile and mutant. In short, to humanize it, to make the artificial resemble the natural. Because it is necessary to be an inventor, not just a designer: to give things life and equip them with ‘gags’ that make them more friendly.“I love other people’s work”, Denis Santachiara confesses. “If La Rinascente in Milan does its windows on Italian design, I want to be the window dresser”. In his career he has done many sets and concepts for exhibitions: he has always been very good at staging the projects of others. And he always creates a sense of surprise, an alteration that refers to the “ecstatic magic made possible by the innovations of artificial reality”. One of his latest ‘surprises’ is Goal, the traveling exhibition on contemporary Italian design interpreted as a football match, promoted by Federlegno-Assarredo. After the stop in Mumbai in November 2008, the show went to Istanbul. Goal has a soundtrack: the radio play-by-play of a match played by Italian designers, “with Leonardo as the captain, who starts the play, then Nizzoli blocks a shot, after which Munari passes to Colombo, and so on...”. Football always works as a parallel. I asked Santachiara what position he’d like to play: “sweeper”, he said, “the guy who stays in the back to help the defense, but is also free to range forward and score. Against Germany we’re still the winner, today. But we can also win against Holland. If only due to a question of numbers. There are so many designers in Milan, we can have at least three complete sides”. The original concept of Goal, an exhibition all in pink, like the Gazzetta dello Sport, reflects Santachiara’s aim of expanding design, identifying other spheres that need aesthetic attention. “I’m interested in giving things sound: not just mutants, but talking mutants. Try to imagine a cute object that caresses you and has the voice of Brad Pitt! Objects should have a language that matches their form”. So it is no coincidence that he is the only partner of Storyville, a project for sound in exhibitions and urban itineraries developed by Tiziana Cipelletti, a long-time friend, for which in Fiabilandia (Rimini) he has designed the movie theater Ricciocinema. In short, Denis is trying to design things, without continuing to create chairs and tables. He wants to do a kind of design that gives form to ideas. The technology isn’t displayed, it is skillfully concealed, so that things can interact, naturally, with users, talking, transforming themselves, offering new kinds of performance. His studio, in the canal zone of Milan, is a laboratory where he works on giving consistency to the immaterial, giving the artificial the kind of amazement found in the natural world. Where spongy lamps are hatched, as mutable as clouds (Nuvola, Studio Italia Design, 2006), lamps with light bulbs (Aurea, FontanaArte, 2005) or others that project sheep on the wall (Notturno Italiano, Domodinamica, 1985); but there are also doormats that sing (Cicalino, Domodinamica, 1988) and other wonders. “What counts is not designing the character, but his gags,” Denis continues. “And the new technologies offer this possibility. There is saturation in the world of design. So we need to go further and become inventors: not designing just the body, but the very idea of the product”. His latest project in progress is Personal Factoring, a sort of industrial crafts. It is based on rapid manufacturing, a process that generates threedimensional objects, usually in plastic, using machines previously employed only for the production of prototypes. The designer simply sells the math, which can be reworked and adapted for the needs of the client: to each his own product, made to measure. This eliminates one passage. Through machinery, the designer also becomes the model maker.
To better understand this desire to always go further, we need to look back on his unconventional career, marked by projects and events that have altered the classic way of doing design. Santachiara is self-taught, and has the gift of draftsmanship. His parents, simple people, let him “play at being a mechanic”. At the age of 16 he started to work at the De Tomaso company, where he sketched ideas for bodywork. In 1970 he left it all behind and set off on a journey, hitching rides: from Norway to Portugal, to see things and learn. He was amazed by modern art, and decided he had to do something in a related field. To live, he drew a bit of everything. Because he was good at it, including making copies. He reached design by way of art, after having shown at the Venice Biennale. In 1983 Franco Raggi asked him to imagine a house for an exhibition at the Milan Triennale, “La casa onirica”. Santachiara-think was expressed in “La Neomerce – the design of invention and the ecstasy of the artificial, Triennale 1985, an exhibition commissioned by Progetto cultura Montedison, where Denis was inventor, curator and set designer. To present 27 examples of neo-merchandise he called in chefs, designers, artists, engineers, fashion designers, entrepreneurs, famous and unknown figures alike, and asked them to invent “artifice for entertainment, working on surprise, on luminescent effects, flexibility of use, the magic of sensors, animation...”. His projects include: in 1992, the Museum of Magic commissioned by Jack Lang, then the French cultural minister, in Blois, France, the home of Robert Odin, mentor of Houdini.
And in 2000 at the Triennale, in the event Essere- Benessere (produced by Interni with exhibit design by Atelier Mendini), he did a piece on paranormal phenomena in collaboration with Cicap, the Italian Committee for checking of accounts of paranormal phenomena, formed in 1988 through the initiative of Piero Angela, and including famous scientists as members, like Margherita Hack, Rita Levi Montalcini, Giuliano Toraldo Di Francia. Instead of the kind of emotional design that investigates form and plays with colors, Santachiara opts for a design of “technological amazement” that aims less at the senses and more at the intellect. The special effects in his room all had an explanation: the table flew because it seemed like wood but was actually styrofoam; the mirror dissolved images because it was a liquid crystal glass that became opaque at the flick of a switch; the fluorescent tubes turned on thanks to the effects of electromagnetism. And so on. The moral of the story: magic is not paranormal, it’s technological. For the Postdesign Gallery in Milan, in 2004, he created a neon installation that could be turned on from a distance. The show was dedicated to Nikola Tesla, a visionary scientist and designer born in Croatia in 1856, and the inventor, among other things, of alternating current. Denis was fascinated by the amazement that Tesla, with childish candor, displayed regarding the results he had produced. An amazement that “was not fascination, but based on everyday experience, transforming something ordinary into something extraordinary”. In his life, too, Santachiara transforms ordinary things into extraordinary ones: his motorcycle trips, covering 6180 km, are the phases, in the north of France and in England, of an ideal exhibition on the birth of the modern through the things and homes of its protagonists, who lived from the start of the 1800s to the end of the 1960s: from Walter Scott to Mackintosh, via Balzac, Rodin, Lewis Carroll, Darwin... And his Christmas dinner in 2008 was also extraordinary: it included Tiziana Cippelletti and the photographer Miro Zagnoli, with whom he shares his studio, together with two special guests, an opera singer and a ballerina from the Giuseppe Verdi home for retired artists in Milan.]]> 2009-02-20 16:50:10 Interni n°599 Red Range Game http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,428,intItemID,437,intLangID,2.html Nadia Lionello
image processing Simone Barberis by Nadia Lionello
image processing Simone Barberis Brash, intense, decisive, highly expressive, the color red in all its versions is a chromatic choice that veers away from neutral tones, adding magic to imagery that wavers between play and reality.]]> 2009-02-20 18:06:28 Interni n°599 Patterns and surfaces http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,428,intItemID,436,intLangID,2.html Nadia Lionello
photos of fabrics Simone Barberis
photos of ceramics Giacomo Giannini by Nadia Lionello
photos of fabrics Simone Barberis
photos of ceramics Giacomo Giannini Finishes for architecture and interior design, combined in allegorical geometric forms. An unusual affinity between new ceramics and trendy fabrics suggested by designs, colors and decorations, in a free context of reciprocal inspiration.]]> 2009-02-20 16:13:08 Interni n°599 Islamic Art Museum Doha http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,428,intItemID,435,intLangID,2.html Ieoh Ming Pei
interior and exhibit design Jean Michel Wilmotte
photos Luc Castel, Keiichi Tahara text Michela Moro architectural design Ieoh Ming Pei
interior and exhibit design Jean Michel Wilmotte
photos Luc Castel, Keiichi Tahara text Michela Moro In Doha, Qatar, the world’s foremost Islamic art museum: a ‘treasure chest’ of content (800 precious items from three continents for a total of 13 centuries of history) and design. The architecture is by Pritzker Prize winner Ieoh Ming Pei, while Jean Michel Wilmotte has designed the interiors.A long avenue with palm trees and a pier, for arrival from the sea: this is how you reach the new Museum of Islamic Art of Doha, Qatar. It is an artificial island, 26 hectares, profiled against the skyline of the city, specially constructed to guarantee uniqueness, in keeping with the vision of Pritzker laureate I.M. Pei for a museum that is the symbol of an emerging nation, Qatar, whose growth is oriented toward education and culture. The driving force behind the project is the young president of the museum, la Sheikha Al Mayassa, daughter of the Emir who rules Qatar. Cultural commitment and decorum are the directions urged by the Sheikha, as was very clear during the opening days of the museum complex, which has already become an emblem of the country. According to Pei, now in his nineties, this will be his last public project. The starting point for the design, which attempts to sum up the key features of Islamic architecture, was the ‘sabil’, the fountain in the mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun in Cairo, which in Pei’s words “offers a cubist expression of geometric progression”. The look of the building varies greatly with changes of the light, and the desert sun plays a fundamental role, transforming the architecture into a kaleidoscope of lights and shadows. The 35,500 square meter complex is built with concrete from Qatar, American Jet Mist granite, German steel, all clad in Magny and Chamesson cream-colored limestone from France. The main volume has five levels to contain the masterpieces of the Museum of Islamic Art, and is connected through the central courtyard, which includes a fountain, to the two levels of the Education Wing. The external volumes taper and are set back toward the big faceted cupola, about 50 meters high, where an oculus captures the light to convey it inward. Inside, the form of the cupola changes with the expansion of the structure, so the perimeter becomes an octagon, then a square, which in turn is transformed into four triangular columns. The lobby has the volume of the five levels of the building, with a wall entirely set aside for a single, very big window, 45 meters high, for a view of the city of Doha, beyond the waters of the Persian Gulf. A circular chandelier with a diameter of 12 meters, in perforated metal, reflects in the inlaid marble of the ground floor, from which a double staircase rises, at the center, leading to the two floors utilized for the exhibition zones. While the exterior is imposing, the interior is spacious and sumptuous. The design of the galleries has been done by the French studio Wilmotte & Associés. Jean-Michel Wilmotte, architect and interior designer, works in a wide range of areas, from industrial design to city planning, focusing on the concept of interior architecture for cities. He is well-known thanks to his work with I.M. Pei on the Grand Louvre, but his museum projects also include the renovation of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, the design of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Arts in Beijing, and the restoration of the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, due to re-open this year. The sober richness of the interiors designed by Wilmotte softens the severe architectural impact and enhances the masterpieces on display. The museum contains the world’s most important collection of Islamic Art: about 800 pieces, demonstrating the artistic connections among different countries and cultures, from Egypt to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia, to the Gulf States, across thirteen centuries of history. For the two levels set aside for the permanent collection, Wilmotte has developed a circular exhibition itinerary, for fluid circulation of visitors and easy discovery of the various sections of the museum, divided into historical periods and groupings like Calligraphy, Figure, Sciences. With many different origins, the masterpieces are also very heterogeneous in terms of typology and size. They range from ceramics to carpets, glass to sextants, armor to jewelry. Wilmotte has chosen elegant, rigorous materials: dark gray porphyry, worked in China, and Louro Faya, a Brazilian wood, brushed and treated to obtain a metallic finish, the interior counterpart of a light, luminous exterior. The display cases containing the priceless treasures are in glass, often resting on dark iron tables with a contemporary look that somehow evokes distant eras. The lighting is theatrical without being too dramatic; the pieces stand out one by one, but at the same time the cumulative effect is not one of darkness with patches of spotlighting. A 280-meter bridge connects the mainland to the island of the museum complex. The museum also has an auditorium with 197 seats, a bookshop and café in the lobby, a 5-star restaurant with a view of the sea, separate prayer zones for men and women, and a large garden. The pair of beacons at a height of 30 meters on the sides of the pier is another imposing landmark of the museum, a cultural beacon in its own right. (For more information www.mia.org.qa)]]> 2009-02-24 16:40:59 Interni n°599 Marbach (Germany), Dupli Haus http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,428,intItemID,434,intLangID,2.html Jürgen Mayer H. Architects
photos David Franck
text Matteo Vercelloni project Jürgen Mayer H. Architects
photos David Franck
text Matteo Vercelloni Near Marbach, Germany, a villa designed in an experimental way by Jürgen Mayer, the promising young German architect. A house conceived as a geological form emerging from and rooted in the ground. A project that is part of a personal path of research, where architecture “should simultaneously have explosive impact and harmonious tension”. At the age of 42, Jürgen Mayer is the youngest starchitect of the moment, honored with a first international retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (6 February - 7 July 2009). Since his first work, the town hall of Ostfildern, near Stuttgart, built in 2001 when he was 35 years old, Mayer has been engaged in research balanced between architecture and sculptural form, where “transparency and provocation” combine with practices of constructive experimentation and the use of new materials like thermochromatic surfaces and polyurethane facade coverings. His architecture has been defined as “furious”; every work, like the recent dining hall for the University of Karlsruhe, must “capture the gaze of passers-by, making them seek new perspectives and interpretations”. This exuberance is translated into incessant experimentation on all scales, from a central square like the Plaza de la Encarnacion in Seville (where gigantic ‘mushrooms’ become urban sculptures, but also elements capable of creating shade for a comfortable micro-climate), to a villa, like the one illustrated here, set down in the suburban greenery of Marbach. This work of architecture stands on a site previously occupied by another construction. The new solution conforms to its footprint, taking it as a sort of memory, a piece of ‘familiar archaeology’. But as the volume develops from that footprint into three-dimensional form, the house takes on a ‘fluid’ look of sculptural fusion of its parts, that combine, rotating with respect to each other, in a sculptural, highly self-referential form. At the same time, the design seeks a relationship, a way of being ‘rooted’ in the landscape. This happens not only through adaptation to the topography of the hillside terrain, not only through the creation of large openings to frame the greenery, offering views in the interiors, but above all in the continuation, horizontally, of the white, seamless facade. The shiny stucco skin thus extends into the lawn, like paint spilled from a can, underscoring the sculptural aspect of an overall ‘porous monolith’, while triggering a conceptual fusion with the site, becoming an integral part of it and forming a ring around the construction, whose concentric propagations can be seen as other natural enclosures: the lawn and the woods. Fusion and counterpoint, in terms of landscape, transparency and sculptural composition, are also extended to the interior layout. The rooms are on three levels; the ground floor, closed at the back by the recessed solid facade, organizes a large indoor pool projected into the woods by continuous glazing, along with guestrooms, around the central staircase. The first floor is like a ‘public zone’ where the entrance encounters an efficient two-storey space, lit from above by a large skylight. This ‘domestic core’ leads to the various spaces of the living area (dining room and kitchen, living room and ‘studio-belvedere’), with different shifts in the floor level. Finally, the upper floor contains the master bedroom zone, with three large bedrooms and a study. The glossy white of the facade skin is repeated in all the interiors, emphasizing the idea of a hollowed monolith, a sort of sculpture for living shaken by unbridled compositional fury.]]> 2009-02-24 17:10:21 Interni n°599 Berlin, Bunker gallery http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,428,intItemID,433,intLangID,2.html Realarchitektur
