Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law, Science & Technology

Stylish Shapes in Space: "Forme - Umberto Riva, architetto designer" @ Fondazione Sozzani, Milan

Some architects may achieve a star status a few years after setting up their practice; others may instead take more time, as it happened to Umberto Riva. Critics started acknowledging the Italian architect around 2003, when the Milan Triennial awarded him the Gold Medal for Architecture, but a recent exhibition coinciding with Milan Design Week is currently inviting architecture and design fans to (re)discover him.

"Forme: Umberto Riva, architetto designer" (Shapes: Umberto Riva, designer architect; until 5th May) at the Fondazione Sozzani looks at Riva's practice through carefully selected projects and pieces.

Born in 1928 in Milan, Riva studied architecture in Venice, where he discovered Carlo Scarpa. Fascinated by Le Corbusier, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Gerrit Rietveld, as a young man Riva developed an interest for materials, techniques and technologies.

After graduating he opened his studio and started a personal and rigorous research defined by critics as a sort of journey in the footsteps of Carlo Scarpa.

Throughout his work Riva reaffirmed the artisanal role of the architect and the pleasure that derives from manual work, and always worked following his own rhythms and taking all the necessary time to complete commissions.

Dynamic, open and inclined towards seeking out unusual solutions, the architect developed a unique approach to his work, a passion for new explorations in spaces and a strong desire to constantly question himself.

Riva mainly designed domestic spaces, residences and homes, focusing also on renovations and restorations of urban spaces in Milan, Ancona and Rome, but also worked on interior design pieces such as the Franceschina lamp for Fontana Arte, and created spaces for exhibitions and installations.

The event at the Fondazione Sozzani is divided in different sections, looking at his lamps, interior design objects such as his E19 chair, and paintings and photographs showing his studies on geometries, colours and spaces. His drawings and paintings employed for carpets for Tacchini are particularly beautiful, with shapes and combinations of colours that call to mind Futurism or Orphism.  

Visitors will also be able to discover interesting cinematic moments in his career: Riva's "E63" lamp, inspired by a sculpture by Brâncuși and designed in 1963, appears indeed in Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049" (View this photo), reminding us that the shape of timeless design objects can help us creating intriguing anachronisms in both fiction and life. The event at the Fondazione Sozzani is accompanied by "Umberto Riva", a new architectural video by Francesca Molteni and Claudia Adragna.

Image credits for this post

1. Umberto Riva, 2013 © Andrea Martiradonna

2. Umberto Riva, Riva Flat in via Paravia, 1965-67. (Photograph: Giorgio Casali – Università IUAV di Venezia, Archivio Progetti, Fondo Giorgio Casali)

3. Umberto Riva, Bar Sem, Milano, 1975-77. Coffee machine detail (Photograh: Umberto Riva)

4. Veronese Lamp by Barovier & Toso, 1984

5. E63 Lamp

6. Ritual Rug for Tacchini, 2018

Design as a Critical Pratice: "I See That I See What You Don't See" @ La Triennale, Palazzo dell'Arte, Milan

When we talk about events such as Milan Design Week, quite a few people instantly think about pieces of furniture and interior design projects, but the word "design" actually indicates a vast universe, as proved by the Dutch contribution to the XXII International Exhibition at La Triennale di Milano (until 1st September 2019).

Entitled "I See That I See What You Don't See" and commissioned by the Het Nieuwe Instituut, this showcase and programme of events taking place in both Milan (at Palazzo dell'Arte) and Rotterdam (later on this year) responds to the Triennale's general theme "Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival".

The Dutch intervention, curated by Angela Rui, design curator and researcher, Marina Otero Verzier and Francien van Westrenen, respectively Director of Research and Head of Agency at Het Nieuwe Instituut, features a group of designers, artists and researchers tackling a series of themes, including dichotomies such as light access and darkness, looking and seeing, and exploring wider themes like Earth, data, technology and energy.

Projects and presentations vary, going from forensic science and biology to cosmology and activism, design is therefore interpreted not as the production of an object, but as a critical practice questioning ways of living, raising awareness and inviting visitors to face new collective challenges.  

