This years Salone Satellite 2012 theme – “Design Technology – a special tribute to Steve Jobs”  (who taught us to dream and to believe in the possibilities of technology and creativity)  was a fascinating gallery of projects, conceived by 750 young designers ( under 35 ) and included 17 international Schools of Design.

 

By the time the Salone slows down many of these young designers will have accumulated showrooms for representation, architects who want to collaborate, designers that wanted to buy, patrons that thought we were crazy but in a good way. But most importantly most will have become more confident in their ability to be relevant and worthy

This year a section of the Salone Satellite was devoted to the first 15 years of the exhibition celebrated with site-specific installations on the theme ” Design – Technology” by 15 former and and current participants in the Satellite

 

 

Representing all the design schools and university departments that have been invited to participate in the SaloneSatellite this year – and underscoring the fundamental importance of a good education in the professional formation of an aspiring designer – is ECAL, Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne

The Salone Satellite was created in 1998 for the express purpose of bringing together, in the same place and time, the most promising young designers from all over the world with the most important business people and talent scouts gathered in Milan to visit or exhibit at the Salone

The Salone Satellite means so much to the World, and not just the “Design World,” because here you can find the ideas of the future.

Within each booth there is some glimpse of how things can be. Perhaps you will see how things can be better, perhaps you will see how things can remain the same, and maybe if you are lucky you’ll catch a glimpse of how things will be

The Salone Satellite immediately became an unparallelled observatory of young international creativity.

As always, a prestigious Selection Committee composed of key international figures in the world of design, architecture and communication reviewed the proposals of many designers and pared them down to those who participated in the 15th edition.

The selection was as competitive as ever, in order to maintain the sterling reputation of the Salone Satellite, the world’s foremost springboard for promising young designers into the marketplace and the design star system.

The Satellite Selection Committee has included such luminaries as Giulio Castelli, Italo Lupi, Aessandro Mendini, Paola Antonelli, Philippe Starck, Mario Bellini, Maddalena De Padova, Carlo Guglielmi, Alberto Alessi and Pierluigi Cerri.

The Salone Satellite is a unique showcase, where a number of designers who are by now world-famous made their debut: Matali Crasset, Patrick Jouin, Paolo Ulian, Satyendra Pakhalé, Tomoko Azumi, Lorenzo Damiani, Ilkka Suppanen, Nendo, Adriano Design, Harri Koskinen, Xavier Lust, Front, to name but a few.

Avverati, the Italian word for something that has come true, such as a dream. Avvèrati – with the stress on the second syllable – turns it into an invitation to make oneself come true, to realise one’s own dreams and creative potential.  Which is exactly what Cosmit and the Salone Satellite are dedicated to helping young designers do.

 

 

Alongside the selected few were 17 design schools ( incl RMIT – Melbourne Design Movement), of which the following participated for the first time at the Salone Satellite: American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; Art Future design School, Russia; Centro de Investigaciones de Diseño Industrial, Mexico; Central Academy of Fine Arts, China; Enaip-CSF, Italy; Hanseo University, Korea; Istituto Europeo di Design, Spain; Kanazawa College of Art, Japan; New York Institute of Technology, USA; Politecnico di Milano, Italy; PUC-Pontificia Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Macedonia; Technical School Wood Art, Serbia; Universidad Piloto de Colombia, Colombia; Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany; University of Cambridge, Great Britain.

Winners of the 15th Salone Satellite Award 2012

First Prize > Raul Lauri (Spain)

Decafe Lamp – made with biodegradable material derived from coffee grounds. This award is given in recognition of the design development, research and experimentation with biodegradable materials used in the design of this lighting fixture.

 

Second Prize > Wow (Spain)

El Botijo Flask – a variation of a traditional Spanish flask that naturally cools water. Described as determinedly traditional with a modern twist, this useful and sustainable design is highly commercial. A contemporary take on an age-old shape, the botijo uses an evaporative cooling technique.

Third Prize > Hinnerud / Enoksson / Boldt (Sweden)

Enamel Table – The bathroom comes to the kitchen in this design which uses an enameling technique that was traditionally used to glaze bathtubs. This steel coated enamel table can be used indoors and outdoors.

Special Mention > Creativeans (Singapore)

Pod – Fabric-reinforced polypropylene food containers. Their design was recognized for its creative use of materials. Creativeans is an award-winning design collective with offices in Singapore and Milan and consists of Kimming Yap, Yulia Saksen, Khairul Hussin and Sharina Bi

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San Patrignano, is the largest residential treatment center in Europe, and it is home to over 1,300 young men and women who are recovering from drug addiction and social exclusion through projects including high level professional vocation training.

One of the important fields in which they learn skills is viticulture and wine making, leading the Community to produce more than 600,000 bottles of premium wine annually. The wine is aged in French oak casks, which are used for a maximum of three harvests – after which they are usually destroyed.

 

A new design project by San Patrignano – New life for wooden barrels – The Third Age of Wood was launched at the Salone 2012

The “Barrique recycling project” draws on an impressive list of “30 x world renowned designers” who created unique pieces using recycled French oak casks from the Community’s winery.

 

All 30 pieces were built by the 200 young men of San Patrignano’s woodworking and wrought iron workshops, with wood recycled from their winery’s oak casks.

Head of the carpentry shop, Marco Stefanini, explains, “It was great to see the young people here create these works of art alongside world famous designers. It is a great feeling to see them get excited about their work and gain confidence in their abilities.”

Through ancient trades, young people find a new life and used wood is recycled into a work of art. Just as the barriques are given a new chance at life, so too are the young men working in the design and carpentry projects at San Patrignano, who are (re)building their professional calling and life in the Community.

“It is truly wonderful to see once discarded casks be given a new chance. The fact that thirty artists have created unique pieces out of San Patrignano’s oak barrels writes a new chapter in history, truly a monument not only to art and beauty, but sustainability as well. These objects are not only appealing to the eye, but also educational.”  …. Lamberto Vallarino Gancia, President of Federvini.

Thanks to receiving a prime location at the Salone ( thanks to the support of Cosmit ) ..   “We are sure that this project will be a great success”

“We would like to remind everyone that, through the humble and noble work of a carpenter, it is possible to rediscover important values, those that are necessary for us in life and permit us to overcome adversity.”

The participants in the “Barrique Project”, who had their pieces exhibited at the Salone del Mobile 2012:

Riccardo Arbizzoni, Claudio Bellini, Mario Botta, Giuliano Cappelletti, Luisa Castiglioni, Pierluigi Cerri, Aldo Cibic, Antonio Citterio, Carlo Colombo, Valerio Cometti, Michele De Lucchi, Terry Dwan, Erasmo Figini, Elio Fiorucci, Giuseppe Leida, Gualtiero Marchesi, Alberto Meda, Alessandro Mendini, Angela Missoni, Paolo Nava, Franco and Matteo Origoni, Alessandro Pedron, Paolo Pininfarina, Karim Rashid, Maurizio and Davide Riva, Alejandro Ruiz, Marc Sadler, Luca Scacchetti, Aldo Spinelli, Matteo Thun, San Patrignano

The project catalog was created in partnership with Origoni – Steiner

 

 

Project Philosophy

Casks, precious custodians in the life of wine, after their first life as a tree, have the poetic task of preserving and ageing their important contents. It is thanks to them that wine becomes enriched with various aromas and unusual flavours. In short, a real work of art is born. At the conclusion of their important labour, many are sadly often left to an end not befitting the painstaking work that they accomplished, being used as pulp.

The discernment, ingenuity and unity of people who love wood have now ensured that, from now on, these “botti” (from the Latin buttis) will experience a well-deserved deliverance in all of our daily lives.

Thanks to their poetic life, the casks have attracted the attention and curiosity of the world’s most established architects, who have got down to work conceiving designer furniture.

The history is short-lived, from tree to cask, from cask to furniture. At the same time, entire pages would nevertheless be needed due to the simple fact that not only the cask will have a second life, but also the people who created these furnishings with the same dedication with which the casks hugged the wine within them.

They, too, will design a new life, a highly important personal change that is ethical as well as professional…   We’re talking about the young residents of San Patrignano.

 

Praise and thanks not only go to the young men and women who work in the joinery department, but to all those who plant new vines, those who lovingly tend to these trees for months before they bear fruit, those who have the expert knowledge and choose the bunches of grapes and all the young people who work in the various departments every day to overcome their problems.

By way of this project, the cask, wine’s best friend, will now be the future star of furnishings, providing a wake-up call to those who experience that taste of wine they tasted years before from the very furniture within their own four walls.

I’d like to finish by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to everyone in the whole San Patrignano Community for having allowed me to work with them.

Le botti e il vino… il vino e il legno …… Davide Riva

The 31 projects

Riccardo Arbizzoni – Tommy

 

We give stronger wings to those who are starting to fly again. San Patrignano: a bridge to unite, a wing to fly, a bench to communicate

Riccardo Arbizzoni with the help of Tommaso Berna (7 years to continue flying higher and higher…)

Claudio Bellini – Dogadoga

 

Accustomed to working together humbly to contain, sustain, protect, hold and carry, the wooden staves, an elementary part made in a high-quality and living material, have made an important contribution to humankind from time immemorial. Even now, untiring, our staves of French oak, extricated from their original function, are together for a new adventure.

Mario Botta – Botta

 

The elements recovered from the concave casks are used as a seat or surface for a bookcase. The vertical parts are joined at the top so as to guarantee the overlay of the individual modules. The strength of this system clearly lies in the multiplicity of elements, which, as they are repeated over several overlapped levels, can redesign.

Giuliano Cappelletti – Steve table

 

From Maurizio and Davide Riva’s idea to reuse the oak of the San Patrignano casks here comes STAVE TABLE.

The wood of the barriques, seasoned over time and browned by the wine contained in the casks, isn’t destroyed after just 3 vintages, but lives on thanks to this project that focuses on recycling and environmental sustainability. STAVE TABLE stems from the idea of respecting the original form of the cask, but with a new way of binding together the staves instead of using a string to eliminate any cracks, as was done for millennia (the origin of this is unknown).

Instead, we assembled the single staves simply by turning the profile, almost as if to show to the user what is contained inside, the interior of the barrique: the wine, which leaves visible signs on the barrique as it ages inside the casks. The planks, fixed to a metal structure, thereby leave a space between one stave and the next, ensuring that light passes through the structure, creating a cadenced chiaroscuro effect, making the final outcome light and intriguing.

The barriques of the casks and the metal of the structure that supports them, combined with a transparent glass surface, emphasize the effect created by the staves and respect the natural, recyclable character of the materials used, without giving in to the excesses of design.

A simple, recognisable style aimed at environmental sustainability, yet not lacking in emotive faculties and what lies at the basis of STAVE TABLE.

Luisa Castiglioni e Maddalena Scarzella – Abbraccio

 

Like in an embrace four staves of a cask unite in couples forming two crosses. The natural curvature of the stave allows two supports to be created through the cross-shaped union. The concavity facing the floor becomes the foot; facing upwards it becomes the support for a glass surface that is 120 cm in diameter. Four knurled tubes unite the two pairs defining the height of the table. The clear glass surface lets you see the stave with its indistinguishable traits in terms of the shape and the reddish colour left by the wine.

Pierluigi Cerri – Vassoio

 

I find the inclination to recover manufactured articles and put them to other uses commendable. The project consists in dismissing the original function in favour of a new one. This project includes all the other “Barrique” projects. Barriques are small French oak casks used to age and aromatize fine wines with care. Once they have exhausted their role, they lend themselves to new interpretations.

Illustrious and unique precedents recommend that overly ambitious goals be set aside, such as the attempt by Diogenes the Cynic to instil alternative life models. It is better to set off along the way of shapes that may already be interpreted in the sophisticated and barely perceptible curvature of the barrique, carving out a portion to create a tray of restrained expressive ambition, yet which nevertheless regains its purpose in the ability to communicate its provenance.

