A monolithic mass of stacked cardboard and delicate strings burgeoning into the ceiling vaults welcomed the visitors inside the Taiwan Pavilion at last year's Venice International Architecture Biennale.
Architect and designer Ming-Pin Liao reused for this installation corrugated cardboard as a solidly consistent material to create a sort of linking space for the design concepts and works of two architects, Wei-Li Liao and Yu-Han Michael Lin.
Stacking cardboard, Ming-Pin Liao built an entire house, the sort of flat typically inhabited by the members of the middle-class in Taiwan - including foyer, living and dining room, kitchen, bathroom, studio and a bedroom - inside the Palazzo delle Prigioni. Some spaces even featured interior design elements such as a desk, a table and chairs, a sink and a shower.
Ming-Pin Liao employed cardboard to experiment with a new aesthetic, emphasising the relationship between environment and architecture, while recreating a symbolic island inside another building, hinting at the relationship between different yet similar places such as Taiwan and Venice. The construction process became vitally important in that case with the corrugated cardboard - accumulated, amassed and stacked - used to shape a new space inside an old one.
The idea of basic cardboard sheets forming appealing surfaces has appeared in fashion as a micro trend for the next season.
Giambattista Valli's Spring/Summer 2014 collection includes for example silk tunic dresses, tops and skirts featuring a print of what looks like rough and basic cardboard. Apparently, the inspiration for this collection came from a combination of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films and the works of Arte Povera artist Alighiero Boetti.
J.W. Anderson focused instead on surfaces: from basic (and slightly unwearable unless you want to reveal too much...) paper-like strips of textiles employed as tops to draped, twisted, gathered, sculpted, densely folded and chevroned materials including leather, silk, nylon and pleather; from three-dimensional pleats to stiff tops and wrap skirts that fold over the body.
Critics saw in some of Anderson's more conceptual shapes hints at Comme des Garçons, and in his textural architectures references to Issey Miyake. But if you're Italian and familiar with the work of Nanni Strada (a firm reference point of Miyake as well...) you may have easily identified the real origins of the densely pleated designs in experimental fabric surfaces such as Strada's Matrix.
As this microtrend spreads, starting to think how it may be possible to integrate and assemble bits and pieces of cardboard in unique and striking accessories may be a fun, and definitely very affordable, option.
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