SILENCE
Besides populating our living spaces, today’s objects also serve the purpose of filling the mental spaces in our life.
When we assumed to design the architecture of a new house, the whole process would start by choosing one single object, the most beautiful on earth, bewitching us with its very presence. By placing this object in the middle of the surrounding empty space, we determine the point of view from which observing and touching it, the way it will be illuminated, the distance between this object and every new object adding on to it. That’s how the new home would come into being: little by little, from the object we chose all the way down to the table hosting it, the chairs surrounding it, the lighting fixtures illuminating it. And ultimately, we would start thinking about the walls, the windows and, in a nutshell, the shape of the entire house. The house would be designed around the object. I think we should choose a symbolic, thought-provoking object, a sort of silence facilitator, significantly reminding us of century-old rituals as well as suggesting future visions.
Today’s design, instead, is about the opposite process: it gets underway starting from the walls, the definition of space, the choice of the materials. Eventually, we fill the house with all sorts of objects: functional, beautiful, dull, bulky, brand new or grandma’s, maybe even unnecessary or redundant ones.
A question spontaneously comes to the mind: how do we choose the object to stand out as the underlying, ultimate element of the architecture and of the space we inhabit?
@ The grave goods of Nefertari, Egyptian Museum of Turin
MAYBE IT IS A SYMBOLIC OBJECT
MAYBE IT IS AN OBJECT THAT STRIVES FOR PERFECTION
MAYBE IT IS AN OBJECT THAT HINTS AT THE PASSING OF TIME
Three aspects beautifully epitomized as one by mysterious objects poised between art,
design and craftsmanship.
Art comes to our help when we talk with God, while offering us the symbolic and
ritual references we need.
Design provides a significant interaction with everyday life and
reveals whether the object at issue belongs to our time.
Craftsmanship is helpful to talk about the time spent in obsessively pursuing total perfection or intentional, controlled imperfection.
I am fascinated by the shamanic presence of objects, by the simultaneous presence of past, present and future their souls harbor, and I feel somehow comforted when I strive to understand them inside out. Despite the effort we lead in designing and crafting them, objects develop a vital drive of their own irrespective of the designer, a drive that has them live a mysteriously independent existence. The objects thus born, find a life of their own, regardless of the design intentions. It is evolutionary objects, flexibly adapting to the future by adding forever new meanings to the original ones and bravely looking forward.
It is no longer handcrafted, industrial objects or “finished” objects only as we have known them so far; they are the result of a yet unexplored energy. They are the offspring of an attitude that I believe harbors a disruptive innovation.
I call them offspring of the uncontaminated, enthusiastic attitude
of post-contemporary handicraft