Aldo Cibic – Chinese roof

 

A designer’s work, I have to say, is a fun one; one day, a friend (in this case) sends you an old stick of curved wood and asks you to make it into something interesting. It’s not any old piece of wood, but one that possesses a history with various implications: I’d like to point out that the raw material already has a soul of its own.

What happens next is that you look at it and hope that an idea comes to you, which sparks a dignified reincarnation. To get a piece of curved wood, a type of workmanship is usually needed that involves investment, meaning that you can only make a piece if reproduced in a large number. In this case, the wood was already curved and it was in search of a new destiny. Those sticks of wood became an anatomically agreeable double bench, which, with the slant that I gave to the seats, made them resemble a Chinese house.

After all, what I like is that it became an original and delicate piece of urban furniture in my eyes.

Antonio Citterio – Barrique

 

The small armchair is made from reusing the extraordinary seasoned oak wood of the casks, making the most of its intrinsic properties without overly emphasizing its previous use. The staves, suitably treated to remove any traces of tannin, are assembled on the wooden structure of the seat using elements (also in wood), which resemble the bung of the casks. The result is a comfortable seat in polished oak that recalls the former life of the prized material in a detached and unromantic way.

Carlo Colombo – Wine Table

 

I began with the history and emergence of the barrique. Thanks to the bending of the wood, ancient civilizations could quickly replace the old methods of preserving and transporting foodstuffs because barrels were so shockproof and easy to transport that they became the only evaluation system of a ship’s load. This keystone of the economy and old transportation inspired me to create this structure, which, like a backbone stemming from the reuse of the barrique, sustains and lends stability to the supporting surface. Moreover, this binding of curved elements held together by a straightforward joint and two boards recalls the magnificent old ships, which sailed and ruled the water in centuries past.

Valerio Cometti – Horn

 

In designing these objects, I was inspired by the respect with which San Patrignano rebuilds the souls of those people who have temporarily mislaid their self-love. Much more humbly, yet observing this metaphor, I took the staves that I came across and by doing as little as possible, just respecting their shape and character, I gave them a new existence.

Always intending to pay homage to the work of the Community, I wanted to create light-filled objects, lamps, metaphors of a new beginning and a renewed ability to design energy and hope, just like the individuals who know how to illuminate their way as well as that of those close to them upon leaving San Patrignano. Silently observing a stave, I realised that most of the work involved in creating the shape had already been done: doubly curved surfaces, variable profiles with a wonderful tension and elongated proportions.

I just had to restrict myself to removing a bit of wood and the job would be done. I’m not a fan of decoration; it always strikes me as an afterthought, a false addition to bolster up a weak project. But, in this instance, I found the mark of time and of wine profoundly imprinted on the inside of the stave and I made this the distinctive element of the beauty of “Horn”. As I am a real believer in the value of cohesion, as a man and as a designer, I turned to low-consumption LED sources, which are in perfect cohesion with the sensitive and precise nature regarding resources that underpins the entire project.

Michele De Lucchi – Doga

 

The allure of the barrique wood brings all the emotion of wine, the expanses of vineyards, the colours of the harvest, and the perfume of the cellar where the wine is aged. The oak casks have been saved, dismantled to retrieve every stave and used as the stripped material to create new furniture.

The Stave Table makes the most of the curvature of the casks in the four legs, which are slightly concave compared with the tabletop, giving them a nice sober shape, and in the tabletop, made from the combination of several curved staves. The stave is treated like a basic unit of materia, as a module that, repeated, linked in a straightforward joint and supported by the metal structure, also contributes a material worth to the object: the beauty of the wood, perfumed by the wine.

The young residents of San Patrignano were the ones who made it in their joinery workshops.

Terry Dwan – Catch me

 

Reused material, eco-friendly manufacturing techniques and interior and insightful design are the constraints that guided my choices for this project. I attempted to re-design the form and function of the barrique, which explains why the distinctive shape of the plank made me rethink the form yet with a new liquid content. I wished to create an object whereby the exterior and interior of the stave, nevertheless always hidden from sight, were clear, where the distinctive blood red colour is predominant and indicative of the life of the wood and the wine.

The iron cup at the bottom contains, envelops and sustains the planks, becoming a supporting structure and container at the same time, all of which is held together by the ring at the top according to the same principle applied to the creation of the casks themselves. I find the workshop/school concept that is encouraged at San Patrignano interesting.

Generally speaking, this Community’s on-going work is excellent in rebuilding a new lifestyle. The vision of the future is limited by the same constraints that affect the process of life, namely uncertainty. I, myself, began my life in a direction with preconceived ideas about where I would end up and, on the contrary, it looks like a zig-zagging path. The same process of life can also be seen in the designer’s work.

I am fascinated by the – sometimes circular – progression that we unconsciously follow.

Erasmo Figini – Michele

 

I’ve always loved salvaging and transforming things. I’ve worked with barriques in other projects in the past and Riva’s proposal struck me as an extremely interesting occasion to develop a different use of these woods.

The idea of a chaise longue came from the invitation provided by the various elements that make up the barrique: the curvature of the staves, the naturalness of the wood and the sturdiness of the metal that secures the staves. An essential and clean form that, through a neat sequence of fullness and emptiness, reveals a sinuous yet energetic structure with a strong expressive force. The suggested design is the resting body. The saddled base is linked to the traditional storage layout of the barriques in the cellar, just like the joints of the crossbars, which reflect the old fixing techniques between the supporting elements.

Utmost simplicity is upheld in the finish, which retains all the nuances of the wood impregnated with wine sediments.

Elio Fiorucci – Hick

 

The Hick pocket emptying console stemps from the combination of three barrique staves, assembled to create a y-shaped table.

This shape is suggested by the plastic tension of the curvature of the staves. A cylinder in the middle, consisting of the barrique bung, acts as the fulcrum/hinge of the y-shape and determines the opening width. The horizontal stave, as well as creating the shelf that finishes the static thrust, becomes the support of a thin surface in opaque and coloured acid-etched glass. At the centre of the horizontal stave, there’s point- contact led light that illuminates the coloured glass from below.

The Hick console is fixed to the wall using two walll plugs hidden on the back, so that it looks as if it is supported by a single fulcrum.

Elio Fiorucci – Look

 

The form of the Look lamp stems from the simple mirror-like superposition of two barrique staves.

The curvature of the two staves, fixed opposite to one another and symmetrically, makes them resemble an elongated, almost oriental eye. An led light is accommodated in the lower stave, which already boasts a hole in the barrique. The two screen/diffusers are made using two music cds, which, as well as screening the direct light, diffuse a warm and iridescent light in the surroundings. The two music cds are in fact exactly the same measurement of the position of the iris in the middle of the staves / eyelids.The middle hole of the cds is the pupil. The look lamp can be placed on a table or wall mounted.

Giuseppe Leida – Tino cavallino

 

The design of “Tino cavallino” was inspired by carefree childhood life, cradled by play and upbringing; a stylized horse for a child of two or three years of age, easy to produce and made using reused elements such as the staves of the barriques. The arched shape of the oak staves and their colour reddened by the wine in the concave side themselves contain the very essence of movement and life.Tino will be a friend to some lucky children and the pride of adults who know that, while making it they will recover themselves, as well as the casks.

Being at SanPa is like being reborn, growing up, getting to know oneself and becoming playful again.

Gualtiero Marchesi – La porta della cantina

 

It was a pleasure to take part in the idea thought up by San Patrignano, aiming to reuse the old high-quality wood no longer in operation, set aside to rest after having meticulously performed the task entrusted to it for so long.

The structure of the handmade casks is in itself a lovely artistic masterpiece tied to the cult of land and wine. The ensemble of its staves is the work of an expert, intelligent craftsman, which lives on thanks to the knowledge of a tradition that has been handed down, unchanged, over time. What destiny awaits these very old, high-quality staves? The wine used them in order to mature, so why not try to give them a new life in an environment romantically linked to wine?

If they were in contact with wine in their “golden” age, why not use them to get into the place where wine ages?

Let’s put them back together again, in a different order. Let’s make them become the cellar door to access the basement and meet their old friend once more.

Alberto Meda – Cinquedoghe

 

I immediately came up with the idea of a swing because one can easily create a solid yet comfortable structure with the staves, which are curved due to having been parts of a cask. This free-moving seat gives a thrill, a feeling of euphoria, joy, sometimes even dizziness, because of its dynamism, all of these sensations resemble those experienced with one or two glasses of fine wine. A new life for the staves, but still as “containers”… of pleasure.

Alessandro Mendini – Goffo, Ruvido

 

The Utopia of San Patrignano also envisages this project. The on-site carpenter’s workshop that recycles the casks from the on-site cellar. The energy of a regenerative action. So here’s the cask: this perfect container tool, consisting of extremely precise parts and pieces. It is dismantled during recycling, then consideration is given to how to reassemble it and allocating it with a new existence. Here are various ideas including a small table and a chair. Two curious objects, bordering on gauche, rustic and amusing.

Angela Missoni – Miss Dondola

 

I joined the San Patrignano Project immediately. In addition to my involvement with Riva, with whom I had already worked on the Briccole Project in Venice, then as now, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the wooden staves of the casks was to “engineer” the object itself, using it in its essence, not transforming it into something other than itself. I like mobile things and the idea of using them just as they are. I therefore came up with the idea of threading multicoloured strings joined by big knots between one piece of wood and the other to keep them together and maintain their alignment. The immediacy of use is what pushed me most in this direction.

Paolo Nava – Wave Air

 

It was a very unusual design experience. In the beginning I looked at the wooden stave as if it were a mass manufactured product, which could be transformed into identified products such as seats, containers, trays, lamps, table bases, etc. But as the days past by, I had the feeling that instead of making progress, I was at the starting point or even further back than that. After deep reflection, I was persuaded that the stave as it had been conceived (and how it had evolved over time) itself contained all the energy and perfection accumulated over the centuries as an extraordinary product of human genius.

I therefore decided that I merely had to make use of it in its entirety, render it dynamic, free it from the perfection of its original function only by using fixing and rotation points in order to generate movements capable of satisfying the endless curiosity of everything that is dynamic like creative thinking.

I admit that I had fun, something I hadn’t had for a while. I hope that others using the structures that I conceived may make these concepts last over time.

Matteo e Franco Origoni – Etta

 

Recycling the wood of wine casks, which have become unusable, to create items of everyday use is not a straightforward project. The barrique is actually made from a set of curved staves, a product of the work of skilled artisans: the master “bottai” [coopers]. It’s therefore not a matter of recycling waste wood, but of reusing a finished product, as if it were a prefab, without radically changing it. So the staves bend, like the legs of a grasshopper, maintaining their original geometry, thereby becoming structural elements of a set of objects… legs and support, in this case, of a chair.

Alessandro Pedron – aVI

 

The curvature and section of the staves are given, ready and researched for the exact dimension of the casks, which is a product of the years of history of this container. The chair is also an object of use, the most natural, the one that is most familiar to us. Avi was created by observing the profile of the stave, which, with minimal workmanship, forms the structure, the body of the chair, ready to offload gently to the ground the weight that it must bear.

Small sections of staves flanking one another horizontally unite the lateral curvilinear parts with straightforward joints made from the same elements. The oak wood worked over time and by its primary function offers its two antithetical souls of “inside and outside”, which become “above and below” or “in front of and behind” in the chair. A thin layer of protective wax preserves and ennobles the surface. The wood of aVi worked by industrious and eager hands is ready for its new life… But only the wood?

Paolo Pininfarina – Single Lamp

 

Pininfarina takes part in The Rebirth of the Casks at San Patrignano charity project, for which Riva 1920 invited more than 30 international architects and designers to plan, without being bound to a theme, an object using the wood recovered from the Community’s casks.

Designer Pininfarina’s goal was to preserve the origin of this wood, which bears the marks of three vintages, thereby also satisfying the look of an exclusive object, made from a unique material. Leaving unchanged the arc that distinguishes the side of the cask, Pininfarina inserted some cutting-edge technology into the wood of the aged barrique: LED lighting.

