Milan: FF 2013 – A Casa 2013

 Photograph by Roberto Boccaccino

Milan: FF 2013 – A Casa 2013.  Now in its third edition [acasa] "at home", is an experimental project by the FBR - Francesca Ballini Richards studio with  agronamist Giorgio Colombo, which breaks all the rules of publicity, offering a welcoming, creative, honest and profound method of communication. The project does not invite us to observe the design object, but rather to use it in a creative way. An arranged table, a home, an encounter between journalists, designers, philosophers and artists whose relationship deepens and becomes more intimate as they share the same moment, a meal.  At a time when our world is saturated with excess, the [a casa] project “in absentia” offers the opportunity to fill the void with the existence of a Milan seemingly eager for emotion, landscapes and warmth. [a casa] also captured unexpected views and hidden details, opening the doors to unique locations, like the Fornasetti and Ignazio Gardella apartments.

Above. The living room of the contemporary art and design collector, Mariano Pichler’s apartment in Lambrate. This space is conceived as a huge container with light flooding in from above to illuminate paintings, sculptures and installations. It is a place where art is not only there to be looked at, but also to be used. 

 

At Pilcher’s Home.  Host and architect Mariano Pichler, A Casa founder Francesca Ballini Richards and Abitare magazine's legendary editor in chief Italo Lupi.

Hostess Giuditta Sala.

 Even the hallway is full of art.

Gemma Richards

 

Co founder of A Casa Giorgio Colombo offers an apperitivo.

The red wine, Staffato Sant’Antimo by Azienda Agricola San Filippo Montalcino, glasses by Iitalia.

 

Color designer, who designed the colors of the apartment, Francesca Valan and architect, Filippo Pagliani.

At Pilcher’s Home. The guest bathroom is full of artworks by Thorsten Kirchhoff, the walls are painted a green that dominates in Kirchhoff’s works and even the door boasts a painting of the virtual key, though for the occasion a actual key was placed in the keyhole.

At Pilcher’s Home.  The dinning room table, also a work of art was designed by Italian artist  Alberto Garutti  and is made in burl wood, in it’s centre are four cut-outs each one depicting the house plans of the fours houses Garutti has lived in. The “candle” on table is called Tetatet and was designed by light designer Davide Groppi. The “crushed” linen table napkins and mats are by Society and all the plates, glasses and cutlery by Iitala.

At Pilcher’s Home –  Cooked by Titta - We Ate

Chickpea and Rosemary Focaccia

Homemade Buckwheat (gluten free) Pasta with Fresh Fava Beans, Wild Garlic and Ricotta

Dandelion Salad with Strawberries, Violets, Lemon Balm and Primosale Cheese

Dark Chocolate Cake with Almonds and Citrus Sauce

Coffee

As photographer Roberto Boccaccino captures the moment, AFP, Agence France-Presse’s Milan bureau chief Amelie Herenstein chats to her neighbour.

Documentary director Maria Arena.

 Moleskine’s  CFO and VP Roberto Di Puma.

 

At Pilcher’s Home – the chef.  Titta peeps out from the kitchen. Tittacucinaitinerante, after spending years in the kitchen noting down her grandma's cooking secrets, decided to become a home chef, bringing the cooking of the Puglia region to Milan, following the rhythm of the seasons.

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Milan: FF 2013 - Ventura Lambrate Design District

Milan: FF 2013 - Ventura Lambrate Design District. Ventura Lambrate. Ventura Lambrate district offers a stage to the most talented expressions of the international design world, with a clear focus on creativity, concept, experimentation, high quality and content.

Above. Luna building designed by architect Mariano Pilcher in Via Ventura.

 

Courtesy Established and Sons

Ventura Lambrate Design District - Established and Sons/Jasper Morrison.  The Hitch Bench designed by Jasper Morrison for Established and Sons. The scooped top surface of this bench is inviting and seems to suit the form well, but what if it rains? The grooves which cut across the surface allows water to drain away whilst maintaining the shape and emphasizing the ‘scoop’ as they turn up at the edges. Its lightly mysterious character is intended to suggest something left behind from long ago.  

Courtesy Established and Son

Ventura Lambrate Design District - Established and Sons/Ingo Maurer.  The Floating Table designed by Ingo Maurer for Established and Sons. This innovative piece on first inspection appears to be an archetypal wooden kitchen table and chairs but on closer viewing the table is revealed as ‘floating’; without any legs, supported by a simple extending mechanism, which connects the chairs. Maurer has drawn inspiration from magic, ethereal substance and weightlessness. 