There's the proverbial something for everybody among the projects: Leanne Wijnsma created three skin fragrances (developed by International Flavors and Fragrances) that act as a carrier for invisible communication and influencing; Pascal van Hulst, following a research by Oscar Peña, was inspired by the 1994 Los Angeles Blackout and by the disruption it caused to the power supply that left residents to encounter the star-filled sky, a phenomenon that sparked fear rather than excitement.

"The Unsleep" is a photographic essay by Danilo Correale suspended between sci-fi and reality, with telecommunications workers as protagonists. As they work following different time-zones from the countries where they are based, these people live in a limbo regulated by the rhythms of production and consumption and in a new labour sphere dominated by a perpetual chrono glitch.

Also "Automated Landscapes" by the Research Department at Het Nieuwe Instituut Automation, focuses on labour, but on the 24-hour, 365-day production cycles of automated labour in the Netherlands, through a research in the data-filled greenhouses and farms where the productivity of the ground is controlled and maximised by automated technologies.

Textile fans will enjoy "Wi-Fi Tapestry" by Richard Vijgen, a wall hanging that renders visible the wireless activity of a space as the tapestry unveils the ever changing landscape of radio frequencies such as mobile phones, printers, and all kinds of smart devices, around us.

When data is transmitted on a channel, the controller sends a current to thermal elements embedded in the tapestry, converting data into heat and activating a thermochromic yarn woven into it. Streams of data transmitted through space appear as visual traces from an invisible dimension that gradually form and dissolve.

Science-fiction artist Lucy McRae continues her utopian/dystopian studies into the future with "Compression Cradle" (co-commissioned by Het Nieuwe Instituut and Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences). This project is McRae's response to the touch crisis: we are all overconnected with technology, but we all lack physical contact, so the artist devised a machine that squeezes the body thanks to a series of aerated membranes that hold it tightly. 

The process alters the gene expression of serotonin - the hormone responsible for regulating mood, social behaviour, digestion, and sexual desire - and repairs the broken bonds between ourselves, our emotions and the way we engage with the world.

The cradle's membrane also reveals the silhouette of a stranger sleeping between a squishy wrap, a figure that hints at voyeurism.

Somehow this installation echoes the 1968 one by architect Aldo van Eyck for the Triennale di Milano exhibition, "Greater Number", that has been rediscovered for the "I See That..." event. Van Eyck's focused on concern for the earth and the limits of growth; his installation was pessimistic, but it was also a plea for the restoration of the connection between man and nature through imagination and creativity.

Though pessimistic in its essence, McRae's "Compression Cradle", suspended between performance, pleasure and total enclosure fetishism, tries to restore the power of physical contact through an imaginative reinvention of the human touch.

Rather than providing answers, McRae asks us if we can design something that can repair the broken bonds between humanity. Think you have the answer to McRae's challenge? Then join her at the "Compression Cradle" performance that will take place on 12th April (at 10.45am) at the Palazzo dell'Arte. 

Image credits for this post

1. Panorama, I See That I See What You Don’t See, Rudy Guedj, 2019. Photo: Daria Scagliola

2. Leanne Wijnsma, A Wildlife

3. Danilo Correale, excerpt from The Unsleep, 2019, courtesy the Artist

4. Automatic feed pushing robot at a dairy farm in The Netherlands. Lely International

5. Richard Vijgen, Wi-Fi Tapestry, 2017

6. Compression Cradle, Lucy McRae. Photo Scottie Cameron

7. Compression Cradle, Lucy McRae. Photo: Daria Scagliola

8. Compression Cradle, Lucy McRae. Photo: Daria Scagliola

Woven Erosions: Sophie Dries X Nilufar Gallery @ Milan Design Week

Inspirations can come from the most unlikely or unusual places: architect Sophie Dries for example was fascinated with Can Lis, a villa designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon (famous for the Sydney Opera House) for his wife Lis.