The wood of the casks, otherwise destined to ruin, therefore takes on a new life by becoming an object of design in line with the philosophy of San Patrignano, where the young residents have an experience that helps them to head in a new direction.

Karim Rashid – Inverso

 

Wanting to make the most out of the San Patrignano barrel form with no waste and take advantage of the beautiful deep-aged wine stain on the inside of the wood, I turned the wood around to create an obvious stool and table. We see an object differently when its inside out. Normally a wine barrel is a bulbous object, but rotate the curve and it’s a slender, sensuous waist, and a completely new object expressing the spent wine.

Maurizio e Davide Riva – Tavolo Mattia

 

Made using the oak of casks and barriques, sitting around it you breathe in the wine that it looked after up until now. “Mattia”, the name of my little grandson, who grows strong and good every day like the vines and their precious fruit.

Alejandro Ruiz – Trojan

 

Astute, curious and hopeful!

A toy made from wood already used for other purposes: is it a stratagem with which to distract the defences? A victory in which strength is inferior to ideas.

Marc Sadler – DOC

 

The revival of the wood of the San Patrignano barriques was inspired by a wish to leave unaltered that feeling of a life well lived and strength for which they were created.

The DOC chaise longue, which I designed using the oak staves, makes the effect of a vertebral column visible, where precise male-female joints lock each component together in a sinuous ensemble.

Thanks to a fine piece of joinery, the multiples in any same section of staves form an elegant and ergonomic design, which also embraces the roughness of the history of the oak with which it is made.

The sigh of the wine that this wood entertained for years makes its presence felt by the rough appearance, which has deliberately been left as it is, and by the uneven yet spectacular colour that the material has gained over time.

San Patrignano – Culla Letizia

 

Custodians of life anyway. As the cask ages wine, the cradle raises a child for life. The first comfortable dwelling, affording shelter and protection, it is a place of origin.

The perfect symbol for San Patrignano too, a place of rebirth in itself. This is the reason why the community thought of a cradle. The curved yet resistant wood of the cask is perfect for a solid structure, which must be capable of ensuring calm and peaceful sleep for a newborn. A sleep that is also soft thanks to the sac, which acts as a bed, made in a hand-woven fabric with linen and cotton. An old-fashioned lullaby that stems from the staves of a barrique, which is born again, becoming a cradle for a life of even greater importance.

Its lines are simple, soft and gentle, aiming to recall the purity of the world’s oldest miracle that is repeated every day. A cradle that will provide actual support to new lives, given that San Patrignano chose to allocate part of the proceeds from the sale of each cradle to a distance adoption programme promoted by Avsi.

The cradle will be available in two versions, one with a cream coloured sac and one with a sac decorated with musical notes, the symbol of Mimisol di Imelde Bronzieri, the company that supported this project.

Luca Scacchetti – Panca San Patrignano

 

The bench obtained from a set of planks from casks, laid alongside one another in parallel to form each individual seat, can be extended from one to two, three, four or five seats. The more the bench is extended, the more that abstract gesture, cryptographic nature and, at the same time, infantile depiction of a stylized wave is reaffirmed as well as the idea of an industrial cover, a set of upside-down and repeated little arches or those stylized oriental clouds that can be seen in all Chinese painting.

It is a reuse or recycling that generates a different figure, for a different use, but that figure derived from the structural elements of the initial cask becomes so strong and absolute that it is now what apparently generates the forms with which the casks are made.

Like those strange toys, the Transformers that mutate from cars to warriors to monsters by rotating their pieces, their structural elements changing shape and nature, in this way, the bench and the casks appear as two ways of sharing the same elements, yet without apparent provenance, without one originating or descending from the other.

Aldo Spinelli – Sardinia

 

It is a real source of human and professional enrichment to have introduced Marco Stefanini from the San Patrignano community to brothers Maurizio and Davide from Riva 1920 in Cantù: from mere knowledge to involvement in a project that brings imagination and skill into play.

I am truly very happy to have designed this unusual object with the help of the Poliform Research Centre: the staves are retrieved and recycled from the oak casks, which contained the Community’s fine wine for a long time, taking on new forms and becoming a garden seat. The contrast between the stainless steel supporting structure and the oak wood with its natural colour on the outside and that purplish ruby colour on the inside: here is a seat with a modern design that is also permeated with bygone flavours.

It is not only a project, it is the umpteenth demonstration of the social and human value of the joinery experience in the SanPa Community.

For me it fuels my encouragement for continual growth, respecting the environment and our values.

Matteo Thun – Paravento Pliè

 

The staves of a cask break free from the metal rings that hold them fast together to preserve wine: wooden segments that hover over the sheet compose new shapes and become something else.

Through simple details, hinges, spacers and pivots, the staves form new linear profiles.

And the cask is reborn: a folding screen that – thanks to the concave and convex effect – can take on various shapes and new uses.

Thank you, San Patrignano!

2013 Contest

“A tavola” (“Dinner’s on the table”)

During the Salone del Mobile 2012, San Patrignano launched the inaugural  Young people’s design contest, focusing on the theme “At the Table” and using the wood from barriques.

A jury will be formed and the winners will be selected in April 2013 at an exhibit dedicated to the project

Participants will have to design an item of furniture connected with the table using and making the most of the wood of the barriques, 225/228-litre casks.

Other materials can also be used to complement the item (e.g. iron, glass, and other types of wood).

The following two participation classes are provided for:

Class 1: Under 26 (26th year of age not yet reached on 05.01.2013)
Class 2: Over 26 (26th year of age already reached on 05.01.2013)

The designs must be uploaded online no later than 05.01.2013

 

History of San Patrignano

On the side of Life for 34+ years

In 1978, Vincenzo Muccioli, along with a group of friends who wanted to take concrete action to combat marginalization and drug addiction, welcomed the first group of young people into a house his family owned in the hills above Rimini.

This was a pioneering experiment, undertaken to fight a tragic phenomenon that was clearly visible in every piazza of Italy, but which had met with no structured response from the government.

In its early years, the Community had to struggle to keep up with constant pleas for help from desperate families.

vincenzo muccioli

Muccioli believed strongly in freedom from drug use and was prepared to make a commitment to making it happen. Kidnapping charges were brought against him, along with other volunteers, for having chained up several residents at their own request, to keep them from leaving the Community and going back to drugs.

The “chains trial” came to a close in the mid-1980s with a full acquittal, including in the Court of Cassation, due in part to the mobilization of civil society.

By 1982, San Patrignano was home to approximately 200 people, mostly housed in trailers. Around the central core of the farmhouse the first workshops, livestock areas, and gardens sprang up, to give everyone the chance to channel their skills and find strength and motivation in daily work.

San Patrignano, in the meantime, gained official recognition from the Italian government as a foundation and charity, to which Vincenzo and his family donated all their real estate. The Community opened separate locations in Novafeltria and Trento.

In 1992, it had a total of approximately 2000 residents.

San Patrignano expanded and improved its facilities: bedrooms and outbuildings were built, as well as a vast new dining hall and equestrian centre.

Construction also began on a multipurpose–medical centre to combat AIDS, which had begun to reap victims from among the young residents.

In 1990, Muccioli contributed to the drafting of the Iervolino-Vassalli bill, which reiterated the illegal nature of drug use.

But in March 1993, after accusations by a former resident regarding a crime committed at San Patrignano in 1988, the Community found itself back in the spotlight and Muccioli was charged with complicity to commit murder.

Investigations found that this crime had been carried out years earlier by a small group of residents whose activities those in charge had been unaware of – an insular, self-contained little band carrying out acts of tyranny and violence.

At the trial in 1994 Muccioli was acquitted of the manslaughter charge and sentenced to eight months for aiding and abetting the crime, for having failed to report the perpetrators in order not to break the confidential agreement he had with them.

The Court emphasized the high human and social value of his work.

However, on 19 September 1995, deeply embittered and exhausted by controversies and accusations, Vincenzo died.

The continued life of the Community, which had been called into question by many politicians and commentators, was ensured by his son Andrea, who took up his father’s difficult legacy together with staff members and volunteers already working there permanently.

In 1996 the first “Vincenzo Muccioli Challenge” international show jumping competition was held, with the world’s top riders taking part. The following year, the Community received certification as a non-governmental organization (NGO) and the status of Special Consultant to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

In 2002 and 2004, along with other major volunteer organizations and private social institutions, San Patrignano organized and managed the national drug abuse prevention campaigns for the Prime Minister’s office.

There was an increase in the number of new residents who had never taken drugs intravenously, but in other ways, and the Community had to fine tune its model of integration and recovery. The positive results achieved were demonstrated by numerous independent studies, which found the rate of full recovery after the educational program to be 73 percent.

In 2004 the Community conceived and held the first “Squisito!” food and wine show, dedicated to showcasing excellence in the field of food and hospitality, an event that was to be repeated every year. Moreover, it hosted events and conferences for important organizations incivil society.

Every year, thousands of students and professionals from Italy and around the world come to learn more about San Patrignano, which has also increased its contact with the internet through websites presenting its institutional initiatives and prevention projects. In 2005, the first European show jumping championship was held at the equestrian centre, with the active participation of all the Community residents.

The following year, the Schwab Foundation, organiser of the Davos World Economic Forum, awarded Andrea Muccioli the title “Social Entrepreneur of the Year”.

2006 marked the start of the 2You project, conceived by San Patrignano and implemented in 20 cities around Italy. The goal of these centers, which are managed in partnership with five major associations, is to contribute to the education of school-aged young people, while fighting social problems and the dropout phenomenon.

San Patrignano’s prevention work also includes the presentation, in twelve Italian regions, of theatrical performances based on peer-to-peer education. These shows, organized in agreement with schools, have been seen by tens of thousands of students.

From 2007 to 2008, thousands of students and Italian and international professionals visited the community, which expanded its Internet contacts with websites providing information about its institutional activities and prevention projects.

Since ’78, the community has welcomed over 20,000 young people, 70% of whom have been fully reintegrated into society.

Starting in October 2009, San Patrignano’s education activities will become “WeFree”.

This new name better conveys the true meaning of “our brand” of prevention: helping kids grow up conscious of their responsibilities with respect for themselves and others, avoiding all forms of addiction.

Mission and guiding values.

1) Providing a heartfelt welcome and recovery to socially marginalized individuals and drug addicts without any social, political or religious discrimination whatsoever.

2) Offering the service completely free of charge to those taken in and their families, without any form of government subsidy.

3) Freeing residents from any type of addiction and/or social exclusion through individual recovery programs, based on values such as dignity, honesty, responsibility and respect for oneself and for others.

4) Using professional training programs as a tool to enable the complete re-integration into society of Community residents.

5) Carrying out drug prevention initiatives aimed at young people adopting a ‘peer education’ approach through real-life stories and video and web tools.

6) Raising funds through its own production and manufacturing activities, as well as public and private funding, in order to fulfill its mission.

About San Patrignano Community

San Patrignano, the largest – and widely considered one of the finest – drug rehabilitation centres in the world, located just outside Rimini in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna.

The idea is simple: Teach young people dealing with addiction how to work hard, be responsible, and take pride in producing something of the highest rank, and you help build their self-esteem.

San Patrignano founder Vincenzo Muccioli believed that with that kind of positive work ethic, these ragazzi, as they are known, stand a good chance of integrating into society.

In 1978, Mr. Muccioli and 20 volunteers started to build San Patrignano’s community on 250 inherited hectares. Today, members are fed, housed and provided with legal, medical and psychological attention. They can even complete a university degree.

During their three- to four-year stay, members of the 1,800-strong community don’t just make wine: The ragazzi choose from about 50 trades, from horse training to graphic design, taught by industry experts, most of whom volunteer their time.

And every year, those who graduate contribute to San Patrignano’s astounding statistics: Of the guests who spend at least three years at the facility, 71 per cent find a job for which they utilize their new skills, and only 8 per cent suffer an addiction relapse. So far, a staggering 20,000 people have graduated

San Patrignano is able to generate €13-million (almost $20-million) annually, roughly half of its operating costs, by selling its homemade wares. The other half is obtained through donations.