in collaboration with Christian Boros
photos Noshe text Matteo Vercelloni project Realarchitektur
in collaboration with Christian Boros
photos Noshe text Matteo Vercelloni In Berlin, near the Friedrichstrasse station, a big bunker from World War II, made to shelter travelers in transit in case of allied air raids, has been converted into an art gallery, with a new domestic addition built on the roof. Monumental, symmetrical, compact, the quadrangular monolith designed by the architect Karl Bonatz in 1942 to protect citizens from bombing has remained a massive presence in the cityscape of the German capital. A severe structure, five storeys high, sculpted by small openings in the heavy reinforced concrete walls (almost two meters thick) topped by a ‘bomb-proof ’ slab in the same material, three meters high, as thick as an entire floor of an apartment building. The functional character is mitigated by the movement of the facades, with recessed corners to form a figure similar to that of a fortress, with a powerful cornice at the top, a decorative element that is complementary to the porticoes of the entrances, placed centrally on each side. Certainly it would have been difficult to demolish this bulky object. But apart from the objective material-structural characteristics, the conservation of this urban item is part of the widespread revival of recycling and reutilization of existing urban structures, as a way of revitalizing parts of the city. In this perspective, the operation conducted by the art dealer Christian Boros, and entrusted in terms of design to the Berlinbased studio Realarchitektur, may seem like a single, complete conversion, but actually also makes a contribution to the definition of a methodology of ‘reconstruction of the city’ that can be applied case by case, underlining the need to study history and its traces in order to reinvent spaces for contemporary needs. In this case, the multi-level bunker has been transformed into an art gallery; cuts in the internal slabs have generated new routes and layout, with about 80 interconnected rooms accessed from four perimeter stairwells. These new exhibition spaces, like neutral, functional white cubes, contrast with other parts of the building that have been left in exposed concrete, bearing the signs of wear and time, graffiti and the ‘scars’ of war, holes made by bullets and shrapnel. Together with the new architecture of the internal volumes, art plays a leading role now in the continuing, renewed interaction with spaces that were once used for short, frightening periods of waiting. The materic character of the original spaces is reflected in the new addition placed on the roof of the building. Set back from the facade to avoid substantially altering the figure of the original architectural composition, the addition is the home of Christian Boros, connected to the spaces of the gallery and surrounded on all sides by continuous, full-height glazing, forming a ring around the entire domestic space. The exposed concrete of walls and ceilings – perforated by large skylights – is also found in the fireplace, open on four sides, conceived as an essential, self-contained geometric figure. The rugged concrete, marked by the imprint of the formwork, is joined by wooden floors that add a ‘domestic tone’ to the house, without altering the overall rigorous, clean design.]]> 2009-02-24 17:08:28 Interni n°599 Sondrio, a house of light and landscape http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,428,intItemID,432,intLangID,2.html Antonio Citterio & Partners/Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel landscape
design Agata Sophie Ambroise
photos Leo Torri text Antonella Boisi project Antonio Citterio & Partners/Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel landscape
design Agata Sophie Ambroise
photos Leo Torri text Antonella Boisi Near Sondrio, a successful, complex project for a sober, rigorous private home, open to light and landscape, that blends into the context in an innovative way, without betraying its original spirit. The house is near Sondrio, in town named Colda, known to habitués of the zone because it is sheltered from the wind, facing south, making it an excellent place for vineyards. Until yesterday this was a simple peasant village, and the houses were built for the precise needs of the vine growers’ lives. Today the place has changed, though it has maintained some of its original spirit, and the sloping land of this property, between an access drive and a secondary road to the north, is still partially surrounded by vineyards. The topography formed the starting point for the residential design by the studio Antonio Citterio & Partners. Its constraints have been interpreted as opportunities for creative architectural expression. “The section of the house is constructed by the profile of the terrain,” the architects explain, “connecting the two roads. The volume that is effectively visible above ground, containing only the living room and the kitchen, is set between two drymasonry walls to the north and bordered, to the south, by a facade of wood and glass that opens the house to the garden. The non-orthogonal orientation of the volume ‘turned’ toward the best view of the valley, and the twisting of the roof level, to minimize the height of the building with respect to the slope of the terrain, have ‘deformed’ the building, fitting it into the landscape, also thanks to the familiar facing materials. The design of the roof can also be seen from inside, where the wooden beams follow the irregular slopes of the eaves”. The large living area, organized in different relaxation areas, is the heart of the house, a vast open space characterized by its height, following the dynamic lines of the roof. The space is luminous, thanks to large sliding glass doors with lamellar oak frames offering a great view of the landscape and encouraging indoor-outdoor relations. The same compositional choices impact the volume below, for the bedrooms and a beautiful indoor pool. Here the spaces are organized around a few simple architectural elements, in a luminous, flexible arrangement full of visual connections. Concrete for the main framework, blocks of local stone for the facade, brick for the walls covered in painted plaster, wood and stone for the floors, painted plaster for the ceilings: all materials selected as a tribute to the genius loci, suited to the rigorous forms, in search of a new balance with the archetypes of local residential building. In the more private spaces, as in the living area, the perimeter walls become an enclosure and, at the same time, a presence from which to separate things, in a design that generates a fluid dimension, without pre-set paths or rigidly defined spaces, suggesting a sort of return to nature, to the lights and shadows of the surrounding setting. The furnishings are spare and essential, selected from the finest contemporary design, and placed in interiors warmed by the dynamic shadings of special lighting design. In short, every aspect has been organized in a consistent whole. The only cold, contrasting element, perhaps, is the lack of a fireplace. But probably too much compliance with the original local spirit would have seemed like folklore.]]> 2009-02-24 16:42:28 Interni n°599 Engadina, A house inside a house http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,428,intItemID,431,intLangID,2.html Michele De Lucchi collaborators Angelo Micheli, Laura Parolin, Silvia Suardi, Sergio Virdis
photos Santi Caleca text Michele De Lucchi project Michele De Lucchi collaborators Angelo Micheli, Laura Parolin, Silvia Suardi, Sergio Virdis
photos Santi Caleca text Michele De Lucchi The result of the rigorous and respectful transformation of an old hayloft with good exposure, this house in Engadina is a tribute to wood and its soul, material and form of new habitat possibilities, above all when utilized by a designer who seems fated to fall in love with this material. Like many Alpine valleys, oh-so-prestigious Engadina has plenty of stalls and barns, many of which are still in use, though many have also been abandoned, either because they are now in the middle of settlements, or because new activities have moved in. For many years these stalls represented the main activities of families, and the main source of income for entire family groups: they were built very well, in excellent locations, often in better spots than the ones chosen for homes. Haylofts and barns often have excellent exposure, for sunlight, and great views. The one in question is right in the middle of an old town, facing the valley. It gets sunlight all day and is so well positioned that it heats itself, naturally. As tradition demanded, it is built with four stone corner walls and wooden filler, even on the roof, also in wood, made with big beams and the best planks. Wood does not decay in the mountains, it keeps its beauty for a long time, especially this Swiss pine (cembro, in the Western Alps, or cirmolo, to the East), which takes on a silvery color and the more it ages the more it glows. In the mountains there are no insects or pests to eat the wood, so it can be left with a natural finish, without paint or varnish to conceal its precious beauty. To avoid altering the original structure and ruining the marvels of time, the house has been completely restructured inside, with a new, independent structure. The new pillars and beams are always slightly detached from the original walls, permitting the creation of a high central void and an equally high glazing on the front. The glass is an inlay of windows and doors, and combines a mosaic of openings that bring light to the big space that contains, in a single area, the entrance, kitchen, living and dining areas. The central stairs functionally separate the zones, and connect the basement level, with the garage, to the two levels above, for the bedrooms: here too the windows have been approached freely, so they are all different: some are glass niches, to obtain light without excessive enlargement of the opening. Some small windows face the internal void and bring visual connections to the whole house. Of course everything is in wood, because there is no other material with the same flexibility and beauty, ready to disguise any error: wood is always beautiful and clean, warm inside and outside, cool in the summer, practical and elegant, free of defects even when it is full of knots and wrinkles. Every impact becomes a refined detail, every stain a brushstroke, every cut a heroic scar.]]> 2009-04-01 16:47:50 Interni n°599 Engadina, A house inside a house http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,10,intIssueID,428,intItemID,431,intLangID,2.html Michele De Lucchi collaborators Angelo Micheli, Laura Parolin, Silvia Suardi, Sergio Virdis
photos Santi Caleca text Michele De Lucchi project Michele De Lucchi collaborators Angelo Micheli, Laura Parolin, Silvia Suardi, Sergio Virdis
photos Santi Caleca text Michele De Lucchi The result of the rigorous and respectful transformation of an old hayloft with good exposure, this house in Engadina is a tribute to wood and its soul, material and form of new habitat possibilities, above all when utilized by a designer who seems fated to fall in love with this material. Like many Alpine valleys, oh-so-prestigious Engadina has plenty of stalls and barns, many of which are still in use, though many have also been abandoned, either because they are now in the middle of settlements, or because new activities have moved in. For many years these stalls represented the main activities of families, and the main source of income for entire family groups: they were built very well, in excellent locations, often in better spots than the ones chosen for homes. Haylofts and barns often have excellent exposure, for sunlight, and great views. The one in question is right in the middle of an old town, facing the valley. It gets sunlight all day and is so well positioned that it heats itself, naturally. As tradition demanded, it is built with four stone corner walls and wooden filler, even on the roof, also in wood, made with big beams and the best planks. Wood does not decay in the mountains, it keeps its beauty for a long time, especially this Swiss pine (cembro, in the Western Alps, or cirmolo, to the East), which takes on a silvery color and the more it ages the more it glows. In the mountains there are no insects or pests to eat the wood, so it can be left with a natural finish, without paint or varnish to conceal its precious beauty. To avoid altering the original structure and ruining the marvels of time, the house has been completely restructured inside, with a new, independent structure. The new pillars and beams are always slightly detached from the original walls, permitting the creation of a high central void and an equally high glazing on the front. The glass is an inlay of windows and doors, and combines a mosaic of openings that bring light to the big space that contains, in a single area, the entrance, kitchen, living and dining areas. The central stairs functionally separate the zones, and connect the basement level, with the garage, to the two levels above, for the bedrooms: here too the windows have been approached freely, so they are all different: some are glass niches, to obtain light without excessive enlargement of the opening. Some small windows face the internal void and bring visual connections to the whole house. Of course everything is in wood, because there is no other material with the same flexibility and beauty, ready to disguise any error: wood is always beautiful and clean, warm inside and outside, cool in the summer, practical and elegant, free of defects even when it is full of knots and wrinkles. Every impact becomes a refined detail, every stain a brushstroke, every cut a heroic scar.]]> 2009-04-01 16:47:50 Interni n°599 Editorial http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,428,intItemID,430,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi “expand design...humanize it, to make the artificial get closer and closer to the natural” If March is a prelude to spring, the big design events in Milan and the pleasures of outdoor living, what better way to start this issue than with the poetic images of an all-wood chalet in Engadina, covered with a blanket of snow? Then we open the big windows of light of an ‘all- Italian home’ rigorously integrated with an authentic landscape of vineyards. The variegated theme of recycling brings us three proposals of different types: a bunker in Berlin, from 1942, transformed into an incredible art gallery with a domestic appendix on the roof, and two houses that reinterpret the historical current of organic expressionism, in a context of tentacular, liquid spaces, in constant pursuit of light. In an extensive reportage constructed in fragments, we also offer glimpses inside eight new hotels and restaurants in the world, by eight well-known designers. In the composite overview that emerges, one thing is certain: linguistic pluralism and the freedom of contemporary scenarios also extend to the design of objects and even the smallest accessories created for guests. This is yet another demonstration of the fact that there are no longer any borderlines between architecture and design. So it is no coincidence that after having shared the dream of the Islamic Art Museum at Doha, Qatar – the first museum of its kind in the world, containing works of inestimable value, with architectural design by Pritzker winner Ieoh Ming Pei and the French architect Jean Michel Wilmotte – our investigation continues with coverage of the first furnishings project created by the Dutch UNstudio. Among the various contributions, perhaps the most atypical, stimulating lesson is provided by Denis Santachiara, featured on the cover: with his works, he clearly explains that his objective is to “expand design, to humanize it, to make the artificial get closer and closer to the natural”. Considering the difficult, critical times, for all sectors, words of encouragement are required. So it’s time to salute innovation and new ideas, carefully selected in terms of quality and quantity. New ideas are always welcome here.
Gilda Bojardi]]> 2009-02-20 17:44:23 Interni n°599 <br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,428,intItemID,429,intLangID,2.html  
 

NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNER
Long live resilience!

IN PRODUCTION
Driade, Cascades of water and ligh
Design on edge, Swinging Comfort

COMMUNICATION
Armani/Dada, Signature partnership

IN FAIRS
Index Tradefairs in Mumbai
ISH in Colonia
Linking People in Verona
360 Interiorhome in Madrid

SHOWROOM
Ligne Roset a Jakarta e Beirut
Rimadesio a Vienna e Catania
Spazio Misael a Milano

ANNIVERSARIES
190 years of Thonet Frankenberg

PRIZES AND COMPETITIONS
Oderzo Award 2008
Samsung Young Design Award
IF product design award
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year


IN EXHIBITION

CITY PROJECT

SUSTAINABILITY

LANDSCAPE

IN BOOKSTORE

INFO & TECH

CONTRACT & OFFICE

CINEMA

TRANSLATIONS






 EDITORIAL

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE
DESIGNING SPRINGTIME
edited by Antonella Boisi

Engadina, A house inside a house
design by Michele De Lucchi
photos by Santi Caleca - text by Michele De Lucchi

Near Sondrio, a house of light and landscape
design by  Antonio Citterio & Partners
photos by Leo Torri - text by Antonella Boisi

Berlin, Bunker gallery
design by Realarchitektur whit Christian Boros
photos by Noshe -text by Matteo Vercelloni

Marbach (Germany), Dupli Haus
design by Jürgen Mayer H. Architects
photos by David Franck - text by Matteo Vercelloni

Los Angeles, a 1950s residence with extension
design by Neil Denari
photos by  Benny Chan - text by Alessandro Rocca

In search of hospitality, in eight new hotels and restaurants
by Antonella Boisi
1. Napoli, Royal Hotel by Fabrizio Mautone
2. Barcellona, Hotel Me by Melia by Dominique Perrault
3. Miami, Hotel Mondrian South Beach by Marcel Wanders
4. Bolzano, Hotel Bad Dreikirchen by Lazzarini Pickering
5. Londra, INAMO restaurant by Blacksheep
6. Belgrado, Majik restaurant by Karim Rashid
7. Dubai, Nobu restaurant by David Rockwell
8. New York, Buddakan restaurant by Christian Liaigre


THE ENCOUNTER
Stella McCartney by Laura Traldi














 TIMELY TOPICS
Doha, Islamic Art Museum
design by Ieoh Ming Pei e Jean Michel Wilmotte
photos by Luc Castel, Keiichi Tahara - text by Michela Moro

THE OPINION
Is design thoughtless?
byAndrea Branzi


THE CENTRALTHEME
Patterns and surfaces by Nadia Lionello
photos by Simone Barberis and Giacomo Giannini

Red Range Game by Nadia Lionello
images processing Simone Barberis

PORTRAIT
Denis Santachiara
by Cristina Morozzi

DESIGN PROJECT
Archidesign
design by UNstudio - by Matteo Vercelloni

Changes of view
design by Michele De Lucchi and Sezgin Aksu
by Maddalena Padovani

Two plus two
design by Morph - by Odoardo Fioravanti

The lamp does not exist
design by Sergio Nava - by Stefano Caggiano

ART / DESIGN
Mass Moca: the biggest museum in the USA
by Olivia Cremascoli

OBSERVATORY
2D:3D, Wonder factory
by Laura Traldi - photos by Paolo Veclani

REPERTORY
The bath in black & white
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