 

Ventura Lambrate Design District - Established and Sons/Felix De Pass. A-Bench designed by Felix De Pass for Established and Sons. A-Bench is a versatile indoor or outdoor, domestic or contract bench. Made from mirroring and repeating two different components, A-Bench has a symmetry that allows it to be approached and used from any angle. The bench’s uplifting, striking angles and carefully balanced proportions are a result of how the materials are formed and the functions they must serve. 

Ventura Lambrate Design District -010-020-Projects/Studio WM. Studio WM’s Circular Lamp is a suspended ceiling light, which is supplied with a warm white circular fluorescent tube and an acrylic diffuser.  The lamp is dimmable to create any desired atmosphere and comes in two versions rubber coated and pressed textile by Kvadrat.

Ventura Lambrate Design District -010-020-Projects/David Derksen Design. David Derksen’s Copper Lights are made from folding a thin copper sheet used to construct stable forms.  This principle defines the shape and aesthetics of the Copper Lights. Reflecting its surroundings, each facet assumes a different tone, ranging from dark brown, to red to orange.  The material gives warmth to the light that shines from these delicate lamps.

 

Ventura Lambrate Design District -010-020-Projects/Lex Pott.  Lex Pott’s True Colour Shelf is made from copper with oxide colors.  The shelves are the result of research on metals and their true colors; a direct relationship between color, material and information.

Above. Lex Pott and his True Colours Shelf.

Ventura Lambrate Design District/Svenja Keune. Svenja Keune’s Emotional Dialogue. SvejnaKeune’s project is about interactive, textile surfaces, which manifest themselves through movement and noises and call upon people to communicate with them. The fundamental question was if the communication with a textile surface is possible and if surfaces can trigger human emotions. The focus is not to develop functional aspects, but rather on the relationship between people and object and its tactile and visual qualities. It’s about the personality of a textile surface quite literally.

 

Freelance interior designer specializing in hotels, Isabella Strambio and her baby Siena.

  Ventura Lambrate Design District/C 12. C12 Books are Furniture designed by Anita Donna Bianco.

Street Food

Ventura Lambrate Design District/Emmanuel Babled. Emmanuel Babled’s Osmosi vase, 2013, in hand blown glass and marbled in collaboration with Venini and Testi. Osmosi is an edition of unique glass and marble pieces, marrying the two materials into sculptural objects and furniture.  The project combines new technology with traditional craftsmanship.  It is characterized by a virtual fusion between marble and hand-blown glass, the materials are put together in combination with a precision only possible thanks to high-level digital technology. 

Ventura Lambrate Design District/Mindraft Milan 13 exhibition. Danish Crafts presented Mindcraft, the exhibition introduced new works from fifteen skillful craftspeople and designers. All works reflected the innovation that is unfolded in contemporary Danish craft and design and was curated by Kasper Salto and Thomas Sigsgaard.

Above: Relatives by Rasmus Kaekkel Fex. A series of chairs combined in different ways to achieve different functions. Relatives is an experiment about context. What happens when you create a design that has no function whatsoever – is it then art? When you let go of function and mass production as starting points for the creative process, new ways of thinking about design emerge. The works are the result of a long and winding conceptual process.
 Most of his products are developed using the process statement ‘Art with function – Design without’, a method developed by Fex in an attempt to push his thinking outside the box. This tool forces his thoughts along new paths and promotes a conceptual approach to the design craft. 

 

Mindraft Milan 13 exhibition/ Marbelous Wood – Refraction by Pernille Snedker Hansen. A floor and wall installation inspired by the refraction of light through a prism.  Marbelous Wood – Refraction is a series of wood adorned with a marbling pattern, a technique known from old book covers.
The floor is the largest wooden surface in Scandinavian homes. Marbelous Wood reinterprets this classic domestic feature with vibrating colors across its surface. In Marbelous Wood – Refraction, both the form of the parquet floor and the applied pattern are inspired by the refraction of light through a prism, a graduating color scale from one color to the next. Its highly organic yet graphic patterning creates an optical experience as your feet move across the floor.

Mindraft Milan 13 exhibition/ Barber shop table on a white patterned floor by Friis and Black. A floor and a table with an evocative pattern that adds poetry to everyday life.  Print flooring is unusual today, but in the Baroque, floors with painted patterns were common. All the wooden surfaces have been silk-screen printed in a multi-layered technique and subsequently lacquered. The silk-screen technique creates a delicate impression of the simultaneously simple and intricate patterns and helps give the Nordic wooden floor a new and challenging expression.  The barber shop table draws inspiration from the old barber shop chair that could be raises and lowered, depending on the barber’s and the customer’s height.