Located on the Spanish island of Majorca and completed in 1971, the villa consists in four sections or pavilions united by walls and courtyards.

The building, made of rough materials such as stone, pine and ceramics, was used for years by the architect and his family, but recently the Danish Architectural Foundation in collaboration with the Utzon Foundation started making the house available to architects wishing to stay there for periods of at least one month.

Dries did a research trip there in 2015, but, rather than studying the more obvious features of the villa such as the geometries characterising the building, she focused on the rough surfaces of its stone walls.

Tracing its imperfections with charcoal on paper and highlighting the marks of the manually sawn stone, Dries tried to reapply their effects to a wool and silk rug created for the Nilufar Gallery in Milan, and designed bearing in mind the empty spaces inside the villa with its fixed masonry furniture. 

The charcoal sketches were turned into ghost patterns and applied to a 300 x 400 cm rug produced using a traditional Persian knot descending from Mogul weaving skills and mainly employed in the regions of Northern India and in the city of Agra.

The manufacturing process was very slow: it takes indeed one month to weave one square meter of such a piece, a rich wool from the Himalayan foothills and Chinese silks. 

Once the weaving process is completed, the surface of the carpet is washed and radically altered, obtaining different volumes that reproduce a sort of visual relief.

Through this technique the textile ends up looking worn out as the silk is revealed on the base of the matte and hollow wool, and the carpet assumes an eroded look, revealing a faded ghost-like memory of the walls at Villa Can Lis.

The carpet is accompanied by a blown glass sphere-shaped pendant light, designed by Dries in collaboration with Basel-based Matteo Gonet's studio. The glass incorporates mica fragments that help forming a cratered lunar-like surface on the sphere (an effect that is directly linked to the eroded carpet surface) and the lamp is attached to a minimalist light fixture structure evoking Cubist jewellery. 

Sunday Trend: Vintage Ice Cream Tin Advertising Boards

Though a few companies already produced ice creams in Italy in the '50s, the trend for prepackaged ice creams developed in the following decades, registering for brands such as Motta, Sammontana, Besana and Algida a boom in sales and an expansion between the '70s and the '80s.

It was easy to find ice cream adverts on the back cover of comic books: some of the most popular ones featured Italian bands such as the Matia Bazar or advertised ice lollies and ice creams decorated with granola in garish colours (the "Cono Atomic" was definitely a post-nuclear age ice cream, that, despite its popularity, quietly disappeared from the market after the Chernobyl disaster...). There was also one ritual among kids who grew up in those years: when you saw a bar or grocery shop putting out the tin board advertising the ice creams with their prices, you knew that Summer was around the corner and the holidays were finally coming.

A quick browse online will introduce you to some examples of ice cream boards from those years (the best ice cream boards have become in recent years interior design items for vintage fans). But can they be a fashion inspiration?

For Jeremy Scott at Moschino, yes, they can: a recent capsule collection developed by the Italian brand (in collaboration with Smileys) features indeed shirts, jackets, trousers and accessories with prints replicating ice cream boards featuring coloured ice lollies and cornetti with fantasy names inspired by the brand tropes ("Coppa M", "Mucchino" or "Cono Sciamoci" where "cono" means "cone", but "Cono Sciamoci" is also a pun on the verb "conosciamoci", meaning "let's get to know each other").

The drawings and illustrations employed for the prints in the Moschino capsule collection evoke some of the ice creams that were popular between the '70s and the '80s and the sky blue background is also borrowed from some of the boards. 

While this is a print aimed at a young generation, it may resonate also with older consumers who may find it nostalgic since it immediately evokes childhood memories and the promise of fun, nice weather, ice creams and, above all, a three-month long holiday (yes, the school summer holidays last for about three months in Italy).

If you like the ice cream advert trend but you're looking for less garish and more elegant inspirations, try going back to the '50s and you will discover stylish vintage adverts like the Motta ones. Have a lovely Sunday! 