In copertina: Denis Santachiara plays with some of his animated products. Center,
one of the Nuvole (Clouds), lamp-sculptures in movement, a limited edition from A2A
and Solares Fondazione delle Arti, seen at the Università degli Studi of Milan in the
exhibition-event GreenEnergyDesign organized by Interni for the FuoriSalone 2008;
above, the vase that can be bolted to the ground, Santavase, for Serralunga, 2000,
and the cheese knife from the Forma series designed for Guzzini, 2007. Under the
cloud: the Coppi stool with pedals for Campeggi, 2007, and the Angel multifunctional
secretaire in the form of a lamp for Naos, 2005. Below, the Vitesse adjustable stool for
Domodinamica, 2005, and the Booxx pantograph bookcase for Desalto, 2006.
Foto ritratto di/photo portrait by Miro Zagnoli ]]> 2009-02-24 17:10:02 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,82,intIssueID,421,intItemID,427,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-01-29 10:16:18 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,82,intIssueID,421,intItemID,426,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-01-29 10:17:04 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only.<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,82,intIssueID,421,intItemID,425,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-01-29 10:09:33 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,52,intIssueID,421,intItemID,424,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-01-28 14:46:37 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,421,intItemID,423,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-01-28 11:40:50 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,421,intItemID,422,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2009-01-28 11:31:06 Interni n°599 CuldeSac, Experience workshop http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,406,intItemID,420,intLangID,2.html Cristina Giménez by Cristina Giménez It might be the hang-out of a rock band, a place of worship, a squat. Actually, CuldeSac is a multidisciplinary design studio formed in Valencia in 2002, whose original creative force comes from the combination of different figures and forms of expertise, from different parts of the world. In Spanish, Catalan, English and French “cul de sac” means “dead end”. The terms was perfect for a place on a blind alley in Valencia where the designers would move. But in Catalan cul de sac also means just what it says, the bottom of the bag, the place where you can find all kinds of things, like the list of projects done by the studio to date: from a chair that won prizes in the US to a collection of timepieces that has received the Compasso d’Oro and the Red Dot Award, the new image of the Campus de Justicia in Madrid to the event organized for the re-opening, in Milan, of the prestigious boutique of Tiffany & Co. The versatility of CuldeSac can be seen in the wide range of services provided for clients: the three divisions of the studio (Creative Space, Communication and Experience) focus on the design of products and interiors, strategic branding and coordinated communication, ‘experiential’ places and public relations. It is hard to sum up the history and works of the group, originally composed of three designers, then six, eight, all the way to 17 today. The founders, Albert Martínez and Pepe García (Creative Space), both have masters degrees in design from the Royal College of Arts of London, where the studied with Ron Arad and learned methods of work that are unusual in the Mediterranean countries. They were gradually joined by Juan Poveda, Xavi Sempere (Communication), Sophie von Schönburg and Garen Moreno (Experience). Duna, a labrador found in the south of Spain, is also part of this big family. This blend of Anglo- Saxon training and Mediterranean culture generates an interesting hybrid whose most original not is the design method, especially the relationships established with clients, which they call ‘Method Street’.
Everything starts in the cheerful, familiar atmosphere of the studio. One of the most important moments of the day is lunch. Every day two members of the group have the job of cooking for everyone. At two o’clock sharp everyone stops working and gathers around the table, including clients, journalists, suppliers, anyone who happens to be there at the time. Around the table the discussion of projects continues, and especially on Fridays dessert is accompanied by an improvised concert: Xavi on drums, Garen on cajón flamenco, Alberto on guitar and Jordi, a member of the group Twelve Dolls, together with other members of the Communication team, does vocals. A nice way to finish the week. But all the fun is accompanied by maximum professional rigor when the whole group analyzes and discusses projects. Discussion among different forms of expertise is a fundamental strong point of CuldeSac, and each project involves the opinions of 17 persons, expressed as a single voice. The studio even has a guest room for visiting designers, who can work alone or join the team for a while. Since 2002 the Catalan group has gained great visibility thanks to its work with leading international brands. One of the first and most prestigious is undoubtedly Lladró, the Valencia-based porcelain maker, for which the studio designed Re-Cyclos, the collection that marked the beginning of the modernization of the brand in 2005. Since then the client portfolio of CuldeSac has expanded with names like Swarovski, Moooi, Loewe, Tiffany & Co, Lorenz, El Mil de Poaig, Lamalla.cat, Buongiorno, Bernhardt Design, Luzifer, Valentine, Carrera&Carrera. Recently the who creative team was involved in the revival of one of Valencia’s most famous jewelry stores: Trinidad Gracia. A project of overall restructuring, step by step, from the design of the interiors to the promotion and opening of the store.]]> 2008-12-23 11:04:14 Interni n°599 The bath by Patricia Urquiola http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,406,intItemID,419,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani by  Maddalena Padovani The first project by the Spanish designer for the bath environment. A collection of over 50 pieces produced by Axor, a step back from the sculptural, ‘male’ image that now reigns in the sector, in favor of an intimate, natural, sensual, very feminine space. She grabs the knobs, caresses the surfaces, tests the volumes, touches the materials. Seeing Patricia Urquiola as she presents her latest product creation, a collection of over 50 pieces for Axor (the high-end brand of Hansgrohe), you understand why she likes to use the word ‘pleasure’ when talking about design. And you can also understand something about her ‘feminine touch’ that has brought success to so many of her designs: the pursuit of a relationship of empathy, sensorial, physical, with objects, designed to sincerely perform their main function (the lesson of Achille Castiglioni and Vico Magistretti, her mentors, shines through in her work), but also a way of establishing an intimate, affective relationship between objects and their users. Even when the objects are faucets, furnishings and accessories for the bathroom. This is the first time the Spanish designer has worked on this type of product. Already seduced for some time by the graceful, sensual image of her furnishings, the strong theatrical and decorative effects of the crafts techniques she has rediscovered and applied to serial production, it was only natural that this new challenge, regarding a genre of very technical, very ‘male’ products, would grab the interest of sector professionals. Their expectations have been met, because the items presented by Patricia at the end of November, amidst the splendid arcades of the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, seem to sum up, in terms of evolved industrialization, her personal vision of comfort and domestic living. First of all, the idea of a fluid, flexible space, no longer rigidly penned in, but conceived to blend with the bedroom zone and to be personalized with objects that generally are not found there. From this point of view the bath of Patricia Urquiola is just the opposite of the systematic collections based on components and functions. But it is also a bath that tends, conceptually, to get away from the monolithic, sculptural vision of its parts, the approach that in recent years has transformed bath fixtures, faucets and accessories into massive objects to put on display, more than to utilize.
“For me,” the designer explains, “the bath is the space in the home where we can revive the idea of original contact with nature. It is the space of intimacy, encounter, family sharing; this is why I wanted to imagine it in close contact with plants, with lots of little personal situations. In the collection I have designed for Axor there is no idea of making a break with the past, no particular typological invention. I have simply developed the idea of a very soft, natural bath, capable of creating a sensation of comfort and pleasure. A flexible space that can expand and open for wider use, but also be subdivided into corners for more intimate, individual use”. Two elements sum up the concept: the screen-radiator-mirror, for dividing the bath corner from the bedroom while also heating the space and supplying it with a range of accessories; and the playful, reassuring washstand in the form of a basin with handles – almost a jibe at those who have made this fixture lower and lower, square, sculptural – that might even be picked up from the counter and used to water the plants. Shifted onto the large scale of a tub-basin, the form again take the design of Patricia Urquiola back to a dimension of memory and emotions, seen as necessary components of a comfortable, serene habitat. The reference to archetypal forms and established typologies is combined with advanced research and technicalmateric innovation. To obtain the softness of the curves and the pleasant touch of the tub and washstands, a special finish has been created with a composite gel coat, also offering maximum resistance. In the same way, the faucets, with their organic lines, and the mixers with their hollow, particularly ergonomic controls, required in-depth study (four years of work), which in the end has made it possible to combine the quality of Axor products with the original formal solutions for the bath by Patricia Urquiola.]]> 2008-12-23 10:51:22 Interni n°599 Ron Arad No discipline http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,406,intItemID,418,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi
photos Stephane Feugere text Cristina Morozzi
photos Stephane Feugere “All the questions about art and design are irrelevant. I never split things into categories: I am simply what I do. You don’t need a permit to move from one realm to another”. As underscored by the subtitle of his solo show No discipline, until March at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ron Arad believes that discipline is a constraint to be thrown off. And that design should be raised to the level of a symbol of freedom and emancipation. The solo show No discipline at the Beaubourg in Paris (20 November-16 March), south gallery, 1200 m2, 600 pieces, acknowledges the role of Ron Arad as one of the contemporary greats. Similar attention has been paid to only a few: Carlo Mollino, Charlotte Perriand, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck and Gaetano Pesce. Marie Laure Jousset, curator of the exhibition, feels there are few figures on the scene that deserve this treatment. Ron Arad is one of them. “Who else,” she asks, “would stand up to 1200 square meters of space?”. Ron dominates them with the energy of his pieces that narrate a very personal path: the drive, almost an obsession, to go beyond formal and professional limits. As a creative talent he is a loner, free of currents and movements. He always manages to progress, in stubborn pursuit of the future. He has changed the semiology of design, while always sticking with his own expressive matrix. His Bookworm, produced in plastic by Kartell, which in 1996 sold something like 1000 kilometers, as philosopher Fulvio Carmagnola points out “has nothing in its pure perceptive presence to indicate the nature of the object” (Vezzi insulsi e frammenti di storia universale, Luca Sassella Editore, 2001). “The Bookworm,” Ron Arad comments, “was something we knew could be profitable… They presented it at the Salone del Mobile in Milan… The result was an avalanche of orders… It was a mass-market product that could be purchased in the desired length at a low cost, and installed at the whim of the client. What’s more, it was a shelving system that for the first time overcame the tyranny of straight lines”. Bookworm meant, as Deyan Sudjic writes, “the entrance of the designer in the prêt-à-porter market. After having only made high-fashion products, this was a product for everyone... An industrial product made with plastic, sold by the kilometer instead of the meter” (Ron Arad, Laurence King Publishing, London, 1996).
Maurice Oyon, creator and artistic director of Notify, the French luxury denim brand that financed the impressive show at the Beaubourg, the first solo show on Ron Arad, is proud – and he shows it – to be an active part of the project. He says that “Ron has the ability to reinvent forms: his forms are original, but immediately familiar. They are creations that emanate a light that illuminates the soul. This exhibition makes me happy: for me it is enough to see the works, I don’t have to own them. Spending a few days together with a genius is a great privilege”. The catalyst of the encounter was a handbag, the Flesh Bag. Claire, marketing director of Notify, wore the prototype, amazing the guests at the opening party. It is an ellipse of black leather, with a large central eye that passes, at a touch, from opacity to transparency, revealing the content. “I though about Ron for the concept of this bag,” Maurice explains, “because with his organic, sensual forms he is closer to the curves of women”. Arad will also design the Milan atelier of Notify on via Carlo Poma, in a former flag factory (opening June 2009). At the center of the lobby there will be a stainless steel sculpture, 17 meters tall, like a mushroom cloud, emerging over the grass-covered roof to reflect green rays down into the lobby. With this titanic work Arad returns as a protagonist in Milan, where he made his debut in 1985 during the Salone del Mobile, showing his first handmade works at Zeus on via Vigevano, straight from his London workshop on Neal street, Covent Garden: the Rover Chair, a seat taken from a Rover 2000 mounted on Kee Klamps, a system of low-cost steel joints patented in the 1930s by a man named Gascoigne, which Arad had already utilized for shelving and bunk beds, and the Concrete Stereo, where the components were set in cement. The Rover Chair, purchased at the time for 99 pounds by Jean Paul Gaultier, is now a museum piece, and Ron is vied for by galleries, collectors and companies. But he is still friends with Maurizio and Nicoletta Peregalli, the founders of Zeus in 1984, together with David Mercatali. In the book published for the 20th birthday of Zeus, he wrote: “...we came from completely different places and went in completely different directions, but in spite of that we immediately sensed a strong affinity. It was their devotion to the cause, the move away from the typical Milanese avant-garde that surrounded them... We absolutely didn’t know what we wanted to do together, what form our collaboration would take, but we immediately felt the need to create an international group. Today we know that those first years of Zeus were fundamental for our development” (Zeus- 20 anni di passione, 1984-2004).
Italian companies, first Moroso, then Kartell, Driade, Magis, Alessi, I Guzzini, have permitted him to become an industrial designer. One Italian entrepreneur, Stefano Ronchetti, has let him remain a craftsman/artist, offering metalworking expertise and an atelier for special projects. Arad was one of the first to focus on creative recycling, transforming existing objects. But also one of the first to understand that objects that raise the same interest as an artwork belong to an economic universe that is completely different from that of the objects created to solve problems in the home: “Therefore we set out,” he says, “to do things people don’t really need, selling them at a price most people cannot afford”. A worthy heir to Rubens, who “raised the price of the work to pay homage to art”, Arad cynically states that “just as designers gauge their success by the number of pieces sold, the artist measures things based on the prices reached by objects at auctions”. Those who ask whether he feels more like a designer or an artist are told: “A ping-pong player,” (after all, in 2008, together with Francesco Clemente, he created a ping-pong table in stainless steel, presented at Arte Fiera in Bologna). “What counts is if the object you have created is interesting or boring; if, when touching it or looking at it, you get a sense of pleasure, or not. You don’t have to know what it is!”.]]> 2008-12-23 10:43:35 Interni n°599 UseLess is More<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,406,intItemID,417,intLangID,2.html JoeVelluto
text by Stefano Caggiano design by JoeVelluto
