Most countries all over the world are still dealing with the Coronavirus emergency, so fashion weeks will be mostly digital events or will take place without an audience.
Since the beginning of the emergency last year different fashion houses tried to come up with new and original ways to present their shows and some of them turned to the popular Nintendo videogame Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
But, while the title has been an intriguing way to recreate designer clothes and interior designs fans have been enjoying it to come up with fun spaces and incredibly detailed environments, professional architectural studios or interior designers haven't really used the vide ogame to launch or promote any of their products. Yet, at the same time, the video game contains some products that can be easily compared with real interior design pieces.
Take the palm lamp: you can make it with the dedicated recipe (coconuts, clay and wood) and also customise it in three versions - natural, tropical, cute and cool. Yet this piece is not just an irresistible kitsch lamp.
The design can be indeed traced back to Mario Lopez Torres, a renowned mid-century modern Mexican artist known for unique sculptures and lamps made with rattan. In the 1970s he created a wicker floor lamp in the shape of a swaying palm tree. The lamp had a round stable base and bulbs placed in the coconuts.
Los Angeles-based artist Christopher Kreiling reinvented in more recent years this piece conceiving it more like a sculpture, with a body made of stacked saddle leather and polished brass with handcrafted metal fronds and coconuts housing medium bulb sockets.
The Animal Crossing palm lamp is actually more similar to this one than to the one created by Torres (now, while the similarities between the AC lamp and the designer lamps in this post may pose a question of copyright, at the same time, the video game lamp should be considered a tribute).
I'm featuring in this post some screens of the four versions of the lamp in my humble abode on my island. In the house you can see wallpaper and cushions inspired by Cinzia Ruggeri's "Homage to Lévi-Strauss" dress and by her ziggurat designs (downstairs the house has got a yellow and emerald motif inspired by the colour combination on the cover of Matia Bazar's single "Aristocratica" that featured Ruggeri's dress; upstairs I used a pink variation of the same wallpaper for my atelier).
There are already other pieces in Animal Crossing: New Horizons that call to mind original interior designs: the leather upholstered Throwback Mitt Chair references indeed the baseball glove-shaped armchair by Jonathan De Pas, Donato D'Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi's "Joe Poltrona" (1970) for Poltronova.
Homage to the American baseball champion Joe DiMaggio, this unusual and exuberant hyperreal design hinting at comfort and protection was inspired by Pop Art and in particular by oversized soft sculptures by Claes Oldenburg.
Included in key collections at Milan's Triennale Design Museum and New York's MoMA, the baseball mitt chair was reissued in 2003 as a sofa for Heller using a smooth and durable polymer suitable for use indoors and out.
Maybe creating more interior design pieces for Animal Crossing could be an idea also for interior design museums hoping to attract younger visitors.
Last year the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan released for example for the International Museum Day a series of QR codes downloadable for free on the museum site, reproducing canvases with some of the works from its collection, including Leonardo Da Vinci's machines and paintings by Giuseppe Raggio and Silvestro Lega. In this way the museum hoped gamers would organise open air exhibitions on their islands or use the motifs to make special garments.
Looking forward to seeing more interior designer pieces this year - possibly launched by architects or designers and inspired by real ones - on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. What about some Memphis Milano designs or Gae Aulenti's Pipistrello or King Sun lamps?
Comments