A Crocheted House for Rainbow Brite: "Home Sweet Home" by Alessandra Roveda @ The Missoni Showroom, Milan

Milan Design Week starts in two days, but the city is already abuzz with installations, exhibitions and events. "Home Sweet Home" by Alessandra Roveda is for example already on display at the Missoni Showroom (via Solferino 9; from today until 14th April).

Roveda is a graduate in Industrial Design from the Politecnico di Milano, but she has a passion for a special traditional craft that she nurtured since her childhood – crocheting.

Roveda's grandmother inspired the artist to start crocheting, but in her practice this craft is applied to create visually striking pieces inspired by ordinary objects.

Conceiving crocheting hooks like brushes and yarns like paints, Roveda covers in polychromatic layers of fabric ordinary objects. Her technique is inspired by yarn bombing and calls to mind the crocheting interventions of other seminal or contemporary artists who have used this medium in their practices, from Faith Wilding to Joana Vasconcelos.

Angela Missoni commissioned Roveda to create an installation inspired by Spring and by the history of the fashion house for the brand's showroom during Milan Design Week: the result is a colourful space, populated with objects we may find in our daily lives, from tables and chairs to sofas and armchairs, beds, books and shelves, bicycles and clocks. 

All of them seem to have been touched by Rainbow Brite's magic and have lost their function: the artist dressed up indeed all the objects in multi-coloured knits.

These objects transform an ordinary and commercial space into a soft and surreal fun landscape, a fairy-tale like set in which yarns are used to recreate Missoni's trademark fiammato or zig-zagging motifs. 

"Home Sweet Home" is more a commercial installation than a way of questioning the role of women or tackling issues like domesticity and feminism, but it works pretty well on the visual and tactile level, proving that yarns can be used to transform even the dullest object into something fun and unique, and the most ordinary space into a repository of daydreams. 

Image credits for this post

1 - 6. Installation view at Showroom Missoni - "Home Sweet Home" by Alessandra Roveda. Photographs by Christan Michele

7. Angela Missoni and Alessandra Roveda share some crocheted sushi at "Home Sweet Home" at the Missoni Showroom. Photograph by Christan Michele.   

The Maze as a Metaphor for the Human Condition: Arnaldo Pomodoro's Labyrinth @ The Fendi Showroom, Milan

There's currently a trend for escape rooms, but there is only one escape room-like environment where fashionistas and art fans may want to be locked in – Arnaldo Pomodoro's labyrinth.

This visionary space was developed throughout 16 years (1995-2001) and is located in the basement of Fendi's Milanese showroom (in via Solari 35, previous headquarters of the Riva Calzoni factory).

Pomodoro developed a fascination with labyrinths as a child and, in the '90s, he made an entry portal conceived as a wall installation for an exhibition dedicated to Babylon.

Two years later, the piece became a proper entry door for a space recreated in another exhibition and, little by little, Pomodoro decided to develop an entire installation at the Fondazione in Via Solari, revolving around the theme of the labyrinth.

Until 2011 the work was a work-in-progress in constant evolution, but, when the Fondazione Pomodoro moved to another headquarter, it became impossible to relocate the labyrinth that was left as it was and incorporated in the basement of Fendi's showroom.

Pomodoro's labyrinth evokes ancient worlds and explorations: you access it through a revolving door and are immediately surrounded by walls covered in unintelligible hieroglyphics and geometrical signs and symbols.

These alien-like alphabets are actually inspired by Sumerian tablets narrating the Epic of Gilgamesh, but there are also echoes of the Aztec, Babylonian, Egyptian, and ancient Greek cultures. These signs hint at the power of communication and at a clash of cultures and alphabets.

The spaces are dark and mysterious, they are populated by sculptures that look half-finished or that evoke other pieces by Pomodoro, and feature corridors and rooms with a great tactile power as the walls are covered with three-dimensional bronzed elements.

In the centre of the labyrinth there is a room that features a sort of stone bed with a beam of light that comes from above: this space reproduces the cell where the Palermo-born alchemist Cagliostro died (the beam of light is a reference to the fact that the only access to the "Cella del Pozzetto" where Cagliostro was imprisoned at the Fortress of San Leo, outside Rimini, was a trap in the ceiling).

