COOL
HUNTING
Touching the Edge
Italian designers seek to redefine consumers' relationships
with objects
by CH Contributor in Design on 11 June 2013
by Stefano Caggiano
A few years ago, Giovanni Delvecchio and Andrea Magnani worked together on a thesis
project in Product Design in Faenza—a little northern Italian city famous for a long tradition
of ceramic manufacturing. What the two up-and-coming art designers were doing,
however, had nothing to do with ceramics. They were actually conceiving their Resign
project, which continues to attract people interested in repurposing old objects into new
designer items. Since Resign's inception, they've continued to blend art and design—
unconcerned with boundaries. All of this is reflected in their current exhibition at the Swing
gallery in Benevento, Italy, where the project titled "Hockety Pockety" features a series of
new pieces contemplating the "magic and the arcane” elements embodied in everyday
objects.
In a broader scope, many designers have been seduced by the magic or the mystical
recently, and how that pertains to our relationship with ordinary objects. New materials like
Sugru (a hand-moldable silicone that solidifies in thin air so you can magically mend
scratched items) and 3D-printing technologies are changing the ways designers and
manufacturers have been inhibited in the past. With wonder being such an active element
of invention, there is a rebirth of magic in products when we aren't entirely sure how they
were made.
According to Mike Kuniavsky, founding partner of the San Francisco-based experience
design firm Adaptive Path, it all boils down to language. He proposes that we must replace
the old cognitive computer metaphor of “desktop” with the metaphor “magic.” His intention
is to make user relationships with technology, whose performance is in fact beyond
general understanding, more natural. For that same reason, “magic”, “mystic” and
“religious,” have become operational metaphors through which extreme designers such as
Delvecchio and Magnani explore the roots of material culture.
For example, the dispenser for (holy) water “Francesco XXIII,” is made of metal, ceramic,
moss and plastic, and was conceived for domestic rituals connected with the consumption
of water. “Sheepper” is an elegant office chair inspired by the old story about a farmer
whose donkey refused to pull a heavy cart, and features a sheep outlined on the backrest
that instantaneously connects with ancestral rock drawings. The “First Supper Project” is a
series of dishes with a decoration obtained by tracing the outline of consumed food
between the first firing and the second one, creating a permanent glaze. “Angular Heaven”
is an object whose structure comes from the buttresses of Gothic churches, designed to
detach the shelf from the wall. These religious associations tap into our acknowledgement
that every day elements of our life were the product of something less tangible: invention
and inspiration.
For Delvecchio and Magnani, design is not a way to meet the market, but a means through
which to touch the edge of material culture. It's something all of us face in everyday
objects—without always being aware. That's why their hand-made projects look familiar
and unfamiliar at the same time. They are overstepping the boundaries that drive our
everyday lives and calling attention to the already in-use. In a entirely commodified world,
one can't help but encounter so many objects. And when we scan the boundaries of
human culture and the way people identify with the tools therein, the best means to do so
is through design.
Object images by Andrea Piffari, portrait by Pasquale Palmieri