 

San Patrignano welcomes all young men and women who have serious drug abuse problems, regardless of ideology, social background, or religion, and completely free of charge, accepting no payment or funding from their families or the government. Admission and the entire recovery program are provided at no charge to those entering the community.

Since 1978, San Patrignano has taken in over 20,000 people, offering them a home, healthcare, legal assistance, and the opportunity to study, learn a job, change their lives, and regain their status as full members of society.

With ultra-modern facilities, accommodating 1,800 addicts across 228 shared dorms and 60 individual houses, the project is completely self sufficient and offers 57 different types of work programs for its residents.

The most important part of San Patrignano’s mission has always been helping others – gathering requests for assistance and offering concrete solutions to problems.

The only requirement is the will to stop using drugs and to make a radical change in life, grow and change

Among the problems that affect the drug addict, drug use is the least relevant.

The core of the problem is not drugs, nor the abstinence crisis: it is the human being with his fears and the black holes that threaten to suck him in. That is why I do not like to say nor hear that ours is a community for drug addicts.

Ours is a community for living, where you can restart in life after years spent as a social outcast.

Ours, if we really need a definition, is a community against social marginalization

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A Storybook catalogue portrays the distinctive traits of an entity that is constantly changing, one that takes its cue from the previous collection and turns that achievement into the point of departure for a new beginning.

The 2012 collection, coordinated by Rodolfo Dordoni, embraces the challenge to innovate with a stream of creative ideas for new seating systems, armchairs, tables, chairs, accessories, storage pieces and beds that interpret the latest trends with stunning individuality, a clear reminder of Minotti’s talent for uniqueness.

The Minotti 2012 Collections catalogue includes evocative photo galleries which show off the products in their many versions and highlights the design details of each piece, while staging them in the most fascinating settings.

The series of photos is followed by generous sections that provide information about the technical features of the products and offers inspiring project ideas

 

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The Biblioteca Ambrosiana ( Library) in Milan, housed along with the Pinoteca Ambroisiana (Art Gallery) is one of the great repositories of European culture

Skybook ( Librocielo ) – Lights and Voices reflecting upon life in Milan’s Roman heart – was held at the Biblioteca Pinacoteca Accademia Ambrosiana during the Salone 2012.

The city of Milan historically has two hearts, two sites that have contributed equally to establish its unique identity.

>> The first, the ancient Celtic forest – mother/matter of the city – was re-evoked in Piazza San Fedele during the 2011 Salone, with the event “The Arbour”

>>  The ‘second’ heart of the city of Milan – the literary culture that goes back to the Roman classical world.

“Skybook” a multimedia installation designed by Attilio Stocchi, was dedicated to the origins of Milan during the classical Roman period

“Skybook” is an event that unfolds inside and around the Ambrosiana, a unique journey of light and sound whose fulcra are the Sala Federiciana and the Cortile degli Spiriti Magni, where visitors could see and hear “books dialoguing with one another”

“Books are full of the words of the sages, examples of the ancients, their customs, laws and religion. They are alive, they speak to us, teach us, console us” (from a letter written by Cardinal Bessarione to the Doge of Venice, Cristoforo Moro, displayed in the Pronaos of the Ambrosiana)

 

During the journey, visitors will enter a new and visionary world, witnessing imaginary dialogues between talking books. Swaths of light, like guiding voices, will help them understand the relationships between the ancient volumes.

This idea of allowing books to speak for themselves is consistent with the philosophy of Cosmit, which seeks to combine commercial events like the Salone with purely cultural ones.

 

 

Project by Attilio Stocchi – with Laura Trovalusci, Laura Crespi and Enrico Prato
Audio and lighting: Volume Srl
Display installation: Way Spa

The vibrant center of all Roman cities was the Forum, at the intersection of the Cardo and Decuman, the commercial, administrative and judiciary heart of the city.

In 1609, in the area of Milan’s ancient forum, between Piazza Santo Sepolcro and Piazza Pio XI, Cardinal Federico Borromeo built the Ambrosiana with the aim of conserving the ancient past and “protecting the pictorial and literary vestiges of the Classical world”.

“Skybook” is an homage to Roman Milan, to the Mediolanum that was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 286 to 402 AD but above all to the literary paternity/patrimony that has come down to us from antiquity.

Why not, therefore, “illuminate and give voice” to the extraordinary quantity of texts conserved in the Ambrosiana that have contributed so much to our knowledge ?

Books illustrate the origins of the distinctive conformation of the city of Milan – the Ambrosiana hosts, among other things, the first planimetric representation of Milan (in a codex by Galvano Fiamma) and the famous sketch by Leonardo da Vinci of the concentric city:  “The city is circular in form: its rotundity is the symbol of perfection”, writes Bonvesin de la Riva in Le meraviglie di Milano.

How did people inhabit the Domus of Roman Milan? Was there a hearth at the center of the home ?

Dialogues, reflections on living in a real place from the past yet one that also fills our collective imagination.

The structure of the “dialogue between books” is informed by the concept of the Domus: the load-bearing structure of the Roman city and its society, a representation of it, almost.

Domus as in urban “microcosm”: an empty space right in the centre – an atrium here, a square there – within a built environment pulsating with purpose.

Seen from this angle, the Roman home, split into fragments and its constituent parts reassembled, is a powerful metaphor for a reflection on inhabiting and living a space: the Fauces: protection; the Alae with the statues of hands, household gods and penates: prayer; the Atrium with the hearth below and the sky above: warmth and universum; the triclinium: hospitality.

A multitude of declensions, therefore: Domus as both a windowless bunker and a temple, a tent beneath the sky and a tavern; domus as convivium, inside which we can “all inhabit” the world.

These are the themes of the great library tomes and of the more modern works. From Aulus Gellius’s Attic Nights to Nietzsche’s Aurora; from Martial’s Epigrams to Savinio’s Tragedy of Childhood; from Pliny’s Natural History to Kafka’s Zürau Aphorisms; from Seneca’s Dialogues to Junger’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

The entrance court on Piazza San Sepolcro – the original entrance of the library’s first nucleus – marks the start of the journey, with the statue of Federico Borromeo acting as host. “Federigo conceived this Biblioteca Ambrosiana with great depth of spirit, and erected it with tireless effort from the ground up.

To provide it with manuscripts, in addition to the bequest already collected by him with scholarship and at great expense, he sent eight of the most cultured and expert men he could find to Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Flanders, Greece, Lebanon and Jerusalem. In this way he succeeded in assembling there some thirty thousand printed volumes and fourteen thousand manuscripts”, as Alessandro Manzoni describes the glorious undertaking in The Betrothed.

Cardinal Borromeo’s collection includes a 5th-century illustrated Iliad, early editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1353), and the Muratorian Canon (170 AD), the earliest example of an authoritative list of Biblical books

Shortly after the cardinal’s death, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana acquired 12 manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci, including his Codex Atlanticus.

There are now some 12,000 drawings by European artists from the 14th through the 19th centuries, obtained from the collections of a wide range of patrons and artists, academicians, collectors, art dealers, and architects.

The Ambrosian Library, locally known as the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, was the first library in europe to open to the public when it opened in 1609. The library contains more than 750.000 books, including over 30.000 manuscripts.

The library’s most famous book is the Codex Atlanticus, created by Leonardo da Vinci. It contains writings on a diverse number of subjects and is illustrated with more than 1.000 drawings by the master himself

About Federico Borromeo

Federico Borromeo, cousin of Carlo Borromeo, was born in Milan on August 18th 1564 of Giulio Cesare, brother of Giberto, and Margherita Trivulzio.

Federico dreamt of being able to unite a religious life with studies. However, the domineering influence of his cousin Carlo led him to an ecclesiastical career that he was hesitant to pursue.

On June 11th 1595 he was consecrated bishop of Milan and made his entrance into the city on August 27th from Porta Ticinese.

On December 18th 1587 he was made cardinal by Pope Sisto V.

He was also great uncle of the cardinal Federico Borromeo junior (1670). Other cardinals that belong to this family were Giberto Borromeo and Giberto Bartolomeo Borromeo, as well as Vitaliano Borromeo (1766) and Edoardo Borromeo (1868).

Only from 1601 was he officially considered as bishop of the city, due to previous clashes with the Spanish government.

Throughout his life he was an instigator of works of charity and culture.

He set up churches and colleges with his own funds and in 1609 inaugurated the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, with 12.000 manuscripts and 30.000 printed works, plus, the homonymous Pinacoteca.

He dedicated himself to helping citizens during the famine of 1628 and the plague of 1630.

On September 20th 1631 Federico died in his room in his premises in the archdioceses.

He was buried in the Duomo, in front of the altar of the Madonna

The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana is an art gallery housed in the Palazzo dell’Ambrosiana, which is also home to a famous library, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

Both institutions were founded in the early 17th century by Federico Borromeo.

A cultural complex

Cardinal Federico Borromeo, archbishop of Milan from 1595 until his death in 1631, had a deep interest in the arts and literature.

The cardinal assembled a collection of books from across Europe and the Middle East and founded the Ambrosian Library in 1607.

After expanding his Palazzo dell’ Ambrosiana, where he stored his book collection he opened his library to the public in 1609.

Nine years later Borromeo decided to create an art gallery with 172 of his paintings. In 1920 the creation of the Accademia del Disegno (art academy) completed his ground-breaking cultural project.

The paintings were meant to inspire students of the art academy. The academy later moved to the Adoration of the Magi in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

The Museum

The nucleus of the museum’s collection still consists of the 172 original works assembled by Federico Borromeo.

It contains 15th and 16th century paintings from mostly Italian and Flemish masters. About half of the paintings have a religious theme, as the cardinal saw the arts as an ideal medium to educate people about historic religious events. The most famous example is Titian’s Adoration of the Magi. But the collection also contains plenty of non-religious masterpieces such as a painting of a court musician by Leonardo da Vinci.

Even after the opening of his museum, Borromeo continued to expand his collection with important works including Caravaggio’s strikingly realistic ‘Fruit Basket’ and a sketch by Raphael for the ‘School of Athens’, a famous fresco in the Vatican.

Over time the collection of the Ambrosian Art Gallery expanded even further thanks to private donations and now covers artwork from the 15th up to the early 20th century.

Scala Archives of Pinacoteca Ambrosiana collection here …..

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BE OPEN: a global scheme to foster creativity and innovation, to imagine and build solutions for the future

The BE OPEN think tank launched during this year’s Salone – in collaboration with Interni Magazine and sociologist Francesco Morace—with a series of speakers from the worlds of art, media, business and science gathered over three days to exchange ideas about how design thinking can respond to and find solutions for current and future social, environmental and economic needs.

Behind the creation of BE OPEN, stands an international team united around one of the most successful Russian businesswoman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Yelena Baturina.

Baturina announced she will be dedicating $100 million to the BE OPEN Foundation, a charity she created in April to support young talent in architecture, design, art and other disciplines.

BE OPEN is a creative think tank whose mission is to promote people and ideas. It is a cultural and philanthropic initiative that aims to harness the brainpower of the global creative minds in the arts, education, design, business, and  media – and asks them to imagine and then build solutions for the future.

“Working in the construction industry, I collaborate with architects and designers all the time. I enjoy their alternative vision, sensitivity to human needs and restlessness – a desire to keep improving on what we have, to fashion us a better world. I want to garner this energy and responsiveness to direct it at really big issues. I am also aware of an emerging generation of creative people who deserve more attention; and I want to help them get it” explains Yelena Baturina, Founder  of BE OPEN

After Milan, BE OPEN’s worldwide road map will reach Basel and London in conjunction with their established design week and art fair. The key project, that will act as catalyst, will be a series of international BE OPEN conferences with creative leaders of the 21st century that aim to create an international debate and platform for making new ideas happen.

Be Open Conference / Discussion Talks

BE OPEN’s first conference rather ambitiously aimed to “exchange ideas about how design thinking can respond to and find solutions for current and future social, environmental and economic needs,” with a particular focus on the relationship between Russia and Europe

Everyone operating in the world’s of architecture, design and technology knows that the world has changed since 2008, but the job of identifying and describing exactly how is only just beginning to happen.