Informed by art, architecture, set and jewellery design, Pomodoro's labyrinth is a metaphor for the human condition: the artist, designer and sculptor often stated in interviews that he often feels locked in a labyrinth from where he can't escape.

Yet, if you search well, you will find the way out of Pomodoro's "escape room": the exit is not to be discovered in his unintelligible signs sculpted on the walls, but deep inside each of us and that revelation will come to you while exploring in silence these spaces and meditating about life. 

Pomodoro's labyrinth will also be open during Milan Design Week (8th - 14th April, but remember to book your visit) - expect your average influencer or fashionista to visit it in search of photo ops.

Images in this post by Dario Tettamanzi

In Weaving I Disappear: Ganga Maki Shawl and Turban Workshop @ Assab One, Milan

Milan Design Week is kicking off on Monday, but, if you are already in the Italian Capital of style, design, and fashion on Sunday 7^th April, don't miss the Ganga Maki shawl and turbans workshop at the non-profit organisation Assab One (6.00-8.00pm). 

Ganga Maki Textile Studio is a laboratory created by Chiaki Maki with Studio Mumbai's architect Bijoy Jain. This creative and artisanal space is located a few kilometers away from Rishikesh at the foot of the Himalaya.

After graduating from the Musashino Art University, Maki, who currently lives and works between Tokyo and Dehradun, continued her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. Then she developed a research in the practice of weaving, spending time in India producing original hand-woven fabrics.

In a statement on the Assab One site Maki states: "When I was studying at the Rhode Island school of Design, I experienced a moment while weaving in which I was disappearing. Only the act of weaving remained. The piece produced by that experience was extraordinary, beyond any possible description. That moment became the heart and the meaning of my work. When touching the yarns, when dyeing with the plants, when throwing the shuttles, no matter where I am, in India, Japan or the United States, I disappear. Emptiness occurs, the absence of thought, this is what allows me to create."

Ganga Maki Textile Studio was born out of that experience of disappearing through weaving: here local craftspeople follow the production from the very early stages, starting from the cultivation of fibres and the making of the yarns and of the natural pigments, to the creation of compositions of exceptional uniqueness on wooden looms.

Maki is known among textile fans for creating with the studio yarns pictorial tapestry-like fabrics, her work is indeed characterised by natural pigments, as well as the reaction of colours to light and matter.

Some of her textiles are currently on display at "The Alchemy of Weaving" exhibition at Assab One (Maki's first exhibition in Italy; open until 14th April), so going to the workshop (where there will also be a surprising and exceptional casual visiting guests - Romeo Gigli) will allow you to check out the exhibition as well. In the meantime, have a look at the colourful Ganga Maki Studio Instagram page that features some beautiful images of artisans at work. 

Wrapping Up the Urban Space: Ibrahim Mahama @ Porta Venezia, Milan

Four years ago Ibrahim Mahama took part in the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice. In that occasion the Ghanaian artist presented his installation "Out of Bounds" consisting in coarsely woven jute sacks wrapping the Troncone section of the Arsenale.

The jute fibre sacks have become his trademark, installation after installation: craft-wise there are many different processes in this installation, such as sewing, draping, cladding and hanging. At times the sacks are sewn together with brightly coloured stitches; in others they are covered with small sequin-like metal disks and seals, something that adds a tactile quality to the pieces.   

Born in 1987 in Temale, Mahama lives and works between Accra, Temale, and Kumasi (Ghana). He was still studying painting and sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology when he started working with local traders and market sellers making large-scale installations of jute fibre sacks.

He then involved migrant workers from the north of the country and students who became active in the production of his installations.

Mahama's "Occupation" series started in 2012 and continued to expand, becoming more ambitious scale-wise: the artist, who took part in major exhibitions, international fairs and events all over the world, covered indeed with his experimental textiles different public spaces including government buildings, theatres, market spaces, footbridges and old train stations, reclaiming them and giving them a new configuration and life.