text by Stefano Caggiano A provocative exhibition of objects deprived of their functions, but capable of generating different thinking. Presented in Turin in November, the first interpretation of the Adesign manifesto of JoeVelluto offers stimuli for more general reflection on the new ‘liquid’ functionalism of design in the 21st century. It might seem like a game, but it’s not. Taking the hands off a clock, the seat off a chair, the hooks off a coat rack, is not a question of stylistic bravado, but a surgical removal of vital organs of useful things, of their Function, with which the artistic side of design has always had to coexist in a tangled love-hate relationship. The authors are the group JoeVelluto, and their latest blitz in the context of what has become the unstable world of objects attempts to open up new possibilities for a multiple sense of things. After all, Andrea Maragno and Sonia Tasca (the historic members who have remained in the group), have accustomed us to sudden accelerations in the direction of Other-than-design. With this first ‘solo’ show, UseLess is More, curated by Beppe Finessi (7-19 November 2008, Palazzo Bertalazone di San Fermo, Turin), they reiterate their choice, taking a further step along their path of restless experimentation. The objects on display are eight in number, but actually 16, because each is subjected to a process that generates, on the one hand, an object with function, and on the other a function without an object. If design focuses on function, Adesign (the title of the poetic-philosophical manifesto of JoeVelluto, of which UseLess is More represents the first operative moment) focuses on dysfunction. So, besides the pieces mentioned, the same ‘dysfunctionalizing’ treatment is applied to a bookcase, a table, a lamp, a souvenir from Venice, a crucifix.
This is not done in the way a child breaks a toy to see how it works. Since the pluriball rosary RosAria, the research of JoeVelluto has shown precocious sensibility regarding conceptual art. And just as contemporary art has freed itself of the sole destiny of ‘representation’, so this way of doing design pursues its own schizophrenic path of emancipation from the monothematic fate of ‘beautiful function’, opening up to the uncertainties of elastic meanings and contradictory emotions. That’s why useless is more: because by taking away a piece from an object you can free up alternative configurations that were previously trapped inside a definite typology. Removing the function, the object is taken back to a condition of ‘total potential’, in which a lampshade doesn’t necessarily have to be a lampshade, but can reincarnate in any other avatar. But it would be a mistake to think that this generation of designers rejects function. On the contrary, it is precisely by walking the lateral paths of dysfunction that the design of the 21st century can keep faith with the process of everyday reinvention, weakened but widespread, of the sense of things. Classical functionalism exhausted its impulse in definite typologies, perhaps improving them brilliantly, but almost never going beyond. The new ‘liquid’ functionalism, on the other hand, does not start with typologies but with gestures made by people in real life, which almost never coincide with the small and big schemes of behavior dictated by the objects around them. One emblematic case is Mr. Hide, the doormat the team has supplied with a secret compartment for hiding keys. Or the cookie in the form of a thimble, by Paolo Ulian, for ‘touching’ Nutella. Little gestures that break up the system of objects and become design. This pursuit of ideas not in types but in non-indicated gestures is a characteristic feature of the ‘design that didn’t exist before’, directly connected to the new anthropology in which these designers operate, which connects the value of an object not to what it is, but to what it could be. Not the results, but the potential for transformation, to generate the ‘sense’ of products in the 21st century. Basically, there is nothing strange about the fact that a generation born in a world full of useless things looks precisely at uselessness to find a dimension of meaning. Challenging function to escape from itself, to transform itself into fresh possibilities. Design has never been so alive before.]]> 2008-12-23 10:28:55 Interni n°599 Vertical Moscow http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,72,intIssueID,406,intItemID,416,intLangID,2.html Gabriele Basilico and Umberto Zanetti
text by Matteo Vercelloni
photos by Gabriele Basilico design by Gabriele Basilico and Umberto Zanetti
text by Matteo Vercelloni
photos by Gabriele Basilico A bare look at contemporary Moscow, without aesthetic filters, an urban recording of changes at the turn of the millennium. This is the latest work by Gabriele Basilico, in collaboration with Umberto Zanetti, shown in November at the Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine in Paris.An interpretation of the Russian city through exceptional vantage points: the tops of seven towers built by Stalin as symbol-images of the capital of socialism. In March 1918 Vladimir Lenin, head of the new socialist State, decided to move the headquarters of the new government from St Petersburg to Moscow, away from the borderlines and winds of war. Thus Moscow returned to its status as capital, with new goals of development and planning. In 1935 Josif Stalin, Lenin’s successor, imagined a big master plan that would make Moscow the ‘stone monument’ of Soviet socialism and the ‘alternative model’ to proudly display to the capitalist West. Abandoning the experimentation of the revolutionary avant-garde, in this vision the typology of the vysotnye zdanija (literally ‘tall building’, not a translation of the American ‘skyscraper’, forcefully opposed on ideological grounds) began to take form. An genuinely Soviet architectural genre, in terms of bulk, language and positioning. An architecture entrusted, in its strategic repetition (of the eight planned towers seven still loom over the urban fabric of the city), with the radial border of the horizontal city, whose center would be the famous, almost legendary point of attraction, the Palace of the Soviets (never built). After a large international competition that included the participation of Gropius and Le Corbusier, among others, following the victory of an American project the design of this building was re-assigned to the Soviet architect Boris Jofan, who took it to a height of 415 meters, which would have made it the highest in the world, overshadowing the West (116 meters more than the Eiffel Tower, 33 meters higher than the Empire State Building in New York). Actually the seven towers, apart from questions of height, were part of a wide-ranging urban planning project; they are tall landmarks, but they also feature connected structures, closer to the ground, the underline the sense of being rooted in the city and its spaces, avoiding the impression of isolated monuments.
As Alessandro De Magistris writes in his contribution to the fine catalogue (Mosca Verticale, Federico Motta Editore), “the towers of Stalin had a central role, in the 1940s and 1950s, in the urban design of Moscow. They materialized, in the most persuasive way, the weld between ideology, architectural monument and urban morphology that expressed the idea of socrealizm, which from the postwar era to the death of the dictator drove the reconstruction of the main cities of Eastern Europe”. So these were models, secular and ideological cathedrals, and the ‘tall buildings’ of Moscow presented themselves as “dazzling pyramids of stone in the style of the Empire (Stalinist), architectural masterpieces of spirals and columns, daring ideological initiatives, building-cities, small islands with restaurants, garages, hairdressers, pharmacies, squares, outdoor cafes, shops… these ‘tall houses’ that triumphantly reached for the skies reflected the basic dialectic of Stalinism, halfway between the spiritual and the functional, the despotic and the popular”, as Anne Nivat wrote in her book on one of these architectural giants, and the life narrated by its inhabitants of the past and present (La Casa alta, Casa Editrice Le Lettere 2004). The project of Gabriele Basilico, conducted together with Umberto Zanetti, reinterprets the history of these towers, immortalizing them in rigorous frontal black and white shots, while reassessing their meaning (in the context of urban planning extended from the city to the territory) by using them as outposts from which to observe, from above, the city as a whole. The arrangement in a ring of the seven vysotnye zdanija permits a 360-degree take on the capital; Basilico records with color photos, but in tones flattened by the white sky, the changes in progress, the worksites – this time with skyscrapers, in ‘globalized style’ – and the advertising, as well as those widespread design expressions Zanetti calls “the cavities of buildings, bearing witness to the corrosion of the architectural heritage”. From the heights of the Kotel’niceskaja, the Krasnye Vororota, the Leningradskaja, the Barrikadnaja, the Mid, the Ukraina and the Mgu, Basilico reads, observes and reports on the state of the city, without making judgments, but offering vertical views, at times with dizzying oblique framing that alludes to the lesson of dynamics of an artist of the Revolution like Rodcenko. An urban portrait that makes the city speak, in a way, its streets, its spaces, through the tool of photography, guided by a talent for listening, for understanding the urban form and its sense, between the past and the present.]]> 2008-12-23 10:14:28 Interni n°599 Ørestad Gymnasium http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,406,intItemID,415,intLangID,2.html 3XN
photos 3XN/Adam Mørk
text Antonella Galli project 3XN
photos 3XN/Adam Mørk
text Antonella Galli For a high school in Copenhagen specializing in communication, the architects of 3XN have created a building that revolutionizes the concept of the school: the classrooms are replaced by flexible spaces, the floors are connected and open, the flow of information and knowledge meets with no obstacles. When it was first unveiled in 2007 the building for the Ørestad high school in Copenhagen prompted great interest on an international level. In 2004 the Danish studio 3XN, located in Århus and Copenhagen and led by Kim Herforth Nielsen, won the commission thanks to a project for a school seen as an active container for knowledge based on interdisciplinary research and the use of Information Technology. The institute, specializing in communication and media, provides every student with a portable computer which becomes the main working tool inside the building, covered by a wi-fi network. In keeping with the principles of studio 3XN, namely that architecture, in its response to an immediate need, should also offer indications for the future, the design team created a parallelepiped in glass and concrete, with four floors organized inside, in the form of a boomerang. Each of these bridge-floors is rotated with respect to the others, almost generating the image of the shutter of a camera, focused on the central hall. The four levels form the study zones of the school and are equipped with flexible furnishings that make it easy to create large spaces for lectures, work areas for small teams or individual study zones. On each floor a large cylinder contains an AV room and, above it, a terrace for relaxation and individual work, supplied with colored cushions. At the center of the building a helicoidal staircase clad in light oak connects all four floors: it is the fulcrum of circulation for the students, but also a place of socializing, to see and be seen. Three maxi-columns support the whole structure, along with an irregular grid of smaller columns. On each level, then, the fixed architectural elements are few in number, while all the furnishings, to different extents, can be repositioned to meet the needs of different groups. The space reflects the most advanced international trends in education, which call for dynamic spaces in close contact with everyday life, facilitating communication and interaction. The main goal, fully achieved by the project by 3XN, is to reinforced the capacities of individual students to supervise their own work, both independently and in teams. - Caption pag. 40 Elevation of the school designed by 3XN, with chromatic modulations in the system of semitransparent glass shutters; on the facing page, the interior spaces with, in the foreground, the study and relaxation area at the top of a circular room. Note the mega-version, in the floor variant, of the Tolomeo lamp designed in 1986 by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina for Artemide. The poufs designed by Finland’s Jukka Setala for Fatboy are distributed in Italy by Phorma.]]> 2008-12-22 18:26:14 Interni n°599 The new Bocconi http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,406,intItemID,414,intLangID,2.html Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara/Grafton Architects
photos Paolo Tonato
text Antonella Boisi project Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara/Grafton Architects
photos Paolo Tonato
text Antonella Boisi In Milan, the new building of the Bocconi University, at the corner of via Roentgen and viale Bligny: a symbolic ‘shield’ of stone and glass, “hard on the outside, friendly on the inside”, winner of the prize as best building of the year at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. It took an international competition, 100 million euros, 11,200 m2 of stone to clad the facades and roofs, and much much more... but, finally, the ‘dream’ of the university that meets its city has come true: the Bocconi now has a ‘campus’ (68,628 m2) that organizes, in a skillful game of voids and transparencies, 6 levels above ground and three below, a space of work and a public space (with an auditorium, five conference halls and an incredible foyer for art), representing the re-composition of salient architectural and linguistic episodes: from the headquarters designed by Giuseppe Pagano in 1941 to the library complex by Giovanni Muzio in 1953, to the ellipsoidal building by Ignazio Gardella (1995) that includes many lecture halls and an auditorium. The entrance on viale Bligny is a sort of piazza, sober but distinctive, where the actors on the stage are the matte physical presence of ‘ceppo di Gré’, a Lombard stone used for the facades of many buildings in Milan, and the lightness of the long transparent glazing below, the element that catalyzes and conveys the gaze toward the entrance and the spectacular underground foyer. It is the successful representation of a sort of two-faced Janus: the building (on a rectangular lot, 70 x160 meters) appears solid above and light and ethereal below, from the outside, while its extroverted dimension is reveals inside, where its seems totally open and luminous. “It’s tough on the outside and friendly on the inside”, the Irish architects explain, partners of the studio that has created this work recessed five meters below street level to encounter the underground foyer of the auditorium, but also as a way of rediscovering urban space through the transparent, layered and inclined glazings of the entrance area, and the visual continuity of the stone flooring. From outside, you can see the life of the foyer, while from the inside you can observe the life of the city. From inside all the transparency of the glazed volumes of the offices is evident, facilities for 1240 persons (mostly faculty and researchers). This is possible because the construction is like a bridge: a structure on which to ‘hang’ levels and floating volumes, with steel supports, as in the complex created by Oscar Niemeyer for the Mondadori headquarters at Segrate, where concrete defies structural laws to become sculpture. Here, the technicians explain that to lighten the structures, particular poststressing systems were used, or beam-walls that support the main roof beams, as the points of reference for all the floor slabs. These are real walls in reinforced concrete, perforated to correspond to the passage of the volumes of the offices. In practice, few pilasters are visible, and the natural light – another strong point of the design – further underscores the effect of dematerialization and suspension of the volumes, also thanks to two skylights. The windows in the offices, formed by layered translucent panes, can be opened for natural ventilation, to limit the use of air conditioning. The impact of the architecture is completed on a linguistic level. In the foyer, the deconstructivist forms designed by Grafton Architects combine successfully with the austerity of a brutalist approach, seen in the exposed beton brut (raw concrete) used for the staircases and floors, and in the white plaster of the walls. This palette of whites and grays prepares an ideal neutral backdrop for works of contemporary art and monumental conceptual-minimal sculptures, many from the collections of Panza di Biumo or Arnaldo Pomodoro. Because culture is ignited by other stimuli, forms and colors.]]> 2008-12-22 18:13:58 Interni n°599 The architecture of knowledge http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,406,intItemID,413,intLangID,2.html Alejandro Aravena, Mario Cucinella, DPA, Bernard Tschumi
text by Matteo Vercelloni projects by Alejandro Aravena, Mario Cucinella, DPA, Bernard Tschumi