It was the contention of the convener of the first BE OPEN conference, Francesco Morace, that three new relationships in the world of design had undergone a huge and important shift.

Morace suggests that a fundamental realignment in thinking has occurred in over the issue of sustainability, the idea of happiness and perhaps most fundamentally the relationship between the local and the universal.

These theories were tested by the inquiring minds of some of the leading figures in the design world.

Day 1 Sensible and Sustainable

Sensible & Sustainable – discussion about the new parameters of excellence in sustainability, which combine design thinking with ethical principles.

Speakers:

Luisa Collina, Projects & Relations Manager at Politecnico di Milano – International School of Design
Maria Sebregondi, vice president, Moleskine
Jane Penty, stage leader BA (Honours) Product Design / School of Graphics and Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins – College of Art and Design
Sass Brown, author of the book “Eco Fashion” & professor at Polimoda IFT
Clare Brass, designer

 

Sensible and Sustainable

Claire Brass, formerly of the Design Council in the UK and now of the SEED Foundation outlined her project Food Loop, which is a design-led social enterprise that offers local authorities a blueprint system for localised composting of biodegradable waste on housing estates. Her vision of how food waste could be turned into compost and how it could become a product in a token based economy, formalising the existing relationships enjoyed by allotment owners and gardeners into a complex bartering system.

Certainly if Morace’s theory that this is a crucial paradigms in our lives, then a great deal of work on creating an alternative economy needs to still be done.

Other contributors such as Sass Brown, author of the book “Eco Fashion”, were more interested in championing those who have adapted existing commercial models to a more sustainable model.

Brown championed a range of companies that she felt were exploding the myth that sustainable design is bad design, or just basic design. Through highlighting the range of companies producing desirable and well-designed apparel she felt that she was part of a general shift in the ethical outlook of consumer culture.

Luisa Collina meanwhile addressed the way in which design students, professors researchers and institutions can shape a more sustainable future. Collina explored new methods for the dissemination and valorisation of the best ideas and solutions for issues relating to sustainability.

 

Day 2 Daily and Happy

Daily & Happy – a discussion about the daily happiness that we express through gesture, behaviour and ritual in relation to design objects and elements.

Speakers:

Julian Schnabel, painter
Alberto Alessi, entrepreneur & managing director of Alessi
Elio Fiorucci, entrepreneur, fashion designer
Carlo Cracco, chef
Edson Matsuo, designer and director of research & development for Grendene

 

Happiness is many things to many different people.

To Julian Schnabel it is clearly the idea of ceaseless creativity that leads – sometimes inadvertently – to happiness.

If Schnabel’s philosophy is that there is no past or future or an endless present, then his art becomes a means of simultaneously existing in as many places as possible. Happiness for him is the bi-product of multiple acts of creativity.

“Art’s happy gesture is about the happiness I feel whilst working. How do you get through the day? I paint my way out of problems. I’m looking for a poetic reality that is running alongside the tangible reality.”

Separating where creativity ends and happiness begins is difficult to describe, as chef Carlo Cracco found.

Alberto Alessi meanwhile used the history of his company to challenge our notions of what is serious and what makes us happy. No architect or designer can have made an object designed to simply make people as successfully as Aldo Rossi’s designs for La Conica produced by Alessi.

To find happiness a degree of mischief is helpful.

Both Edson Matsuo and Elio Fiorucci clearly see joy as a motivating force in both creating and consuming; buying things can make you happy!

For Vladimir Pirojkov happiness was a concept he understood in relation to design through his own personal experience. Having worked in the car industry, designing the interiors of the Prius and Yarus for Toyota amongst a host of other roles in the automobile sector, he explained he was driven into the aeronautical sector through understanding he was dissatisfied with what he was doing. In doing so he has arrived at a proposal for a combined car and plane vehicle.

Happiness may be hard to attain but the meaningful pursuit of it leads us on to creative and surpass ourselves

Day 3 Unique and Universal

Unique & Universal – how local and global worlds are strongly differentiated and yet converge

Speakers:

Stuart Parr, designer
Ilse Crawford, design expert
Paola Navone, designer and architect
Daniel Rozensztroch, art director Merci Paris
Patricia Urquiola, designer
Gaetano Pesce, architect and designer
Vladimir Pirojkov, designer, President Astra Rossa

What makes something Unique and Universal drew an even greater variety of responses.

Ilse Crawford gave the example of her interior strategy for the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland.

Briefed to both represent the hitherto unknown craft culture of the area but also draw in international visitors to the island, the Inn became a space to firstly represent and develop an informal indigenous craft culture – patchwork quilts and hard furniture – through the help of international designers and secondly as part of an interior ensemble designed to attract visitors from far and wide.

In her model the designer becomes an intermediary between the local and the universal.

In her own way Paolo Navone is doing a similar thing.

Although the interface between the unique and the universal to her was the way in which the individual assembles objects from around the world in their own way, much as how Daniel Rozensztroch, her fellow contributor takes her work and adds it to the ensemble of the Merci Paris store of which he is art director and where Navone sells her work.

For Gaetano Pesce the conference was a chance to re-affirm his faith in the direction of Italy as a home for design. Pesce who has questioned the existence of Italian Design in the past, has clearly realised that the approach of the Italians to material production is unique, affirmed its role in an international context.

For Stuart Parr, the unique was itself an opportunity. Rather than being a product of a specific place for him the unique was the great idea; the Hasellblad camera, the Rietveld Chair, the first Thonet bentwood chair.

What makes a unique object universal, is the manner in which it addresses a need and subsequently succeeds. Whilst things have changed a great deal the skill of the designer is the same as it always was.

Be Open Verge Art & Design Exhibition

The exhibition Verge shown alongside the Be Open to the Future conference was in many ways a more brutal, more confrontational exploration between the ideas of artistic autonomy versus social utility.

Covering younger artists solely from Moscow, Verge showed the refreshing clarity with which Russian designers view the social function of both art and design.

“Verge”, showcased contemporary Russian artists whose work sits at the subtle interface where art ends and design begins. “Verge is our chance to give young Russian artists and designers a stepping stone to the future.

By appearing on the international stage, they will be able to develop their thinking and direction”, says curator Elena Selina

“The problem of Russian contemporary art is that it’s separated from the rest of the world, I don’t know if this is a historic inheritance, but it is not well enough integrated into world art. The whole world knows the names of famous galleries but not those of Russian contemporary artists. They don’t have a showcase, and the situation is even worse for young designers,” … Yelena Baturina

Exhibition installation was by Italian designer Paola Navone

Be Open Verge Milan Exhibition

The Language of design in art, dedicated to Russian contemporary art that sits at the interface with design.

Today contemporary art and design are strongly intertwined, organically influencing each other. Sometimes the distinction between art and design is blurred – it is difficult to tell where art ends and design starts, and vice versa. Often art disguises itself as design and assimilates its language: one form is on the verge of becoming another.

Both of these cultural phenomena play with each other’s forms and meanings. It were Marcel Duchamp and later Andy Warhol – who initiated this process with his famous “Campbell soup cans”, when a canned soup became the hero of the artwork. Art has referenced design, whilst every third design solution contains either hidden or explicit references to art, be it Russian avant-garde aesthetics or the latest novelties of video art.

The exhibition “Verge” is about the morphing of these two disciplines as seen in some part of contemporary Russian art and design. “Verge” in fact shows that they have moved on from the conservative “realism” with which people tend to associate Russian art. Russian culture has a new openness and dynamism. Its new art is interactive, ambitious and deep.

BE OPEN project is also something of a stepping-stone to the future for the artists involved.

Electroboutique

“3G International” sculpture by Electroboutique group turns one of the most popular products in the international gadget market – an Apple’s iPhone – into Tatlin’s “The Third International Tower”, which was conceived as a state-formative structure in its function and as a meaningful symbol of the workers solidarity all around the world.

In Electroboutique’s opinion, universal access to information and easiness of processing it postulated by the iPhone’s engineers is just another illusion, born, this time, not in the socialistic but in the consumerical world.

Another work, “The Cross”, is interactive – the information on the electronic panel changes only after a spectator has bowed to the object.

Here religious experience, which is collective par excellence, is opposed to an individual schedule of moving in space. Archaic notions creep into the contacts with the technocratic world, and this does not come as a surprise to Russian spectators. Many of us, while dealing with intricately organized technical equipment, practice animism – earnestly, more or less, (the degree depends not upon education level but upon the difficulty of a problem solved by a technical appliance).

Electroboutique’s art has the closest affinities with design in this exhibition. Their objects and installations are spectacular and interactive and play on our perceptions. They promise a lot – each looking like a designer objects – yet fail to deliver: they’re really about criticizing our consumerist society.

Their works lie at the meeting point of cool aesthetics and information technology, modern design, pop-art and real-time data processing. Their techniques amalgamate open source and proprietary solutions with the key art media of past decades

 

The work in Verge is imbued with the spirit of the age, particularly in technological terms thanks primarily to the work of Electroboutique

Electroboutique is a unique creative electronics production company, a media art gallery and an artist collective. Their products are developed in modern technological forms, – user- friendly electronic devices and computer programs, which at the same time are artworks and exist beyond national and cultural borders.

Group “Electroboutique” consists of Aristarkh Chernyshev, born in 1969 and Alexei Shulgin, born in 1963. Both are Professors at Rodchenko Multimedia Schools and they live and work in Moscow.

Files, 2012. Installation. Files, cabinet, mixed media

Buldakov is one of the most interesting artists in this new generation of contemporary Russian artists. He works in video art and installation. “One way or another, a considerable part of our lives takes place in virtual reality, and it has an effect on our minds”, he says about his project “Correction of Design”.

Real things, for example, office furniture, come to be regarded as virtual. He perverts normality through radical action

Watch, 2012. Sculpture. Styrofoam, acrylic

Sergei Shekhovtsov works principally in foam and plastic, materials more readily associated with design. He brilliantly uses them in a sculptural way.

With the help of PU foam Sergey Shekhovtsov, in his monument to an expensive watch, makes a parody on marble, the material favored by sculptors of monuments.

Shekhotsov’s sculpture implies the existence of watch worshippers on a mass scale as well as of the “memorized” watch’s owner who cannot but belong to “the high and mighties”. Here the individual add-on symbolizes not so much a social status as the power – over minds and wallets

Plasticene in Metal

Irina Korina uses modern materials, often literally from construction sites to create cosmogonic installations. These works have a sense of nostalgia for lost aesthetics, yet also offer new original aesthetic possibilities.

In the installation by Irina Korina multi-colored play dough in the oblong container personifies a miscellaneous society stiffened by the authorities.

Irina Korina work involves the forcing of layers of plasticine into metal grids- giving the effect of a hugely constrained sense of vitality and difference bursting at the seams, begins to think at some of the ways in which she uses design. “You can really tell when they were made, they are both expressions of the time,” she says.

Red Kabab, 2012. Computer mice, enamel

Mikhail Kosolapov’s computer “mice” gather frantically in packs.

Mikhail Koslapov’s work featured a frenetic pack of corroded scarlet computer mice quivering in a pack or herd. He adds a further distinction. “Design has a client and art does not,” he states.

Mikhail works with the most unlikely and unexpected materials – tubes and tyres, fixtures and glass, molten computer mice, monitors and fax machines – to create astonishing artefacts.

Asked to comment about the nature of an art market which is dominated by the tastes and spending power of a limited number of art-buyers, Koslapov whose work on show in Milan created an organic form from melted computer mice and red enamel, insisted on the distinction, between agent and end-user.

“Pushkin he says, said was impossible to sell inspiration but it was possible to sell the script.” And yet there is a resonance and charge to the exhibition. These artists may not consider themselves a school. They may not have even been friends previously but there is a certain pop-art power to the way the language of the everyday has been appropriated and critiqued.

BE OPEN AWARDS – 

Create the Future Now, an international contest focused on young talents.