Mahama will represent Ghana on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale opening in May, but he is anticipating this new participation at the international event with another monumental installation, entitled "A Friend".

Commissioned and presented by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi with the collaboration of miart in the framework of 2019 Milan Art Week, and curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the installation wraps up in Mahama's trademark jute sacks the two neoclassical Caselli Daziari (Tollgates) at Porta Venezia in Milan (Piazza Guglielmo Oberdan; until 14th April).

The site-specific installation is a way to highlight the importance of this urban landmark: one of the six main gateways in the ancient city walls, the crossroads of Porta Venezia stand on the same axis as previously erected gates during the Roman, Medieval, and Spanish eras.

A protagonist of the history of the city during catastrophic events such as the plague that devastated Milan in the 17th century (Porta Venezia also appears in Alessandro Manzoni’s historical novel The Betrothed), Porta Venezia
marks a sort of border between the urban fabric of the city and the countryside, so between the metropolis and the outside world.

As the crossroads also separate the city from the many multi-ethnic neighborhoods surrounding it, "A Friend" is conceived also as a threshold, a passage between the inside and outside and a way to meet new cultures.

In ancient times the main function of the gateway was that of being a place of trade and exchange, and this installation is also a way to tackle contemporary themes such as globalisation, migration and the circulation of goods and people (key themes, especially in Italy where the far-right anti-migrant policies of the local Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have created a chaotic situation without finding real and proper solutions).

So while previous exercises in building wrapping in Milan by Christo, who wrapped the monuments of Leonardo and Vittorio Emanuele in Piazza della Scala and Piazza del Duomo in the 1970s, were used as a critique of consumption, the second skin created by Mahama around Porta Venezia weaves in the fabric of the city a new narrative that revolves around stories of global tensions.

These themes are perfectly represented by the sacks: traded across Ghana, the jute sacks implicitly confront the notions of trade, labour, and export that connect Ghana and the rest of the world. Manufactured in Southeast Asia and imported into Ghana by produce buyers who use them to bag cocoa, beans, rice and coal, before distributing them to end-users all over the world, the sacks reference the history of Ghana's political and financial economies, but they also hint at markets as places of inequalities and labour exploitation, while commenting on the effects of globalisation.

So, while there are parallelisms between Mahama’s sacks and the American sacks used for distributing food supplies in Europe as part of the Marshall Plan after World War II that served as inspiration for Alberto Burri’s work, there are further meanings to discover behind these textiles. 

The jute sacks are indeed marked with the names of various owners, so once integrated in Mahama's installations they encapsulate personal narratives and become tangible proofs of intangible identities.

"A Friend" is a symbol of conflict and drama inviting passers-by to go beyond the mere sacks and think about the personal narratives and identities of the owners and of the people who used them and sewn them together including migrants from urban and rural areas in search of work. There is indeed a metaphor between the sacks and the nomadic and uncertain existence of people without documents or rights who seem to be subjected to the same conditions of the sacks - they endlessly travel through ports, warehouses, markets and cities, their living conditions precarious, their future uncertain.

Image credits for this post

1. Ibrahim Mahama, A Friend, Porta Venezia, Milan, 2019

2. Ibrahim Mahama, An Age Of Our Own Making, Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Nyhavn, Copenhagen Denmark, 2014-2016, 2016, installation view. Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery

3. Ibrahim Mahama, Out of Bounds, 2014-2015, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2015, installation view. Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery

4. Ibrahim Mahama, Material Effects, Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, Michigan, USA, 2014, installation view. Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery. Photo Credit: Aaron Word

5. Ibrahim Mahama, Do Not Squart On The Seat, Please Sit On It, 2015, Accra, Ghana, installation view. Courtesy the artist

6. Ibrahim Mahama, Check Point Prosfygika. 1934-2034. 2016-2017, documenta 14, Syntagma Square, Athens, Greece, installation view. Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery

7. Ibrahim Mahama, Check Point Sekondi Loco. 1901-2030. 2016-2017, documenta 14, Kassel, Germany, installation view.
Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery

8. Ibrahim Mahama, Check Point Sekondi Loco. 1901-2030. 2016-2017, documenta 14, Kassel, Germany, installation view.
Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery

9. Ibrahim Mahama, Check Point Sekondi Loco. 1901-2030. 2016-2017, documenta 14, Kassel, Germany, installation view.
Courtesy the artist and Apalazzogallery

10. Ibrahim Mahama, Liberty Please No Enter by Police, Kanda 37, Accra, Ghana, 2015, installation view. Courtesy the artist

11. Ibrahim Mahama, Affordable Housing Project, No Stopping No Parking No Loading. Asokore Mampong Kumasi 2006 – 2016, Kumasi, Ghana, 2016, installation view. Courtesy the artist

12. Ibrahim Mahama, Independence Hall, No Stopping No Parking No Loading. K.N.U.S.T Kumasi, Kumasi, Ghana, 2016, installation view. Courtesy the artist

13. Ibrahim Mahama, Fracture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2016, installation view. Courtesy the artist

14 and 15. Ibrahim Mahama, Silence between the lines, Ahenema Kokoben, Kumasi, Kumasi, Ghana, 2015, installation view.
Courtesy the artist

Beauty in the Eye of the Architect (and Designer): "Mario Bellini. Italian Beauty" @ The Architecture Museum A.V. Šcusev, Moscow

According to Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini it is more difficult to design a chair than a skyscraper. After all chairs have been around since ancient times (Bellini has a fascination with Tutankhamun's throne/chair...) and the way they are designed has an influence on our posture and on the actions we perform while sitting on them.

Bellini is right as, designing an iconic piece, something genuinely timeless that can decorate an interior design space in a stylish way while improving people's lives, is no mean feat.

Bellini is currently getting ready for Milan Design Week (9th - 14th April), but in the meantime Moscow is hosting a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the 84-year-old designer and architect, "Mario Bellini. Italian Beauty".

Born in 1935, Bellini studied architecture at Milan's Politecnico (Gio Ponti was one of his lecturers). After he graduated he opened his own studio and in the early '60s he started working with La Rinascente.

As the years passed he designed iconic products for Olivetti, among them computers, typewriters and calculators; he also designed in 1968 "Pop" a portable record player that became a sensation since it allowed people to listen to their favourite vinyl records wherever they wanted (and that many critics with hindsight consider as the ancestor of the iPod). 

In 1972 he designed the Kar-a-Sutra, a mini-van concept for the exhibition "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" at New York MoMA, a prototype that 13 years later inspired automotive companies to launch the first minivans.

In the early 1981 he met Steve Jobs at a lecture, but he refuses to collaborate with Apple and, from the '80s on, he mainly dedicated himself to architecture.

Last year Bellini presented during Milan Design Week, a series of products, including tables and chairs, and he's currently focused on architectural projects in Rome and in the Caribbeans (on the island of Virgin Gorda), though his dream remains building a city in China.

"Mario Bellini. Italian Beauty" (until 13th April 2019) at the Architecture Museum A.V. Ščusev in Moscow is the travelling version of the original eponymous exhibition held at Milan's Triennale in 2017 that celebrated the 30th anniversary of the MoMa exhibition about Bellini organised in 1987. 

The exhibition is a comprehensive event – Bellini defines it a "perspective" on him rather than a "retrospective" since it covers 60 years of design.

Visitors are invited to (re)discover products such as the 1977 "CAB 412" chair for Cassina Spa consisting in a leather structure mounted on a metal frame, the iconic "Pop" record player and the 1972 super soft "Le Bambole" (The dolls) sofa for B&B Italia Spa, that caused a scandal when photographer Oliviero Toscani, called to shoot the marketing campaign, featured in the image a topless Donna Jordan.   

The journey continues through Bellini's own photographic reportages from his trips to Japan and the USA in the early '70s, his sketches, drawings and illustrations and then an extensive section dedicated to his architectural projects, from the Villa Erba Exhibition and Convention Centre in Cernobbio (Como) and the Tokyo Design Centre in Japan to the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre in Paris, and the new museum "Antiquarium" at the Roman Forum in Rome (2014-2019). 