Ventura Lambrate Design District/Catellani and Smith. Enzo Catellani’s Sorry Giotto lights above “When I create a lamp, I always start off with a prototype; my laboratory is a workshop where I continually accumulate materials, components and objects of all different kinds; and this is where everything was born... I assemble, weld, bend, shape... I need to feel the materials, to see how they play with light. In this initial stage there is no real design, the idea must take shape immediately, becoming an object. Only at this point do I move on to the traditional design phase: feasibility, technical characteristics and much more; it’s an idea of light, and the desire to tell about it, which guides me through the construction. A large part of my production is made up by pieces that require a great amount of craftsmanship, it’s the hand of the craftsman that builds them, his manual work that creates the imperfection, making a truly unique object.” Enzo Catellani. 

Wall light by Catellani and Smith

  The Smith of Catellani and Smith, is the late thoroughbred Logan Smith, above, son of Ercolano (USA) and Lydia Esteban (F) shoring Italian Champion 1988-89.

 

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Milan - Parties: FF 2013 – Sergio Calatroni/Fragiacomo.

Milan - Parties: FF 2013 – Sergio Calatroni/Fragiacomo.  In the new Fragiacomo flagship shoe store in Via Turati the presentation, a work in progress, of the space and display fixtures designed by Sergio Calatroni SC.ARTroom which was celebrated with a cocktail party.

Above. Marble free form blocks designed Sergio Calatroni SC.ARTroom are used as window display shelves.

 

Sergio Calatroni and his wife Miyuki Yajima

 

Design star Paolo Lomazzi

Mille Nuits chandelier designer for Baccarat, Mathias 

 

We ate:

Shrimps with Pink Cocktail Sauce

Veal salad

 Salmon Mousse

Artist Edvige Ripa who for ten years has been collecting plastic bits on the shores of the Mediterranean coast, from which she makes jewelry and art, like the necklace above made in collaboration with Hisayuki Amae.

 

Great personal and colorful style, designer Hisayuki Amae.

   

Editor in chief, publisher and design expert Stefano Casciani with deputy editor Paola Bellani and the first issue of his new magazine, Disegno which specializes in design for industries.

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Milan: FF 2013 – Fashion meets Design – Karl Lagerfeld/Cassina.

Milan: FF 2013 – Fashion meets Design – Karl Lagerfeld/Cassina.  For the first time the renowned fashion and creative icon Karl Lagerfeld has chosen to carry out an original photographic project for a furniture brand. Following the preview of the exhibition in Paris, Lagerfeld created a special scenography that is on show until, May 31 at the Cassina showroom.

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Venice: Lifestyle – Working lunch in a Palazzo on the Grand Canal.

Venice: Lifestyle – Working lunch in a Palazzo on the Grand Canal. During a photo shoot for Christie’s magazine a simple and delicious lunch was organized chez Attilio and Gabriella Codognato. Fourth generation jeweler and Contemporary Art collector AttilioCodognato has amassed an impressive collection which is housed on the piano nobile of a Palazzo on the Gran Canal.

Read all about it.  In the May issue of Christie’s magazine you can view the collection and the palazzo.

Above. Water is brought to the small cards table set up in the corner of the dinning room, for an informal and quick lunch. A Cy Twombly painting and a bust of the emperor Caesar Augustus sit above an Empire style side table.

 

Working lunch in a Palazzo. A small card table is set with early Twentieth Century antique Murano lace tablemats.  Family crystal long stem goblets tinted in three colors, and Richard Ginori porcelain plates with a simple gold rim elegantly compliment the shell pattern silver cutlery.

   
Risotto con Castraure

Mixed Green Salad with Avocado, Giant Prawns and Herbs

Baked Apples and Prunes

Coffee

Gabriella’s Candied Ginger Dipped in Chocolate

Note: The baby artichokes or in Venetian castraure are a Venetian delicacy and are only in season for one month of the year, they are the first floral shoots of the artichoke which are cut off in a certain way to 'castrate' the plant.

Working lunch in a Palazzo. The elaborate silver shell shaped sugar bowl in the foreground is a rare and antique Codognato design “There are no more craftsmen able to execute work like this today.” Attilio regretfully explains.

  

Jeweler and Contemporary Art Collector, Attilio Codognato who he is known by his international A list clientele for his exotic and Gothic jewels and in particular, the Skull and Serpent series, photographer Manfredi Bellati who is currently working on a NY inspired project; The High Line, as well as, a work in progress photographic essay on grotesque tourism in Venice, architect Gabriella Barbini Codognato who besides restoring Venetian Palazzi is also working on a new Museum in Bassano del Grappa.

 

A special guest peeks in.

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