The Be Open awards are designed to recompense original design solutions, and the use of future technologies that can be implemented today.

“There are three prizes,” Baturina explains: “Each winner gets tuition fees in a top design institute, and the first gets €10,000 to make a prototype of their project.”

About Elena Selina

One of the most influential and independent Russian curators and gallerists, Elena has been part of the Russian contemporary art scene since its nascence.

Her XL Gallery was one of the first contemporary art galleries in Moscow.

The gallery has exhibited at key international fairs such as Frieze/London, Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach and FIAC/Paris. Gallery artists have exhibited through years at Biennales in Venice and Sao Paulo and museums such as SMAK (Ghent), Folkwang (Essen), MUHKA (Antwerp), MAC/VAL (Paris), Art&Science museum (London), ZKM (Karlsruhe) and MUMOK (Vienna)

About Yelena Baturina

Yelena Nikolayevna Baturina born 8 March 1963) is a Russian Oligarch.

BE OPEN is the brainchild of Elena Baturina, who made her fortune in the construction and cement industry during her husband Yuri Luzhkov’s 18-year tenure as mayor of Moscow from 1992 – 2010. Luzhkov was brutally dismissed by president Dmitri Medvedev in 2010.

Baturina is Russia’s richest woman and the only Russian woman worth more than a billion dollars.

“Luzhkov was long admired for his no-nonsense organisational skills, but the latter half of his tenure was plagued by allegations of corruption as his wife, Yelena Baturina, amassed a vast fortune as a leading Moscow construction magnate, becoming Russia’s richest woman along the way,” …. UK Financial Times.

About Paola Navone

Paola Navone’s eclectic approach as a designer is hugely influenced by her travels and by different cultures. This Turin-born live wire, who trained in architecture at the Politecnico di Torino, and graduated in 1973, lived in Africa in the 70s, then worked in Asia for over 20 years, notably as a UN and World Bank development consultant for the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Although often inspired by the Far East, Navone finds inspiration everywhere, as she told Be Open’s audience during the Unique and Universal conference. Talking with Daniel Rozensztroch, art director of hip Paris lifestyle store Merci, with whom she has collaborated, Navone summarised her approach as ‘sponge design’. From the moment she wakes up, she said, her ‘brain is like a sponge, absorbing everything’. She also described her eclectic approach as being like ‘a mixed salad’ ­– such that she can’t talk of individual inspirations, only combined ones.

Indeed, Navone’s work gleefully jumbles cultures and references, resulting in unexpected hybrid pieces (‘hybrid’ was another word she mentioned in reference to her work at Be Open). For example, for Habitat she once designed kitchen utensils whose shapes are derived from African tribal cooking utensils but made of a high-tech, heat-resistant plastic.

The origins of this pick ‘n’ mix approach partly lie in her highly formative experience of working, from the mid-70s, with Milan’s avant-garde, ultra-conceptual design collective, Studio Alchimia, whose members included Alessandro Mendini and Ettore Sottass. This group rebelled against the dry rationalism of the Bauhaus and helped lay the foundations of postmodernism until it dispersed in 1992. Navone’s own work has continued to be experimental although it is also commercially viable.

About Francesco Morace

“In the crisis scenario we’re living in, deep recovery of value needs are emerging, through the talent and passion led by a perspective of “design thinking” in which creative people and not only designers or creative professionals, become bearers of values, creating a vision of the world, with a capacity of concrete realization. And this is the foundation of the debate brought by BE OPEN think tank. You can only forecast the future if you are prepared to project it” concludes Francesco Morace, Future Concept Lab President.

Sociologist, writer and journalist, has been working for over twenty years in the sociology and market research fields.

Founder of the research and strategic consulting institute Future Concept Lab (1989), he is also a professor at Domus Academy and Milan’s Politecnico.

He has participated in conventions and seminars in 22 different countries around the world, where he represents the excellence of made in Italy. He consults to blue chip international clients such as American Express, BMW, Coca Cola Company, The L’Oreal Group and many others.

Co-founder of the association The Renaissance Link, among his most recent publications is “Il Talento dell’Impresa: L’Impronta Rinascimentale in dieci aziende italiane” (The Talent of the Enterprise: traces of the Renaissance being left by ten Italian Companies) published in 2010.

He is the author of over 20 books translated into various languages, and ranging in subject from trends in consumption to social change. Among the most important titles: “Paradigms of the Future. A Trend Exploration” (e-book version will be available in April, 2012); “Il Senso dell’Italia. Istruzioni per il terzo miracolo Italiano” (The Sense of Italy. Instruction for the third Italian miracle, February 2008); “Societa Felici” (Happy Societies, December 2004).

Francesco Morace is a regular columnist for Adv, Interni, Mark Up and other specialist international magazines and journals.

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Marcus Trimble talks to architect Glenn Murcutt about generations of practice, beginning in the 1950s.

In a climate in which Australian architects and recent graduates alike face financial uncertainty, it is important to have some perspective.

An economic downturn, one of many in a long life, provides a moment of reappraisal or, in the words of a friend of Glenn Murcutt’s, a downturn is “like a flood that cleans the system.”

Photos taken at Q & A with dedece

Photos taken by Brett Boardman

Architecture Australia – Jan 2012 (vol.101 no.1)

Full interview follows here

Marcus Trimble You started your office after a number of years working for a series of established architects including Neville Gruzman and Ancher Mortlock & Woolley. It is always a tough gig setting up an architecture office, but we like to look back with rose-coloured glasses. I am curious to know if it was as tough then as it is now, and what the economic climate was like at the time?

Glenn Murcutt Terrible – the country was in a recession. But our next-door neighbour, Russell Slade, a director of Polymer Products and other major companies, would drive me into town at least twice a week. He was really very important to me; he said, “I love recessions – they are like a flood that cleans the system out and once it’s clean you are ready for when things are good again. The plants start growing and the whole river ecology starts to get back to its proper thing, same as in business.”

So I was not so frightened to go into practice. I had one job which was a bit of a disaster for me, then I had nothing else for about nine months, but what I did do was get every company that I could think of in the building industry and ask them to send me catalogues.

It occurred to me that there was another way to look at detail with industrial components and that was to make a [link] between these components and what you are doing. All of a sudden tomato house glazing came in, Aluminex glazing bars and louvres came in – all these industrial things that you put in factories. I found a way in which they might be able to be used in architecture.

Because I had little work, my brother asked me to design his house instead of buying a project home, and then Laurie Short came and I did his house and both buildings won awards. And then Marie Short came to me for the Crescent Head House, then a whole series of things started to happen.

In 1972, an alteration on my house in Wunda won for me a trip around the world; real estate agents Gray and Mulroney together with the Royal Australian Institute of Architects had an award for alterations and additions with the aim to show how a modern addition can be made without replicating a 1912 Federation-style bungalow. This gave me $1,000 for a trip to go around and visit the work of the architects from the Americas and Europe who had achieved wonderful results through alterations and additions, like Maison de Verre in Paris.

That was the only obligation – so in 1973 I went away for four months. Absolutely amazing.

Another aspect of starting in practice was that three days after I left the office I had worked in for five years I was invited to teach by Sydney University, so I went into practice in November 1969 and I was teaching in March the following year; [I was] combining work and teaching.

Marcus Trimble Along with teaching, how have you mentored other architects through your practice?

Glenn Murcutt It is very rare [that I have employees]. What I generally do is make an association on the project where we share equal collaboration. For example, Reg Lark and Wendy [Lewin] and I were in collaboration for the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre. I am collaborating with Hakan Elevli in Melbourne on the Altona mosque. I am collaborating with Wendy on the Lightning Ridge Australian Opal Centre [and] with a number of other architects like Troppo, who I collaborated with on the [Bowali Visitor Centre and Headquarters at Kakadu].

Some of the students I have taught – Paul Pholeros, Alec Tzannes, Wendy Lewin, Stephen Lesuik – there are so many that are out there now doing the sort of things I was articulating back in the 1970s. They are not all doing “Murcutt” buildings because that was my last aim. The aim is to understand underlying principles. To understand the principles is like a toolset.

Marcus Trimble As an architect that has focused on residential architecture, I am interested in how you see the current situation of real estate as entertainment or hobby, and the resulting commodification of architecture. One of the upsides of this is that people are now more literate in terms of reading plans, as a result of the extensive real estate listings for every property. How have residential clients changed over the years?

Glenn Murcutt In the 1950s when I did my education and 1961 when I finished, there was a lot of land still vacant in the Northern Beaches [and] southern beaches that were within ten kilometres of the coast. It was at a time when one salary was able to buy a block of land. This was before society changed in the 1970s, when society saw that the man [would be the breadwinner] and the woman [would raise] the children – it all changed and very quickly. The economic base of things changed – if only one breadwinner can sustain a family the economy is set to what that breadwinner can afford. Things came in stages; there wasn’t this idea that one could borrow ninety percent of the value of the property, including the land and the house you bought. One had to save.

Of course, then came the project house, which was another step up, and at this time it became acceptable for both men and women to become breadwinners and bring income that allowed for the block of land and the house – the complete package. The project house became achievable and buyers became interested in design. They were educated by the house and became visually literate [because] there were so many good quality project houses. For example, Pettit+Sevitt, Habitat, Program, Merchant Builders – they were all here and they were all excellent works. Ken Woolley, Harry Seidler, Dysart, Gunn from Melbourne, Terry Dorrough – they designed good houses. The weekend was taken up with hundreds of people visiting project houses. There was not just the last difficult sites to build on as there was enough land [on which] one could construct, say, the “low line,” “split level” and many others – all very cleverly done.

Marcus Trimble I guess the sense now is that in the procuring of public work, the criteria for selection is the lowest fee and the least amount of risk that a practice may represent to the project. Do you feel that this is a new development, and how do you see it as affecting the profession?

Glenn Murcutt People seem most interested in purchase power. So hence we go full circle as to why clients select an architect based on the lowest fee rather than the quality of the work. And frankly the old adage “you get what you pay for” still stands.

Marcus Trimble You pay peanuts you get monkeys.

Glenn Murcutt Yes. I was working with a client from a university in Victoria and he said to me: “We are no different to developers – we select architects based on the lowest fee and fifteen years later we are spending more in repair work on those buildings than we paid for the cost of the buildings in the beginning. Had we gone to an architect of choice and got quality work we would have been far better off economically in the long term.” That is what we have lost. And then I think it would have been in the 1980s. [There were some] fairly important discussions [had at that time] about the role of the architect; [we thought then that we need not] carry a project through to reality and that perhaps the site inspection role could be undertaken by a professional other than an architect.

Marcus Trimble So this was the rise of the project manager?

Glenn Murcutt This was the rise of the project manager. We abrogated our responsibility because as architects we were project managers, we were trained to be project managers, we took a building from beginning to the end. All of a sudden we decided we could reduce our fee and let another person come in there, but we did not think it through. Because the other person let in was essentially visually illiterate and made decisions [based] on dollars and cents, which did not make sense. We lost a vital part [of what makes a] building “sing.”

Marcus Trimble A diminishment of the role of the architect in the mind of the client and the mind of the authority.

Glenn Murcutt Sure. The architect is the one who sits down and visualizes this and does it. The first thing a client asks today is “give me a picture or perspective and what it looks like.” I mean, what nonsense is that? When we first started the Boyd centre that is one of the first things they wanted to know [when they went] about selecting the architect – they just wanted to know what it was going to look like. I wrote them a letter and [explained that that is] not the way we do things – architecture is about understanding a client’s brief. That changes to the brief will occur on the way through and a good client understands that. Now when I said “a good client understands that,” I think ears pricked up and [they thought], “are we good clients?” So the role of the architect has changed enormously – we listen and we can easily be compromised without fighting. Yet, I hate fighting. I will not do a job unless I have the opportunity to take it fully through to completion.

Marcus Trimble Another aspect of this is that the profession is broadening its scope and becoming less focused on strictly the design of buildings. Your practice is closely tied to the specific act of building design as that is your passion. What do you think of architecture shifting to fulfilling a more strategic role in city-making?