The title of the exhibition hints at the fact that beauty can save, and while Bellini conceives beauty as an unstoppable force and you want and must believe in this statement and in his vision (especially in the historical period we are living in...), there is another message to take home for visitors - the final aim of an architect and designer's work is not just creating a beautiful building or object, but sparking a dialogue between people, cultures, religions and cities.

Notes for Font Fans: "Exemplary Signs" @ at The Biblioteca Palatina, Parma

You don't need to be a professional graphic designer to have a favourite font, you can indeed be just a reader or a writer and feel more at ease reading a book printed with a specific font or typing with it. Among the most classical ones there is the Bodoni font: created in 1798 by Giovanni Battista Bodoni (1740-1813), typographer, type-designer, printer and engraver of punches, this is an elegant font in which thick and thin lines are alternated and the emphasis is set on the verticality of the character that gives it a clean and elegant look.

Font fans may be happy to hear that there is currently an exhibition dedicated to Bodoni at the Galleria Petitot at the Biblioteca Palatina (Palatina Library) in Parma, Italy.

Bodoni was born in Saluzzo in 1740, he learnt the art from his printer father and started working as a compositor in the Vatican printing office.

He worked in Rome for ten years and then moved to Parma to establish a fine printing office at the request of Duke Ferdinand of Parma. In his first works Bodoni copied the types cast by Pierre Simon Fournier, but soon started developing his own style and cutting punches for types. Bodoni was admired as a compositor and a type designer, and achieved great technical refinement, also thanks to the large range of sizes which he cut and that enabled him to compose his pages with the greatest possible subtlety of spacing.

Organised by the Bodoni Museum in Parma (that preserves around 80,000 original tools and items, plus very rare books), "Segni esemplari" (Exemplary Signs) (until 18th May) celebrates the 200th Anniversary of Bodoni's Manual of Typography. 

The manual was published posthumously in two volumes by Bodoni's widow, and includes 265 pages of roman characters, declining in size, romans, italics, and script types; 125 capital letters; 181 pages of Greek and Oriental characters; 1036 decorations and 31 borders and 20 pages of symbols, ciphers, numerals, and musical examples, plus an introduction in which Bodoni explains his method and modus operandi.

Bodoni had previously published another book of characters in 1788, this volume didn't have any introduction and was probably inspired by Fournier's Manuel typographique (1764), bu there was one major difference between the books - Fournier's manual was a sort of description of characters, Bodoni's was more a collection of his own characters and decorative elements.

The 1818 volume is a hybrid volume, a sort of summary of Bodoni's life, in the preface he states: "It is proper here to offer the four different heads under which it seems to me are derived the beauties of type, and the first of these is regularity – conformity without ambiguity, variety without dissonance, and equality and symmetry without confusion. A second and not minor value is to be gained from sharpness and definition, neatness and finish. From the perfection of the punches in the beginning comes the polish of the well-cast letter which should shine like a mirror on its face."

The installation at the Biblioteca Palatina tries to retrace his life and achievements via books, letters, archival documents and punches and matrices that were preserved in a monastery during the Second World War and therefore escaped the library bombing in 1944. It also offers the chance to all sorts of visitors and not just to experts and font fans the possibility to learn more about manuals and specimen by Bodoni and by other designers.

The "exemplary signs" in the title of the event are to be intended not just as the marks left by Bodoni, but also as the visual interventions of typographers and printers and the evolution of his typeface in the works of contemporary graphic designers who were inspired by Bodoni. 

The event features indeed a section dedicated to a group of international artists, including British graphic designer Patrick Thomas, who worked with the Bodoni typeface and tried to present a futuristic vision of the font. 

Once you finish your visit at the library, put into practice what you've learnt: the Bodoni typeface is very used for street and shopping signs in Parma, so enjoy yourself having a walk and spotting it.