text by Matteo Vercelloni The most innovative projects, summed up here in four examples from different contexts, approach certain key aspects of contemporary design: the idea of the container that reflects the research performed in it, that of constructing on construction, that of the new territorial landmark and, finally, that of architecture as landscape. Rather than conforming to a ‘building type’, they are all historically connected to the concept of place. A reinterpretation of settlement models applied in the past to underscore the function of encounter and exchange, but now linked to the conditions of the contemporary world: both in functional terms and as opportunities for experimentation.The model of the modern university emerged at the start of the 19th century, and can be traced back, in terms of its settlement logic, to the archetype of the medieval monastery as a place of encounter, exchange, conservation of knowledge. The evolution of the architecture of universities has kept pace with the times, bearing direct witness to changes in society, translating the structure of human relations that is its foundation into three-dimensional reality. What the various constructions devoted to knowledge around the world have in common is their nature as a terrain of architectural experimentation in the areas of compositional and technological choices, of languages and layout solutions, in different geographical and temporal contexts. There are many outstanding examples in the history of the 20th century, which are still milestones. Some are like little cities in their own right, while others are buildings that fit into their host cities, establishing close ties with them. In the case of Italy we can mention the exemplary case of the Città Universitaria of Rome, designed by Marcello Piacentini in 1932 as a ‘choral project’ of rationalist culture (Giovanni Michelucci and Giuseppe Pagano, Gio Ponti and Gino Capponi were some of the architects involved), as well as the facilities of the University of Calabria at Rende (Cosenza, 1973-79), where Vittorio Gregotti, with Emilio Battisti, Pierluigi Nicolin, Franco Purini and others, created a formidable new model of “land architecture” on a territorial scale. In America we can cite the works of Alvar Aalto (the dormitories of MIT in Cambridge, 1947), of Le Corbusier (the Carpenter Center for Visual Art, 1961, also in Cambridge), or the lyricism and poetry of the Jonas Salk Institute by Louis Kahn at La Jolla, California, 1959-65. These are just quick references to a series of innovative projects. The list could go on, and perhaps form a chapter in the history of architecture, due to the high level of experimentation and the close relationships with social components.
Even today, the architecture of the university seems like one of the most interesting areas to observe, from many vantage points. The four examples presented in this issue approach, in different contexts, certain key aspects of contemporary design: the container that reflects its content (Center for Sustainable Energies, Nottingham University at Ningbo, China, by Mario Cucinella Architects); constructing on construction (École Cantonale d’Art, Lausanne, Switzerland, by Bernard Tschumi); the new territorial landmark (computer center of the Catholic University of Santiago, Chile, by Alejandro Aravena); architecture as landscape (EWHA Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, by Dominique Perrault. In the heart of the Chinese district of Zhijiang, location of the campus of Nottingham University, the new Cset building (2008) by Mario Cucinella stands out like a magical prismatic volume for the spread of sustainable technologies (solar, photovoltaic, wind energy). The light, elusive volume is based on the figure of ancient lanterns and wooden screens from traditional Chinese houses, changing its image from day to night, when internal lighting makes it into a sort of beacon reflected in the river. The facades are composed of a dual glass skin with silkscreened motifs that indicate the monumental presences of the zone. A large opening at the top captures natural light and conveys it to all the floors, while producing a chimney effect for efficient natural ventilation. A series of radiant floor panels transform geothermal energy to heat and cool the spaces, making this work an example of sustainable architecture, one of many in the intense research of Mario Cucinella.
Sustainability is also the focus of Alejandro Aravena (Leone d’argento at the latest Venice Architecture Biennial) in his ‘Siamese towers’ for the Computer Center at Santiago in Chile (2003-2006). Here, over a base clad with thick raw wood planks, two glass volumes cover two towers built inside them; a sort of transparent architectural cage that is detached from the true facade of the building inside, clad with fiber cement panels, to create a void that functions as a ventilation space, pushing the warm air accumulated in the summer months upward, while providing an efficient thermal insulation mechanism in the winter. The ‘Siamese towers’ are the symbol of the Catholic University of Santiago, “a relatively hermetic volume, with extremely controlled openings, [because] now that work is done in front of electronic screens soft lighting is required, to avoid annoying reflections” (A. Aravena). The landscape dimension is addressed in the design for the EWHA University in Seoul (2008), which Dominique Perrault has conceived as a sort of architectural canyon inserted in the urban context, with buildings covered by greenery facing a central route that becomes the outdoor core of the university complex, but also a new urban space offered to the city. Finally, the new headquarters of the ECAL (2007) at Renens, an industrial district at the gates of Lausanne, designed by Bernard Tschumi, reflects the increasingly widespread practice of recycling of urban structures, of ‘constructing on construction’; in this case, an abandoned hosiery factory is taken as a container in which to position new lecture halls and spaces of encounter for a school of art and design. Tschumi has worked on the skin of the facades with effective chromatic grafts that have not erased the industrial character of the building. Hollowing the inside, he has created two-storey spaces that take on the appearance of small ‘indoor squares’ in which light enters from above, with the various educational facilities organized around them.]]> 2008-12-22 18:02:54 Interni n°599 Drops of glass on the city http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,406,intItemID,412,intLangID,2.html UnSangDong Architects
photos and text Sergio Pirrone project UnSangDong Architects
photos and text Sergio Pirrone In South Korea, at Seoul, Kring, the multi-target and multi-functional macro-object, covers an ambitious real estate investment with the poetry of art. Exhibition space on the ground and first floors, a conference room on the second, space for the sale of real estate on the third, and a sky garden on the fourth and last level, a futuristic destination for a sensorial itinerary, narrating a work of architecture that is both a marketing tool and an urban container. The dance of two drops of water never misses a beat. One after the other, the movement seems to be held in place by the way it repeatedly hits the same target. It digs into the pores of a steel box, like stone, hollowing and then inserting the sea, a sea of new ideas. An imposing presence, for the perplexed faces of a charmless metropolis. Seoul has the talent of a middle zone, and perhaps we will see what it will become. Because the ratrace, plunging and soaring, forces another sort of sustainability, that of the architectural object that generates profit in its own right. Darwin is still here in our midst, facing a glass cylinder, a meeting room suspended over the big entrance lobby. From a distance, he watches the architects Yoon Gyoo Jang and ChangHoon Shin as they discuss things with the management of Kumho E&C, a leader in the real estate sector. Seven times the thickness unveils its layers, revealing its time and that of the next generation. Kring will leave a mark even when we have forgotten its forms, because its program has invented a new way of doing architecture. The first five years of the new millennium were for the new patrons, who thanks to the fever of consumption filled cubes and towers with neon and high fashion. Architecture, the most intelligent promotional message, marketing tool, three-dimensional in look, two-dimensional in perception, mono-dimensional in content, was filled with new demagogic symbols. But not Kring. It keeps the course, but finds another port of call, that of evolution. So a real estate company commissions a multi-target work, and fills it with functional itineraries, apparently distinct from the original aim.
The functional program penetrates the facade volume with white reliefs that frame glassy irises, seven like the epicenters of the streetfront. Circular, vertical and horizontal, radiated and reflected, the absolute principle of this project clad in steel passages pointed toward the city. Beyond the threshold, sculpture floats in shiny white, the offices are set back, beyond the cinema toward the internal facade, while the gaze loses its bearings on the three open ramps that climb, excessive, to the first slab and the café zone, the expanded foyer of the multi-purpose conference room. It pulsates, reduces, dilates; the parallelepiped is a frozen lake. Outside, its openings retreat amidst luminous rings that form a vertical amphitheater for the contours of the city. The circular incisions are the reverberations of a drop, another, another still. Inside, from the glazed vertebrate cylinder, one ‘dives’ into the void, in the glare of many suns, satellites of the visitor who, curious, grasps at the ‘porous, suspended tunnel’ of the third level. The secret of Kring is finally, discreetly, revealed. Wrapped by wooden suspended ceilings and walls, in 6 glass rooms, in 12 round, swiveling chairs, those who wandered through flying sculptures, took part in a conference, listened to music, perhaps with a cup of coffee, can finally, if they so wish, buy a house. They can also think it over, going up to the last level, a lunar landscape, on a long, undulated deck, under drops of steel from a clear blue sky. Seats scattered like perforated ice cubes, a bitten apple in the background, and beyond another oversized eye gazes at the occidental silhouettes of the city, the worksite of changes, and a drop of glass, like a tear, joins to steel skins.]]> 2008-12-22 17:50:33 Interni n°599 Madrid, TupperHome http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,406,intItemID,410,intLangID,2.html Andrés Jaque
photos Miguel de Guzmán
text Francesco Vertunni project Andrés Jaque
photos Miguel de Guzmán
text Francesco Vertunni In Madrid, Spain, the prototype of the Tupper Home Shop program. Made by the architecture studio guided by the young architect Andrés Jaque, this is a home-program that approaches the problem of traditional housing models through new typologies aimed at optimizing interior spaces. A mini-apartment, 30 sq meters, conceived for a middle-aged couple that has decided to live outside the city, but wants to keep in contact with an urban center as a place of reference, and a place to let their teenage children stay for the duration of their schooling. This is the first Tupper Home, whose marketing is connected with the famous distribution system of plastic Tupperware products, an efficient idea of networking and communication. The ambitious concept of the young Madrid-based designer is to insert the ‘house as product’ inside a bigger program-catalogue of ‘architectural articles’ for living in the present and the near future, offered to a wider public as a system aimed at improving technological solutions and optimizing domestic space. A project that combines reconfiguration of habitat types with suggestions on possible new urban behaviors of ‘living in the home’, maintaining the same functions but reducing the floorspace by about 55%, to proportionately reduce overall costs. For this experimental model, but one that could really be lived in, the work focuses on a two-storey space with an L-shaped layout, and a single opening to a small balcony transformed into a tiny garden. The unified space of the studio apartment features pastel shades on the fixed furnishings, containing vanishing domestic equipment (washing machine and dryer), the kitchen cabinets and the doors. Pink, blue, light green, like the colors of Tupperware, used by families for years to conserve foods. Translucent plastic is also the inspiration for the light inclined screens that separate the two nighttime zones on the mezzanine level. The zones are independent and reached with metal steps (one set fixed, the other on wheels, to run along the green girder of the upper level), like well-balanced ‘domestic capsules’ for slumber and rest, open to the space below thanks to a series of portholes flanked by fans for air circulation. The bathrooms are arranged in a column, the first beside the kitchen and the second above, for the main bedroom zone. A modern and functional machine à habiter that suggests, with a smile, new habitat solutions for the city of the new millennium.]]> 2008-12-22 17:32:59 Interni n°599 Paris, a mix&match residence<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,406,intItemID,409,intLangID,2.html James Greenfield
photos Alberto Ferrero
text Antonella Boisi
 project James Greenfield
photos Alberto Ferrero
text Antonella Boisi In Paris, the autobiographical house of James Greenfield, managing director of Kenzo; conceived and produced like a tailor-made suit, with the idea of a total, global, integrated architecture, inspired by Le Corbusier. James Greenfield is a refined, cosmopolitan young gentleman, and managing director of Kenzo, the French fashion maison with headquarters in a hotel particulier from the 16th century, a few meters away from Place des Victoires. His home in Paris is a concept house, as they might call it in America, imagined by him, though he is neither an architect nor a designer. It is far from the noble pomp of the Kenzo facility, but closer to the spirit. Because in its architectural and décor choices this home expresses, with taste and tact, the whole dimension of cultural contamination and crossover style that has always been part of the Kenzo philosophy, a concentrate of verve, materic research, technology and craftsmanship. “It isn’t one of those museum homes”, he explains, “though a certain taste for 1950s design and authentic use of materials in architecture is perceptible. I was interested in neutrality for living spaces, allowing me to treat them like so many white pages, to fill up season by season. After all, a house is never finished: its like a classic suit, well made, that can be constantly updated with accessories. I’ve tried to take things away, to find a new balance between the full and empty spaces that life tends to disrupt in a logic of accumulation and stratification of objects, presences, emotional memories, souvenirs”. First of all, the basic structure. Then a rational layout of spaces and functions. Finally, furnishings selected with great care, for a polyphonic home, rich in colors and charm. A dwelling that thrives on mix & match details, while maintaining the original, rigorous form.
Greenfield’s main stimulus came from the location, which was also the reason behind the choice of purchasing the building four years ago: a portion of a yarn factory from the late 1800s in the dynamic northeastern zone of Paris, near the canals of the Seine, which had been converted to make four residential units around a courtyard sheltered by a glass roof. “I was immediately fascinated”, Greenfield explains, “by the idea of having a reserved outdoor space where the children could play, protected from the rain, amidst the greenery of a bamboo garden. The main facade had all the potential of a big glazing, a reservoir of light and views, whose metal and glass structure reflected the industrial character. Skillful craftsmen had already fixed the casements, so I asked them to make identical metal and glass partitions for the inside. It was important to bring light into the innermost spaces of the house (on three levels), also because there is a perimeter wall without openings”.
Now, in a compositional logic that promotes fluid, continuous spaces, the ground floor, used for the bedroom area (master bedroom and guests) and a studio communicates with the courtyard and the terrace surrounding the entrance area. Below, the luminous basement contains the children’s rooms, the playroom, bathrooms and other service spaces. The upper level is for the living room, open to the kitchen, and two large glazed ovals cut into the roof, flooding every corner with zenithal light. “A real shower of light,” Greenfield explains, “inherited from the place that was once here”. A legacy that also includes concrete, plaster, glass and metal, left in their original states as the ‘raw materials’ for the organization of the various domestic islands, with a contrast of sophisticated style, a skillful mixture of modernity, creativity, ethnic accents, avant-garde design and an intimate dimension with respect to the large spaces. Greenfield favors international industrial design products from the 1950s, especially pieces in tubing and wood, which seem to fit well with the spirit of the place. “Pieces with a soul,” he says. But there is much more in the details of his very personal domestic landscape: the expression of a possible improved quality of life, for architecture as well.]]> 2008-12-22 17:07:33 Interni n°599 Summary http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,21,intIssueID,406,intItemID,408,intLangID,2.html NEWS