Glenn Murcutt Well, it is no longer architecture, is it? Architecture is quite clear – it is about designing buildings, objects, almost anything, like a car … the most important point of architecture is design. There are other things that support it [but] designing is a mental activity, designing is about the mind. It is about understanding light, space, structure, order – all these things. There are people who are fantastic on transport systems, there are people who are fantastic at understanding the fabric of a city and what the mix might be. We have such naive planning laws. The greatest cities [are a] mix, where a market might be in the middle of housing, and so on. Diversity of activities.

Marcus Trimble I always think of it as a conglomerate rock that is pushed together under pressure.

Glenn Murcutt It is like a conglomerate rock … the greatest [cities] are developed not on regulations but in an almost laissez faire [way]. Regulations are important but to have a flat regulation – “this is all residential and that is where the commercial will go” – I think is nonsense. The Spanish gave that away forty or fifty years ago. I chaired the jury for the Peace Park at Gallipoli Peninsula and the Turks were at about the same level as we were; that is, there was a planning strategy and they had diagrams of coloured areas – “this will be where commercial will be, this will be the residential, this will be how this works.” I remember Ignasi de Solà-Morales – he was an amazing guy; he was fantastic – he said, “I do not understand you – we gave away this sort of planning years ago. This is what it is about – mixing things up. These are the sorts of solutions we should be looking at.” And he was right. That is the problem – we have to be more flexible. We are too much of the British sort of planning strategy. Laws and number crunching neatly packaged. I recall working in London in the early 60s and the Royal Institute of British Archtects (RIBA) put out the dictum: FLEOS + VAL = Design (Function, Logical, Economic, Optimum, Solution + Visual Acceptability Loading).

The other aspect is the legal profession. If we are talking about risk, then risk is about the legal profession. Ultimately if you develop a proposal and it does not work out, well, then you have a bloody curly-headed lawyer on your tail.

This is a big issue. If you want to make progress you have to take a calculated risk. I have done that all my career, but I cut my teeth on alterations and additions – at one stage I had thirty-three alterations and additions. In my first ten years of practice I [only] did three new houses. I became known as the king of alterations and additions. If you wanted a good alteration or addition, go to Murcutt. Do you know what I did? In every one I had one little experiment – one little thing to build up a vocabulary of risks. [If it was only a] little thing and it did not work out it didn’t matter so much. So I used my ten years of alterations and additions as the method of research.

Now, the other thing that I was taught by my father [was to] never be in a rush to be a success, and if it should ever come handle it with kid gloves.

So we go back to the legal profession. They provide the platform for us to not take risk, because we know if something goes wrong we are vulnerable. Why is our professional indemnity so expensive? I think it is incredibly expensive and I understand it is exercised to protect one in four insured each year. One in four in our profession – that is terrible.

I have notified my insurers probably four times in forty-two years that there may be a case – mainly when builders have walked off the site and where there is no way that one can finish the project for the money that is left in the contract. One is always going to have to spend another 10 or 15 percent extra over the original contract sum to complete. It makes us entirely vulnerable; the law does not take that into consideration, so one cannot afford to have a builder walk off the site. It is too dangerous. Thank goodness, I’ve never been sued, I have not even been threatened – perhaps I’m taking an awful risk saying that!

Marcus Trimble You have been lucky so far.

Glenn Murcutt But I have taken the opportunity when I have felt that someone might try to notify my insurer. I have been very careful about that, so the insurance company has done very well out of me to date!

Marcus Trimble We have to have it.

Glenn Murcutt Yes, we have to have it, but is that not a manifestation of the dreadful state that we are in?

Marcus Trimble When did that start happening?

Glenn Murcutt It was really starting to be thought about in the late 1960s. Bigger offices had been carrying insurance but smaller practices could not afford to carry insurance. I did not have professional indemnity for my first eight or nine years in practice. I did not think it was that necessary.

Clients were all nice – I did my best for them. It is the legal profession that is really the challenging profession. It is a really difficult time for architects. Let me say this: if one is working with a board, there is a much greater risk of getting sued. If one is working with an individual client you can say “you are as responsible to me as I am equally to you.” You can negotiate and work through any difficulties that may arise more easily and not resort to court action.

Marcus Trimble Yes, a board is another matter – it is indifferent and detached.

Glenn Murcutt Yes, detached. Go back to your earlier statement – it generally only looks at money and time is also seen as money; it is part of our culture. I remember in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s dinner tables were only talking about capital gain, trading houses, real estate profits … it was a big, big topic. Australians suddenly realized that we do expect a very good income and that our living standards are very high. It is [incorrect] that our living standards are the greatest – living standard is consumption based and therein lies the idea that money becomes the ultimate thing – for consumption! And little has changed. We are short term, short thinking and short span – same in our politics. Our politics are there generally for the moment; they tend to think to the next election and not about thirty, forty or a hundred years ahead. Not unlike “how can I turn this building over to get myself 10 percent profit? How can I get an architect to do enough work on this property to get it sold quickly, make me 14 percent profit?”

Marcus Trimble How have you seen the profession change with regard to how architects relate to other architects?

Glenn Murcutt Amongst architects there was such a design camaraderie in the 1950s. Firstly there was enough work around to keep everybody going. Today some offices are so big and they need a lot of work to keep them going. Practising architects have to be so competitive against other architects, particularly in the “big end” of town. Competition is not the only way to go about receiving a commission – the Aboriginal people survived by cooperation, not through competition, as opposed to the Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Competition does not necessarily always produce the best. It can do in some things but not necessarily so in procuring a project. But in the 1950s we had lots of architects that were so much part of one another and were part of a real profession, not isolated individuals. I recall the relationships between Ian Mackay, Bruce Rickard, Harry Howard, Neville Gruzman, Bill Lucas and others. They critiqued one another’s work, had discussions on built work, undertook planning studies and projects together at the University of Sydney. They did competitions of ideas together, they were a force in Sydney and respected one another enormously. They supported one another, they did not take commissions from one another.

Marcus Trimble Yes, there are stories of similar practices locally undercutting and manoeuvring their way into other office’s projects.

Glenn Murcutt There are those who will do anything; I have experienced it first hand, and you can quote me. Not mentioning which job, but it was a project in collaboration. We were well underway on an important project to us, four months into it, when a well-known city architect rang our client suggesting that we could be replaced, and that this practice could do the design component without cost and then do the contract documents and site inspections for a much-reduced fee. My client contacted me and asked me “what sort of a profession are we in with that sort of thing taking place?” The project remained and it went well. When I received the Pritzker Prize I got a letter that offered congratulations, but with the barb being, “Some of us have to take on the tough things in practice like designing commercial work.” Right – what sort of a congratulatory letter is that? All it implies is a “grab-all-if-you-can-get-it” attitude. Large practices do require large or smaller significant projects and if work is scarce, problems emerge.

Marcus Trimble Yes, that type of work relies on a generous profession as well. It is a difficult thing finding those collaborations.

Glenn Murcutt I’ve greatly enjoyed collaborating with those I greatly respect and generosity by each is not ever discussed, it is understood. Collaborations are important and each of us is able to contribute equally on every stage of a project without having to engage staff and that has been wonderful – and no need to “grab all of it if you can get it.”

About Marcus Trimble

Marcus Trimble is a registered architect and set up Super Colossal in June 2007.

Prior to going into private practice, Marcus was an associate at BVN and prior to that was at Lahz Nimmo Architects.

He sits on the North Sydney Council ‘Urban Design Advisory Panel’ and in 2009 was listed as one of Sydney’s Creative Catalysts for the Creative Sydney Winter Arts Festival.

He is actively involved in the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, where he is a member of DARCH – a group of committed architecture geeks that run competitions, public forums, slidenights and other mischief.

With DARCH, Marcus organises the Sydney leg of the global slide night phenomena, Pecha Kucha.

Teaching
2009 – Graduation Studio, Masters of Architecture at the University of Sydney
2009 – 3rd Year Design at the UNSW under Glen Murcutt
2008 – 2nd Year Design at the UNSW
2007 – 3rd Year Design at the UNSW under Glen Murcutt
2006 – 1st Year Design at the University of Sydney
2005 – 1st Year Design at the University of Sydney
2004 – 1st Year Design at the University of Sydney
2003 – 2nd Year Design at University of Sydney

Writing:
‘Abundance’ – On the 2008 Venice Biennale Australian pavilion proposal – AR (Architecture Review)
‘Departure Lounge’ – National Conference Review – Architecture Bulletin May/June 2007
‘Hardline Seduction’ – Artilcle on O’Connor and Houle’s Heide Extension – Mark Magazine Issue 7 April/May 2007
‘Determined Simplicity’ – Profile on Durback Block – Mark Magazine Issue 5 Dec/Jan2007

Following Graduation from the University of Sydney with 1st Class Honours, he was awarded the NSW Board of Architects Design Medal in 2001 for his final student project and was shortlisted for the RAIA National Biennale award.

At BVN Marcus acted as a design architect on two premium residential developments in Milsons Point, Sydney, was part of the design team for the new football stadium in Venice, Italy and was project architect on a mixed use development in Hurstville.

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Celebrating it’s fifth year in Milan, DMY Berlin presented Instant Stories, showing the work of eleven designers and creative studios from Berlin. The Designers were Werner Aisslinger, Mark Braun, Heike Buchfelder, Coordination, Fabien Dumas, e27, ett la benn, Oskar Fabian, David Hanauer, Studio Hausen, Hermann August Weizenegger.

 

Emphasizing the narrative quality of design, the exhibition‘s setting enabled the designers to seize on different aspects, attributes and concepts of their designs and to enhance these in a specific scenery.

Produced and presented as a traveling exhibition, the individual works were shown in “stage-cases” that felt like elevated dioramas—giving each piece a sense of theater.

 

In large wooden crates, the designers created still life sceneries as contextual environments for their objects. The format of the crate-stages corresponds to the 4:3 proportion of digital images

These stage-crates emphasized the narrative aspect of design and allowed each designer to create their own context, identify visual cues as inspiration and, like any good piece of fiction, invite the viewer to participate or reject the premise.

Overlite
via Privata Oslavia 8
Ventura Lambrate

DMY Berlin Exhibiting Designers

Werner Aisslinger
Chair Farm

 

The latest project chair farm by Berlin-based designer and curator Werner Aisslinger showcases an improvised laboratory as a new production vision, based on recent urban experiments and agricultural utopias. In detail, the chair farm consists of a reusable frame-kit to shape local plants into objects such as chairs. The farm questions the fact of decentralized production methods of foodstuff and common goods by shipping them thousands of kilometers around the globe. The farm rather underlines the pleasure of local sourcing and local productions of societies focused on their surroundings and qualities of life. The accumulation of material possession becomes less and less important for these people.

Heike Buchfelder
Pluma cubic – lighting

 

Pluma cubic is a symbiosis of natural goose and rooster feathers and clear, geometric forms combined to create illuminated objects. With the new editions Heike Buchfelder makes a departure from its classic line. The feathers take on a less abstract expression, playing with viewer associations even as they recall their former owner, the bird.

Fabien Dumas
The War of the Lights

 

Fabien Dumas presents the lighting installation, „The War Of The Lights“ featuring Yokozuna and for the very first time Atamé. Yokozuna is a suspension lamp, part of the new collection of Belgium based manufacturer DARK. Atamé is a freshly designed collection of suspension, table and floor lamps.

Mark Braun
Fortune –drinking set no.283

 

2011 ett la benn discovered and presented the characteristics of natural cellulose within the kami project. Using the same biodegradable material, this year‘s project kami spin transmits this process into an industrialised rotation moulding suggesting new applications of the objects.

Parts

Inspired by their own kami collection from 2011 ett la benn designed 19 asymmetric ceramic pieces for Australian homewares distributor Maxwell & Williams which enter the worldwide market in June 2012.