YOUNG DESIGNERS
X Biennale di Saint Etienne, Francia

IN PRODUCTION
Ceramica 3D, Henry Glass, Ivano Redaelli, Riedizioni d’autore

ANNIVERSARIES
75 years of Lorenz
50 years of Gobbetto

SHOWROOM
Calligaris in Milano
Guzzini Flagship Store in Milano
Visionnaire Design Gallery in Milano
Meridiani in Parigi

IN FAIRS
Seatec in Carrara
Marmomacc in Verona
Maison&Objet and Meuble Paris in Parigi
I Saloni WorldWide and Mebelissima Italia in Moscow
33ª ArteFiera Art First in Bologna
Habitat Valencia

COMMUNICATION
Philips: simplicity for better living
Promos: Italians in New York
3M: contract solutions
Elica Contemporary: in the name of art


IN-TERNET
A blog for Interni

IN EXHIBITION

LANDSCAPE

PRIZES

CITY PROJECT

SUSTAINABILITY

IN BOOKSTORE

INFO & TECH

TECHNOLOGY

CONTRACT & OFFICE

FASHION FILE

TRANSLATIONS






 EDITORIAL

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE:
NOMADIC HOMES AND SIGNATURE SCHOOLS
edited by Antonella Boisi

Paris, a mix&match residence
design by James Greenfield
photos by Alberto Ferrero text by Antonella Boisi

Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza, a house around a courtyard
design by Mario Tessarollo
photos by Paolo Utimpergher text by Antonella Boisi

Madrid, TupperHome
design by Andrés Jaque
photos by Miguel de Guzmán text by Francesco Vertunni

Seekirchen/Wallersee, Austria, Nomad House
design by Gerold Peham con Hobby.a Schuster & Maul
photos by Marc Haader text by Alessandro Rocca

Seoul, Corea del Sud, Kring mall
design by UnSangDong Architects
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone

L’architettura del sapere
design by Alejandro Aravena, Mario Cucinella, DPA,
Bernard Tschumi
text by  Matteo Vercelloni

Milano, il nuovo campus della Bocconi
design by Grafton Architects
photos by  Paolo Tonato
text by  Antonella Boisi

Copenhagen/Ørestad Gymnasium
design by 3XN
photos by 3XN/Adam Mørk
text by  Antonella Galli


THEOPINION
Universities: new times, hard times
by Andrea Branzi














 TIMELY TOPICS
Vertical Moscow
design by Gabriele Basilico and Umberto Zanetti
text by Matteo Vercelloni photos by Gabriele Basilico

UseLess is More
design by  JoeVelluto
text by Stefano Caggiano

MASTERS
Cini Boeri
by  Matteo Vercelloni

THE CENTRALTHEME
Movement in the home
by Nadia Lionello

Transparency and reflection
by Nadia Lionello
images processing Enrico Suà Ummarino

PORTRAIT
Ron Arad
text by Cristina Morozzi

DESIGN PROJECT
The bath by Patricia Urquiola
by  Maddalena Padovani

Laboratory of experiences
projects by CuldeSac by Cristina Giménez

ART / DESIGN
Boston: l’Institute of Contemporary Art
by Olivia Cremascoli

REPERTORY
Angles and curves
by Katrin Cosseta

FIRMS DIRECTORY by Adalisa Uboldi

TRANSLATIONS

In copertina: Ron Arad with one of his latest industrial design projects, the
PizzaKobra extensible table lamp produced by iGuzzini in steel and chromiumplated
aluminium, using LEDs. A single object that can assume many forms,
always different, thanks to a system of high-tech joints. The lamp is something
like a snake, and can reach a length of 73 cm; when closed, in the form of a
‘pizza’, it has a minimum height of 2 cm.
Photo portrait by Montgomery Graeme ]]> 2008-12-29 12:04:18 Interni n°599 Editorial n.588<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,8,intIssueID,406,intItemID,407,intLangID,2.html Gilda Bojardi by Gilda Bojardi We’re starting a new year that already promises to be a tough one, but also stimulating, in a way, for those who work on design and like to try to imagine alternatives to any pre-set reality. So we begin with an issue that optimistically, in spite of our awareness of the present situation, proposes a range of topics that cross thematic, geographic, spatial and temporal boundaries, once again opting for a certain pluralism of content as a tool of fertile debate and enrichment for design culture. The works of interior architecture illustrate international trends and ways of living, with a particular focus on experimentation (the nomadic home, the home produced in plastic) and education, in works by outstanding talents, places and spaces that interpret the idea of a modern, open, interactive school. After a review of the work of a great protagonist of Italian modernity, Cini Boeri, always timely for her capacity to approach the design of living spaces in a global manner, the design pages examine the provocative exhibition by JoeVelluto, containing objects deprived of their functions, but capable of generating different thinking: a new stimulus for reflection on the ‘liquid’ functionalism of the 21st century, already proposed and theorized by Andrea Branzi. At the center of this excursus, the portrait of a renowned exponent of crossover design, Ron Arad, whose work is featured in an important solo show at Centre Pompidou in Paris (as seen on our cover). Once again, the designer of Israeli origin explains his belief in a design method that breaks down disciplinary constraints and holds design up as a symbol of freedom and emancipation. Finally, a narrative, in images and suggestions, of the trends found in the latest furnishing products: transparency, transformation, the game of opposite forms, represented in this issue by angles (sharp, fragmented lines) and curves (soft, rounded design).]]> 2008-12-23 12:55:10 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,66,intIssueID,399,intItemID,405,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2008-12-03 16:16:38 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,399,intItemID,404,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2008-12-03 14:59:36 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,399,intItemID,403,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2008-12-03 14:59:57 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,399,intItemID,402,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2008-12-03 15:01:00 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,399,intItemID,401,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2008-12-03 15:00:40 Interni Panorama n°58 This article is available in Italian only. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,50,intIssueID,399,intItemID,400,intLangID,2.html  
 