Rakso Naibaf
Parapluie table

 

The small parapluie table enriches the interior with its love for detail. Its design grapples with the tension between object-nature and context-expectation, the sublime ‚releasement‘ of the trick. The impression of the fragile handle, like it could collapse every second, reminds us of the transience of the objects we know -the objects that made the modern world work. Playing with these impressions, the table is simple but full of character in the role it fulfills for the interior. In its role within the domestic space, the table is an homage to the absurdity of the everyday. The table is 100% designed and manufactured in Berlin.

E27
A7 Berliner Pendel

 

The shape of this pendant has its origins in the old Berlin gas lighting. It has been developed in the 1950s as part of the modernization of Berlin‘s gas lighting following models designed in the 30s. Since the beginning of 1970 Hahn Licht has been produced these lamps in both gas and electric versions. The production method is the same: aluminum is spinned by hand on the original forms. In their design process, e27 has discovered the shade in the manufacture. It was actually the top of the gas lamp. The shade was opened up in the middle and the top and transformed into a pendant.

Louis Chair

Louis Chair uses the possibilities of stretching to transform a simple metal sheet into a three dimensional furniture. Stretching the laser cut steel sheet up to maximal strain creates a static equilibrium. With this simple but ingenious technique, a metal sheet just 3 mm thick has been turned into a rest chair, resembling baroque louis XIV seat.

Light drop

Formal is a series of objects made of deep drawn perforated metal plate, mostly used as facade material in architecture, and natural or painted wood. The Formal family consists of objects that illuminate the room or can be used as storage. The formal shape is a simple cylinder, but with its use of two divergent materials Light Drop becomes a big suspense. Industrial and cool meets warm and soft.

David Hanauer
The living structure

 

What is our relationship to objects (as furniture) in space? The organisation and positioning of self, which our environment demands from us as active human beings is expressed in ‘the living structure‘. Shifting between a sculptural object and a piece of furniture, this design of a table and a chair shows how social interaction can develop in space, and how it depends on a conscious decision for or against it.

Red black and black gold

‘red black‘ and ‘black gold‘ are lamps which consist of tennis racket bags that were stitched together: it is an everyday object that was formed out of recycled consumer goods. Both aspects, conversion and the ability for a different use are subject of its form. It is the observation of the fine line between art, product design and consumer behaviour that the designer puts up for negotiation.

Hermann August Weizenegger
Tecto

 

With his work group ‘Digital Couture‘ Hermann Weizenegger translated traditional crafts to modern technologies and experimented with spatial layers and torsion. Based on this concept he developed a wide range of objects. The latest objects are the two bowls Tecto. They were developed in cooperation with the young table Auerberg. Like a topographical landscape model, its body is built, layer by layer and plays with the tension between 2D and 3D surface respectively space.

Aerostat

Inspired by the shape of an airship, the lamp Aerostat floats in space. Like marionettes, the layers made of synthetic Japanese paper YUPO are brought into position by metal strings causing the ship to move. Aerostat follows the principles of ‘Digital Couture‘ by HAW, joining a generative design-process with accurate craftsmanship.

Coordination Berlin
Thread Stool – high stool and bistro table

 

This family of objects features upscale hand-cut wooden threads connected to intrinsically detailed lathed tops. The top structures are supported by well crafted steel bases. Matte oil finished walnut wood emphasizes the precision of the engineering and the natural preciousness of the material. An opaque matte lacquer finish for the bases was chosen for durability and creates the right contrast according to the assigned function. The reduced design of the Thread object family pronounces the beauty of craftsmanship. By using a minimal selection of materials with subtle surface treatments, the clear structure is enhanced. The outcome is a distinctive look of a well thought out yet humble luxury object. Thread is timeless, light & highly flexible in use.

Studio Hausen
Pipe Party

 

Studio Hausen is celebrating the tube and invites to the presentation of two new products. Both, the GOLIATH cutlery and the UDO chair are made from pressed steel tube. In a simple pressing process clear shapes with a somewhat naive aesthetics were created and form the character of these products. Forge pressure forms the sharp bladed knife and the smooth shaped spoon of the GOLIATH cutlery but also the floating connections of the UDO chair. Besides this aesthetic benefit the pressing procedure offers manifold functional potential. All pieces of the stackable UDO chair can be fast and easily connected with the help of blind rivets. Therefore, no additional expensive tools or procedures like welding, sanding or polishing are needed. To emphasize the modular character of the UDO chair all four elements can be coloured in a customized colour range. In this project the use of the tube in design was squeezed and stretched and leads to two playful, charming products.

Installation preparations

 

About DMY Berlin

DMY Berlin is an international platform for contemporary product design. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, DMY will present 12 international exhibitions this year including showcases at Ventura Lambrate (during Salone del Mobile), Noho Design District (during ICFF New York), at Designtide Tokyo, Design Miami and Buenos Aires’ Mes de Diseño.

Serving as a genuine hub for designers, manufacturers and journalists, DMY Berlin annually presents its very own DMY International Design Festival in Berlin, the largest festival for contemporary product design in Germany.

This year‘s jubilee edition will take place at former city airport Berlin Tempelhof from June 06-10, 2012.

Over 700 designers and brands will showcase their latest works, including serial products, limited editions and prototypes. The exhibition will especially shed light upon the processes and concepts that led to the final designs reflecting design as a holistic system of interlocking development stages. The showcases will be supplemented by a versatile programme of symposia, designer-talks, workshops and evening events reflecting current topics and crucial developments in design.

In 2012, DMY Berlin will also host the official German Design Award “Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“ for the first time. The prize is awarded by the Ministry of Economics and Technology since 1969 honouring excellence in product and communication design. It is considered as the country’s most prestigious design award.

As an international platform for contemporary design, DMY Berlin encourages experimental and innovative approaches in design and nurtures an interdisciplinary dialogue to identify necessary future tasks in design.

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The Israeli-born new york-based designer Ron Gilad, presented a solo exhibition at Dilmos Gallery entitled ” The line, the arch, the circle & the square” illustrating the building blocks of his new series of sculptural projects. The collection titled, examines the basic elements of composition

In this exhibition for Dilmos, each object is the translation of an argument and each idea synthesizes a thought. Gilad’s goal is to frame everyday objects within perfect geometry, simply altering their function and giving them new life

Ron Gilad uses simple geometries to describe the transformation of objects as an imaginary dimension.

 

With note of humor and irony, Gilad takes up the opportunity to invite us into a “theatre of the absurd”. Here objects are not what they seem, or more accurately, shapes do not immediately suggest function, quite on the contrary.

The LINE: emerges from a cut in the wall to form a thin iron line which – not without kindness – supports a candle.

The ARCH: shows the capacity for simple solid geometry to become a seat.

The CIRCLE: doesn’t just hold a mirror, a clock, or an LED light fixture, it embodies the designer’s arguments about concepts such as point / surface / container and, of course, circle.

The SQUARE: through its slow evolution contains a fragment of the mystery of forms.

His work revolves around ideas which relate to foundational concepts of the history of form in respect to architecture, art, and design, often resulting in what he refers to as ‘three-dimensional concepts’.

Since 1980, Dilmos has been hosting exhibitions with designers that “express a philosophy where each piece of furniture is a representation and at the same time a key to deeper thoughts, a way of communicating and interacting with the world.”

Ron Gilad’s installation embodies this perfectly, with the designer exploring objects and their respective functions with a playful approach.

Not made for mass production, these pieces will be sold as limited edition pieces

THE LINE, THE ARCH, THE CIRCLE AND THE SQUARE.

“I try to convey thoughts and arguments through form.”

Ron Gilad’s objects are the end-result of what might be called “three-dimensional concepts”.  He uses simple geometries to describe the transformation of objects, in an imaginary dimension.

Many of the ideas he has been developing for years relate to foundational concepts of the history of form, as well as to architecture, art, and design.

The very title of this one man exhibition for Dilmos – “The Line, The Arch, The Circle & The Square” – illustrates with utter simplicity the building blocks in his new series of creations.

In his second show for Dilmos – following “IX Mirrors” (2011) – Gilad once again shows us a thought process which involves many stops along a single path where each element connects back to the preceding one while also sending us on to the next.

He is not concerned about whether the idea originated recently or ten years ago: the important thing is to add ever new stimulus to the perception of the reality which surrounds us.

Led both by instinct and reason, Gilad’s goal is to frame everyday objects within perfect geometry, altering their function and giving them new life.

The objects exhibited – seats, coat racks, mirrors, and light fixtures – confirm how successfully and freely Gilad moves among disparate crafts and a wide range of materials.

The pieces conveyed included mirrors, lighting fixtures and seats demonstrating the designer’s ability to work between different materials and various craft forms through his creative practice. the show was a kind of ‘theatre of the absurd’, whereby the ‘furniture’ exhibited where not necessarily what they seemed, their shapes not immediately suggesting function, but rather the contrary.

One example is the bench series which picks up on the classic architectonic shape of the arch; using extremely refined techniques to work with marble, he handles this material as if it was as malleable and light as paper.

The installation is Ron Gilad’s physically realized three dimensional sketchbook, as the display has been created to explore the object and its function through an inquisitive or playful approach.

The trained industrial designer has developed a highly cerebral reconfiguration of basic shapes and forms. indicative of gilad’s evolving visual language, the collection of design pieces include a range of visually accessible works, having been realized as hybrid objects in limited edition, one-of-a-kind and production pieces.

‘the line, the arch, the circle + the square’ ultimately aids in the facilitation of an open dialogue surrounding contemporary design and art.

Oscillating between the logical and the absurd, randomness and causality, strictness and flexibility, Ron Gilad leads us – object by object, idea by idea – along his conceptual road map, to a place where everyone may interpret what they see, guided by their own imagination

Upholstered seat with fixed cover and feet in lacquered steel. Metal structure finished with polyurethane.

Appropriating the Thonet chair no.14, shape, shrinking it and reproducing it in steel, allowed the stability for it to function as a support to the other components

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The history of Knoll is the history of modern design. Knoll,  one of the worlds’ “leading furniture and textile manufacturers” recognized for innovation and modern design, showcased highly collectible classic and contemporary designs for Salone del Mobile, 2012

During its’ 75th year, Knoll launched some exciting collections -

1) A new sofa collection by Pierre Beucler and Jean- Christophe Poggioli
2) The Warren Platner Easy Chair and Ottoman
3) A tables and chairs collection by UK designer Marc Krusin
4) Richard Schultz 1966 outdoor collection

 

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The Italian high street fashion house Marni, premiered chair’s which were woven from PVC threads and produced by Columbian former ex-prisoners as part of a rehabilitation programme.

The collection of 100 pieces were shown at a “pop-up Marni Boutique” at Via della Spiga 50, with proceeds going to the institute ICAM of Milan – a project to allow children of imprisoned mothers to spend their youth in a family environment.

All products are handmade by Colombian craftsmen using salvaged materials: concrete reinforcing bars for the structure and coloured plastic pipes for the seats and backrests. The colours and colour combinations were chosen by the Marni team, thus adding a personal touch to the project and completing the creative process that was initiated overseas.

The collection ( 20 colours, 7 models and 21 variations for 80 chairs, 10 deckchairs and 10 tables) were sold during the Salone del Mobile, with all profits from the project reverting to the charity

 

The Marni furniture collection, which is inspired by the common seat–a simple piece of furniture that is popular within Colombian families, is also affiliated with the “L’Arte del Ritratto” project, a photo exhibition made in collaboration with Francesco Jodice, a photographer and filmmaker as well as the founder of the Multiplicity Group. Jodice’s work revolves around his interest of analyzing and cataloging new relationships that are formed between urban design and social behavior.

The chairs are part of the art project “L’arte del Ritratto” by photographer and filmmaker Francesco Iodice.

The photos’ subjects are Marni employees from different departments sitting on the chairs in an arrangement that represents the brand’s family orientated work ethic and a tribute to their long time together.

Individual  furniture pieces retailed for between $260-590.approx.

The venture was created to help the prisoners get re-acquainted back to social and working life—a move made similar by Filipino designer Puey Quinones, which the world will soon see in his upcoming documentary, “The World’s Most Fashionable Prison.”

 

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