]]> 2008-12-03 15:00:19 Interni n°599 Sway House<br /> (The Japanese theorem 2) http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,377,intItemID,397,intLangID,2.html Atelier Bow Wow
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Momoyo Kaijima, Takahiko Kurabayashi project Atelier Bow Wow
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Momoyo Kaijima, Takahiko Kurabayashi ...it was time to transforming a severe limitation into precious quality... Sway House goes beyond its own twisted profile to propose an alternative to the biggest residential quarter in Tokyo, Setagaya, an urban fabric dense with discordant residential objects, accumulated in the layering of the last century. Atelier Bow Wow is not just an architecture studio, but a laboratory of architectural analysis, and the two chief architects, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima, both in their early forties, are undoubtedly the best guides to theoretical and practical architecture in Japan. They create spatial domains where the desires of clients come true in dwellings whose design is directly based on the character of the place. Individual lifestyles and urban consistency finally meet in private spaces that have the soul of urban objects. Analysis of this site led to the identification of three different habitation generations. Within the constraints of the Sky Coverage Ratio, the building regulation that determines the profiles of structures to limit their shadow zones, it was time to make the first fourth generation structure, responding to the desires of the clients, a young couple, while transforming a severe limitation into precious quality. Sway House is a parallelepiped with a wooden framework clad in horizontal panels of galvanized steel. On a corner lot of 78 m2, it twists like a tango dancer, retracting a single upper peak. The inclined interior space eludes perspective canons and is divided into nine rooms on four staggered levels, for a total height of 10 meters. Each slab is a gigantic step whose volume communicates with its neighbors, multiplying the perception of the overall 107 m2 of floorspace. The white spiral staircase is the spine of the entire composition and connects all the spaces, from the entrance level, the bedroom and the husband’s studio on the first floor, to the living area and kitchen on the second, rising toward the open studio of the wife and the children’s room on the third level, and then landing, on the terrace, between an outdoor bathtub and the rooftops of Tokyo. With the exception of the first level, Sway House has no internal dividers, and the alternation of staggered horizontal levels generates oblique perspectives, as well as openings of different sizes, rising on inclined planes, to offer irregular quadrilateral frames for the view of the city. The interiors are clear and functional, with wooden floors. The suspended ceiling becomes a bookcase, the bench is also a sofa, concealing a belly full of objects. Is this the Japanese house of the near future?]]> 2008-12-03 10:26:42 Interni n°599 An eye on design http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,83,intIssueID,377,intItemID,395,intLangID,2.html Maddalena Padovani by Maddalena Padovani Munari made it an ironic art object, Starck designed them by thinking of the human body, Iacchetti has redesigned them, doubling the function. The most famous and most recent inventions in the world of eyeglasses. Some people think that to become an architect it is enough to don a pair of Le Corbusier glasses. This is why the site ‘A is for architecture’ offers their profile, for printing: you can cut it out and put them together to check out the effect of wearing the big, round glasses that were custom-made for the famous architect. It is true that glasses are the favorite and distinctive accessory of many architects, designers and creative personalities in general, who seem to reason that if they must where lenses, they might as well make them into something original and distinctive, almost an emblem of a certain aesthetic approach. Besides Le Corbusier, we can mention Achille Castiglioni, Daniel Libeskind, Karim Rashid and other designers, who in many cases have done the design themselves. But there are also designers who, apart from their own personal needs, have focused on the theme of spectacles, achieving interesting innovations in technical and functional terms. Experiences that demonstrate how the grafting of design and fashion can be fertile, extending the life of products and rethinking our ways of using them. The first and most illustrious example is undoubtedly Philippe Starck, who in 1996 proposed, together with Alain Mikli, the concept of ‘biovision’, or a collection of eyeglasses designed for human beings. The idea was to introduce biomechanics, to replace the traditional hinges and screws with the Biolink, a patented joint based on the human collarbone. A hinge completely free of screws with great freedom of movement, to guarantee constant grip at the temples offering greater comfort. Last October, Giulio Iacchetti presented an invention that sets technology aside to develop a much simpler concept: blending two pairs of glasses into one, or resolving, in a single object, the needs of people who have to use two types of lenses (reading and driving, clear and tinted, study and rest...). 4occhi is the name of the new model made by Aspesi Ottica Oftalmica. A double set of eyeglasses that can be turned upside down. The archetypal, timeless form, intentionally free of decoration and styling, expresses the simple but far from obvious functional principle. The list of famous designers who have worked on glasses could continue, shifting in time and space. We should definitely include the product-art objects of Bruno Munari, creator in the 1950s of the well known ‘Occhiali paraluce’ in bent, cut cardboard, but also glasses for watching black and white TV in color. And the ‘Studies for asymmetrical glasses’ by Gaetano Pesce in 1973, whose natural evolution might be the Sugar Kane line designed by Leandro Manuel Emede, based on the idea of asymmetrical lenses. If we look at the new products shown at the latest Mido in Milan, the most important trade fair in this sector, we can see that plenty of design energy is at work in this industry capable of producing record-setting sales figures. Among the most innovative proposals there are two models based on a rethinking of structural principles: 3Concept and Tornado. Designed by Pascal Lacotte, the first makes use of patented screwless technology to reduce the frame to a simple bar of steel shaped to support the acetate stems. This simplification makes it easy to quickly transform the glasses: with two simple movements it is possible to remove the front to replace it with sunglasses, or vice versa. Winner of the Good Design Award, Tornado by Derapage is a stratified frame, without welding. Three different parts in steel laminate, mounted with an original system of rivets used in microtechnical applications and fine jewelry, give rise to a highly technological solution for a light, practically indestructible product. Finally, the Charitas glasses by Theo, a Belgian brand that is undoubtedly one of the most innovative on the market today. The original line without angles, designed precisely to continuously follow the form of the face and head, has been obtained thanks to more than one invention, first of all a particular hinge that gives elasticity and, at the same time, strength to the metal structure placed horizontally, not vertically. The most original and characteristic aspect of this model is that the lenses are recessed with respect to the frame, which is reduced to a sinuous, minimal sign; in this way, they can assume a slightly converging position, ideal for our optical axis, which converges toward a single, though variable, perspective. The result: an effective functional solution for those who need to see better, but also an original, distinctive element for those who think of glasses as a tool for being seen. Architects and designers, first of all.]]> 2008-12-01 16:33:35 Interni n°599 Studio Fragile:<br /> a dialogue with images http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,377,intItemID,394,intLangID,2.html Fragile
text by Laura Traldi design by Fragile
text by Laura Traldi To create a relationship of dialectical exchange with clients. To facilitate access to a wide, varied range of products. To underline the Italian character of the brand. With a new image created by Fragile, Trony tries to make the renewal in progress of its retail outlets more visible, proposing a shopping experience based on the idea of simplicity. To attract the public, seduce it with dialogue, orient its purchases through a visual language that speaks to everyone and should last in time. Communication in the world of retailing is complex, appealing first to emotions, then to the intellect. This intrinsic complexity is joined by the presence of more competition and the resulting need, for retail giants, to reposition themselves in a coherent, attractive way with respect to an audience that is increasingly varied and volatile. This is the context for the updating of the image of Trony, the big Italian consumer electronics chain. The starting point is a new sales model for the stores, followed by a new image for all outlets, designed by Fragile. This Milanbased studio, guided by Mario Trimarchi and Frida Doveil, has been commissioned to design a system of communication and signage to facilitate dialogue between the consumer and the commercial space, underlining the Italian character of Trony – something often not perceived by younger consumers. A universal system, then, easy to understand, using contemporary languages, but capable of connecting with the historic characteristics of the brand (like the color blue), and open enough to guarantee longevity. The solution proposed is a visual alphabet composed of a few elements, to use together or separately in a rigorous way, in keeping with a precise visual order inside the retail spaces, from the entrance to the price cards on the shelves. The main characteristic of this alphabet is the presence of ‘instant people’, stylized replicas of normal folks, consumers who different greatly in terms of taste and age, and become the icon of the variety of Trony’s customers. There are also numbers written out in letters, to underline the Italian background of the brand. To connect all the elements of the system, Fragile has utilized a red ‘colon’ punctuation mark (red is the color of the underlining of the Trony logo), to indicate an open system of dialogue between the brand and its clients. The new communication exists on a white background, the new color of the Trony stores: the furnishings and walls will be white, for greater visibility, transparency and clarity of communication. The four elements of the new identity constitute a dynamic system: the same alphabet can be combined in different ways, in extended or shorter versions, through the sales outlet: from the entrances to product signage; from the uniforms of the sales assistants to the streetfront media, shop windows and external facades. “The capacity to adapt, to change and evolve inside a pre-set scheme that is immediately recognizable,” Frida Doveil explains, “is one of the aspects we feel is most important in the design of the image of a retail space, which exists today but will also exist tomorrow”. Because a brand experience can only be consolidated over the long term.]]> 2008-12-01 16:23:27 Interni n°599 Multiple unit http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,60,intIssueID,377,intItemID,393,intLangID,2.html Paolo Ulian
text by Odoardo Fioravanti design by Paolo Ulian
text by Odoardo Fioravanti Created for the exhibition Memoriae Visionariae (Florence, 23-26 October), Matriosca is a chair that narrates the expressive potential of even the most banal objects. A poetic reflection on the concept of stacking and the serial production of industrial products. Projects often complete the character of their maker in the third dimension, offering a real glimpse of his or her personality. Like that of Paolo Ulian, a designer gifted with charisma and capable of transmitting and representing his leanings through products. Ulian, the only Italian designer to have become part of Droog Design in their finest hour, conceals very high design quality behind understatement. His career is full of inspired projects that narrate his poetics and readily present their beauty to the gaze. Invited to participate in the exhibition Memoriae Visionariae, curated by Stefano Caggiano and held in Florence from 23 to 26 October, Ulian has interpreted the theme by making the project Matriosca. Munari taught: “Observe at length, understand deeply, make things fast” and Ulian, in this new product, seems to demonstrate that lesson. The Matriosca project comes from observation of a stack of outdoor chairs made of resin, of the most common variety: the ones you often see outside the most normal barcafes. The designer observes and understands that those objects packed into a pile symbolize technical reproducibility of a standard, but might give rise to a new system of objects. The project consists in the progressive, modular shortening of the legs of nine stacked chairs, so that the tenth chair closes the stack, remaining at the original height. The sum of these objects creates a sort of armchair with the same bulk as a single chair: an image segmented by the repetition of the forms, but made solid by the stacking of lots of material. When the unit is separated into parts you get ten chairs of different heights, a sort of ergonomic paradigm: a chair for everyone, each to his own measure. You can choose the normal chair or a slightly lower one, for those who always want to keep their feet firmly on the ground. There are smaller ones suitable for children, all the way to the smallest –just 15 cm high– that might be perfect for sitting on the sand, or the lawn. The utopia of varying industrial products is thus materialized in the composition of these ten pieces: a realization of balance and intelligence. In a sort of dogmatic formulation, it is nice to think that this project is simultaneously one and ten in number, where distinction does not necessarily preclude unity.]]> 2008-12-01 16:15:27 Interni n°599 William Sawaya http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,84,intIssueID,377,intItemID,392,intLangID,2.html Cristina Morozzi text Cristina Morozzi The variety of his creations speaks of an almost existential urgency to avoid repetition. He doesn’t follow trends, he foresees them, with acute epochal sensitivity. He expertly handles technology and crafts. He makes innovation coexist with respect for tradition. He is daring, but never overlooks harmony and elegance. His studio in the center of Milan, protected by a shady garden, is an oasis sheltered from the tumult, a place to work calmly, with care. William Sawaya, reserved and courteous, seems to underscore this atmosphere: “I prefer quiet design. But it shouldn’t be mute, either! Today there is too much noise, design is made as a spectacle, to be sold at auctions. Whatever happened to the utopia of industrial design and big numbers, that of the great masters?” Silence is the risk of the opposite extreme. William certainly doesn’t run that risk. If we look at his work as a whole we see an uncommon expressive ‘ardor’. His projects can be defined as quiet, due to the elegance of their lines, but they are definitely not mute. They reveal elaborate, varied eloquence, charged with emotions: attention to different cultures, knowledge of the legacy of the past, fascination with technology, admiration for fine craftsmanship. Speaking of elegance might seem limiting, today. It is an old term that indicates measure and harmony, and design seems to have neglected this aspect in favor of cruder, less harmonious gestures. But William doesn’t mind being called elegant. “I would like to be Sunday best”, he says, “or a spoonful of caviar after lots of corn flakes. Life is too short to always dress in gray. And I’m not afraid of contradictions. I get bored, so I need change”. On the screen in the meeting room we see images of his latest creations, important projects that bear witness to his rare capacity to handle precious materials and his talent for invention of wonderful effects: a 60-meter yacht with onyx bathrooms and galuchat facings; the Klapsons hotel in Singapore with a sparkling steel sphere, five meters in diameter, in the lobby. Now under construction, a large office building in Saudi Arabia with walls in cowhide, silkscreened with Arabic characters... Though his works of architecture are multiplying around the world, William’s heart still beats for design. He would like to work on more ecological, democratic projects, but the reality of Sawaya & Moroni forces him to come to terms with limited quantities. In 2003 he designed, in collaboration with Corepla, the national consortium for recycling of plastic packaging, a chair in heterogeneous recycled plastic, the Bella Rifatta. The design gives a humble product a higher aesthetic dignity, liberating recycling from its usual connotations, demonstrating that beauty can also be combined with ethics. The Calla chair produced in 2000 by Heller, an American brand that specializes in the moulding of plastics, is now in the permanent collection of MoMA New York. Even when he works on big industrial production, the originality of his touch is always evident: fluid lines, sensual surfaces that seem to be modeled by light, playing over the daring curves. At times he shapes materials, almost like wax, as in the Darwish seat from 1999, in aluminium and bronze, or the bronze Gravity chair in 2002. In other cases he seems to sculpt, with a chisel, like the Diva chair in solid wood and cowhide, 1987. He designs volutes of curved plywood that seem like spirals of a silken ribbon, as in the Patty Diffusa chair in 1993. Or he uses steel almost like a diamond, making facets to gain unexpected reflections. His silver pieces seem like sabers. Glass blossoms and bulges, like a carnivorous plant. He doesn’t indulge in mannerism, a true temptation for those with a quick hand, but breaks the rules, updates aesthetics, often ahead of his time. He dares to be sensual, refining the weight of the flesh, making it levitate. He makes fearless hybrids, contaminations between the clarity of glass and steel and the body of gilded friezes, as in the Barock’n’Roll series, 2005. But he never overlooks function, even delivering unexpected results, like hidden drawers in the shelves of bookcases (High Light 2006). His work ranges from faucets (Zucchetti) to silver, glass to crystal (Baccarat), chairs to bookcases, divans to tables. He always changes keys, risking and experimenting without losing identity, because every project comes from his passion for the job, projected into the future, but based on knowledge of traditions, familiarity with a wide range of materials, and that expressive ‘ardor’ that, like a fire, smolders in the embers under the ashes.]]> 2008-12-02 12:25:47 Interni n°599 NewPrimitive http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,377,intItemID,391,intLangID,2.html Nadia Lionello
image processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino by Nadia Lionello
image processing by Enrico Suà Ummarino The result of a combination of creativity, craftsmanship and technology, preferably in natural materials applied in an original way. A style with a primordial look that sets aside the usual dictates of design to make objects suggested by instinct, but without overlooking the details.]]> 2008-12-01 15:38:16 Interni n°599 Tables & Co. http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/PublicationVertical,intCategoryID,67,intIssueID,377,intItemID,390,intLangID,2.html Nadia Lionello
photos Efrem Raimondi by Nadia Lionello
photos Efrem Raimondi Harmonious structures and irregular, round or profiled tops for the tables, while the chairs become more versatile, light, practical and original. Furnishings with essential functions for everyday activities like eating, playing, working…]]> 2008-12-02 11:51:36 Interni n°599 Girona, Spain, Basic House http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,377,intItemID,388,intLangID,2.html Anna & Eugeni Bach
arquitectes photos by Jordi Bernadó, Nuria Fuentes
text by Matteo Vercelloni design by Anna & Eugeni Bach
arquitectes photos by Jordi Bernadó, Nuria Fuentes
text by Matteo Vercelloni In the village of Gaüses, near Girona, Spain, a small home-atelier designed by two young architects as a painting studio and weekend refuge. A project built with a very small budget, winner of the FAD 2008 opinion award in the Architecture category. How to build a house today with just 70,000 euros? An amount that would usually just be enough to renovate a medium-sized flat? The budget was the starting point in this project by Anna and Eugeni Bach, architects just over thirty. Materials, techniques and human resources had to be local, to optimize every construction process, reducing distances and waste. So the whole project had to be ‘eco-compatible’, by necessity, combining compositional invention with the use of local energies and products. A rectangular block became the space for working, extending the domestic interiors toward the surrounding greenery by means of a large porticoed border on two sides, and an essential pergola structure composed of aluminium section that supports a roof of reeds, a common feature in the Mediterranean. The second ‘skin’ of the house (which can be replaced, due to normal wear, every two years, for a total cost of 120 euros) does not only organize the roof in three sections – built with sloped pitches to conform to local standards – but also descends vertically to form perimeter screens that underline the character of open-air rooms and routes, including the large pergola. The smooth cement floors join inside and outside, together with the large sliding corner window that ‘cuts’ the walls, projecting the large living area toward the portico and garden. The external walls, painted with green and white vertical stripes, partially erase the elementary form of the rectangle, creating an irregular rhythm that is enhanced by the shadows of the canework. The striped motif marks the two sides toward the portico, while the remaining sides are painted green, functioning as unified screens to welcome the projection of the shadows of trees, utilized as ‘natural decoration’. The roof, beyond the first pitch of the portico, has been subdivided into two pitches sloping inward, corresponding to zones in the house: the first, covering almost 2/3 of the surface, is for the living areas (kitchen, dining, living or atelier). An accessorized spine behind the kitchen – made of wood panels reassembled from packing crates – contains the accessway and the bathroom, separated from the two bedrooms. Rain water is collected in a well for watering the garden, while a ventilated interspace of 30 cm extending across the whole roof, with ‘uralite’ panels, visible from inside, produces good insulation, drawing the warm air toward the upper part of the house and keeping the bedrooms cool with a natural method of climate control.]]> 2008-12-02 11:17:53 Interni n°599 The house that slides to the sea http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,377,intItemID,387,intLangID,2.html MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
photos Brian MacKay-Lyons, Greg Richardson, Manuel Schnell
text  Alessandro Rocca project MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects
photos Brian MacKay-Lyons, Greg Richardson, Manuel Schnell
text  Alessandro Rocca In Canada, Upper Kingsburg, in an old village near Halifax, the Sliding House is a vacation home designed as an elementary box, carved and hollowed by incisions that alter its symmetry, with effects of instability and false dynamism. A construction related to the barns of this segment of Canadian coast, a structure that seems to slide toward the sea while, at the same time, penetrating the terrain, expressing a sense of belonging to the primitive landscape of Nova Scotia. The house rests on the ground like a ship on the sea, a bit sunken, a bit suspended, as if waiting for another wave to push it toward the sea that is waiting there, less than 500 meters away. The house is about to set sail: the line of the roof runs parallel to the slope of the land, and the visual effect is that the house seems to be sliding toward the ocean. The slope of the roof underlines that of the hill, which is actually just 6 degrees. Proudly facing the sea, the western facade of the house has an ambiguous expression, like a face in a curious asymmetrical sneer. The horizontal eye above it is a simple loggia, with a nautical look, entirely in wood, like all the interiors of the house. “Louis Kahn”, Brian MacKay-Lyons reminds us, “thought a building should not have more than two materials, of which one would be glass”, and this superb house has been conceived in that spirit of simplicity that is so deeply rooted in American modernism; a spirit found in the architecture of Kahn, but also the art of Sol LeWitt and the music of John Cage, who were both students at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. The Sliding House is an elementary monument, a construction related to the rural edifices of the zone. It is the result of an encounter between David Peters and Rhonda Rubinstein, a creative couple with a young son, Dashel, and Brian MacKay-Lyons, a talented architect and part of a family with centuries-old roots in the Halifax region. Seven years ago the couple decided to build a summer home in Canada, and Peters turned to Brian MacKay-Lyons, whom he had known for thirty years and for whom he worked as a graphic artist and website designer. David and Rhonda purchased a lot from the architect in Upper Kingsburg, an old village (founded in 1750) near Halifax, where MacKay-Lyons owns about 20 hectares of land on which he has built 12 houses over the course of 25 years. The couple wanted a quick and relatively economical project, for a vacation home of about 150 sq meters, and MacKay- Lyons, with partner Talbot Sweetapple, imagined a parallelepiped cut and hollowed by incisions that alter its symmetry and generate an effect of instability, suggesting false movement. On the northern side the house protects itself from the cold wind with its thickness, a large air chamber containing the staircase, the bathrooms and the kitchen with fireplace. On the opposite side, to the south, a ribbon window opens to the sunlight and the view of the meadows and the ocean, in a sheltered, welcoming summer habitat, a panoramic promenade that terminates, on both the short sides, in loggias facing the landscape. The structure is in wood, the external walls entirely covered with a continuous skin of corrugated sheet metal, a cold industrial material that forms a contrast with the warm poplar interiors. The hundreds of slats of poplar, with tones varying from red to blanched, generate an intense pattern with optical effects in the hypnotic uniformity of the floors, walls and ceilings.]]> 2008-12-02 14:19:26 Interni n°599 Michele (or the happiness of doing)<br /> http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,9,intIssueID,377,intItemID,385,intLangID,2.html Andrea Branzi text by Andrea Branzi It’s not easy for me to talk about Michele De Lucchi and his work, because to some extent our stories have often overlapped and continue to do so; in spite of age difference, we have been part of the same cultural episodes and had many of the same friends. This is why his work, so different from mine, is nevertheless very familiar, and I can see some apparently remote but still very active shared roots. Michele, at the end of the 1960s, left Padua, where he had taken part in the founding of the situationist group Cavart, and came to complete his studies in Florence, attracted (like Marco Zanini, Dante Donegani and others) by the presence of the Florentine radical movement. He had a chance, there, to work with Superstudio, a group that was an antagonist of our Archizoom Associati. A few years later I convinced him to come to Milan, where I had moved, like many other members of the movement, and where Michele became part of the vast circle of young designers that formed around Ettore Sottsass (a movement I have defined as Sotts-art), collaborating with him at Olivetti, and later with Memphis. So these are his roots, a singular mixture of radicalism and the best product design. Michele crossed those eras in the best way, acquiring growing independence and great professional ability, to the point of taking over from Ettore at the helm of the Olivetti design division. This mixture of radicalism and design capacities should come as no surprise, because that migration that happened in the early 1970s brought the Milan design system, on the threshold of a difficult passage to the postmodern, an influx of new ideas and energies, which took form in the birth of “design primario”, Alchymia, Memphis, Domus Academy, Modo, and that whole collection of initiatives known as Nuovo Design Italiano. The professional (and commercial) successes of Michele provided, in that context, important evidence of the fact that the new Italian design was not just a minority group of anarchists, but had the aim and capacity to become a new cultural and professional player, leading the whole Italian design system, updating it and guiding it in a new phase of its history. The ex-radicals proved to be the heirs to an experimental tradition to which not only Sottsass, but also Munari or Castiglioni, belonged. Without overlooking their long history, starting in the 1960s, they knew how to renew a genetic legacy that was unique in Europe. The drawings and the little wooden houses of Michele, like his Produzione Privata, should be understood, in this sense, not as escape from professional commitment, but as an integral part of it. A veritable foundation for it, because they reflect the radical idea that design feeds on continuous research and the profession requires incessant experimentation. Architecture, like design, does not consist only in responding to the needs of clients, businesses and markets, but also in an important autonomous activity of reflection, studying new archetypes and new languages that constitute an imaginary territory for intervention in reality, just like that of real buildings and products. Today the world of design is not limited only to physical realities that can be found on the market or on streets. It also extends to a boundless media universe, composed of an iconic flow that circulates on markets of ideas, driving global innovation. These little houses of rough wood exist, then, in reality, equal to the reality of concrete houses in our cities. So it should come as no surprise that they are made with hatchets and power saws, utterly different from the subtle, sophisticated finishing of Michele’s furniture, because they do not represent a miniaturization of his projects, but an alternative, based on study of more rugged, potent archetypes. A long, noble tradition exists of wooden cabins proposed as a starting point for a new architecture; beginning with those proposed by the Enlightenment philosophers of the 1700s, a primitive architecture for ‘noble savages’, castaways from the era of darkness. But this is not the case of Michele. They also remind us of the research projects of Superstudio on the extra-urban material culture of the early 1970s, but that research was aimed at tracing back, in Florentine character, to the roots of an eternal modernity; and that is not the case of Michele. The reference to peasant culture has been a recurring theme in the work of the avant-gardes, starting in the 1920s with Kazimir Malevich and his Ukrainian huts, as rediscovery of the ancient archetypes overshadowed by industrial culture and bourgeois society; but that is not the case of Michele. Walter Gropius also looked to the image of the house as a place of recomposition of the subversive thrusts of the avant-gardes and their call to order; but that is not the case of Michele. In the case of Michele, in effect, we find something different, a major return to the ‘power and the happiness of doing’, directly by hand, with primordial technologies. His models are not conceptual, theoretical or educational, the are self-referential scraps of raw wood, self-sufficient, perfectly complete in all their imperfection. Refined, in their poverty; approximate, in an overly perfect world; happy, in their heaviness, in a world of overly light, unhappy projects. As William Morris wrote, in fact, the ‘happiness of the maker’ should be an important, very visible part of the project itself. As direct testimony, in an alienated universe, that a possibility does exist of being happy with one’s own work; an indispensable condition for making other people happy too. Otherwise we will have fought (and designed) in vain.]]> 2008-12-01 14:41:12 Interni n°599 Hiroshima, Saijo House http://www.internimagazine.it/Dynamic/Publication,intCategoryID,3,intIssueID,377,intItemID,383,intLangID,2.html Suppose Design Office
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone design by Suppose Design Office
photos and text by Sergio Pirrone ...the dark blue pyramid stands out like a hat, covering the gestures of a young couple and their three children... This is the case of a 34-year-old talent named Makoto Tanijiri, chief architect of Suppose Design Office. Under the skies of Hiroshima, he has built about 50 works of architecture, almost all single-famil