birdofpassage: 06.07.2011 Milan, Rain rain go away

Today is a rainy day again so I bought an umbrella for 5 euros on the street. There are these guys that come out in the rain with umbrellas and hound people on the street without umbrellas to buy one off them. Anyway I was only looking for a small hot pink one to add to my collection of umbrellas, but I ended up getting a red long one –which is just as awesome!

There is a carre-four next to our hotel. Groceries are exciting when food is expensive. We were asked to pick up our lunch there because the area we were going to had very expensive food (Trienale). I’m thinking I might do that for the rest of this week. Anyway it is more cost efficient than eating 6-8 euro lunches every day and I don’t think I brought enough funds for this trip… : S

Anyway, so our first stop was at Achilles Castiglioni’s home and studio (FLOS). It was wonderful! From his workshop, you could tell that Castiglioni was extremely organized and had a fun-like curiosity. His daughter, Giovanna Castiglioni, gave us a tour of the studio space, workshop, and meeting room. Every room is well preserved with many small collections of items. It is cluttered, but organized at the same time. There was a wall of shelves of prototypes and another wall of shelves full of documents and contracts and another wall of technical drawings with everything labelled with a number. Giovanna was very excited to share with us the stories of her father and was more than willing to hear us ask questions about anything that was in the room. I think she enjoyed reminiscing about her father and sharing the joy as much as we enjoyed listening to it. It seemed as though the house was a treasure box and every single item in the space had its own special history to it. There was a reason for everything he had as well as a reason behind every design Castiglioni made. I don’t know how to say it, but even though he is not present, his life was in his work and you could almost get a feel for the man himself from the stories his daughter told and the space he lived and worked in.

Branzi

Next, we went to the Design Museum at the Trienale to check out an exhibition called “The Dream Factory” by Alberto Alessi and a lecture by Andrea Branzi, who is the scientific curator of the Trienale (I don’t know what that means) and designed the design museum. It seems to me that Andrea Branzi is a very highly respected designer/critique among Italian design –and probably in the design world. I couldn’t really follow his lecture because it was in Italian and Lorenzo was translating, but I think my next step is to read a book by him containing his philosophies of design. Branzi seems to be a very intelligent thinker with a lot of experience and wisdom in the world and theory of design.

The Design museum exhibition was exciting because never in my life have I seen so many designer items at such close proximity. Chairs, lights, tables, everywhere and I was allowed to touch and sit on them and take pictures. Can you imagine? We were all like kids in a candy store. The topic of the exhibition was a view of products of design factories from the point of view of Alberto Alessi. I think every few years they get another designer to do a “point of view of design from a designer” exhibit. The exhibition itself was very, cute. It wasn’t prolific or extremely creative or intellectually stimulating, but fun. (Quite fitting for Alessi anyways) One of the major points of focus was manufacturing and how manufacturing processes allow us to create more and better products for today, and that manufacturers always run a high risk making these products because it can either result in a flop (in terms of money), or a success –a product of dream factories.

moroso

Our next stop was design showrooms. This was like going to a design show except it wasn’t all in one hall; it was in different locations sprinkled on a city. Moroso was very Moroso-like. There isn’t much I can say because I find Moroso to be a very trendy company that focuses on the young and contemporary buyer market and not so much of the classic minimal style market. Not to say that I don’t enjoy Moroso’s product line because there was some very nice objects there, but when matched to the showroom we visited after Moroso, it has been belittled in comparison.

B&B stands for Banks and Bushnelli, a sister company of Cassina and oh my god going to the B&B showroom was a sensory overload of beautiful furniture. We were given a brief history of B&B by a woman in the communications department and a view of their products and their prototypes and their design process. I think B&B’s largest competitive factor (for the market) is their research and design. They seem to work like a traditional furniture company in which they spend years to create the perfect piece that exudes the values and traditions and style of the company in every aspect. (Design, functionality, comfort, timeless, elegant, minimal) One thing the lady noted that I believe is quite true was that a designer with a good idea needs to match with the right company at the right time to be able to produce really good work. And as other lecturers have noted before, a designer without a company to support their ideas (and ideals) [to produce] is nothing.

After the lecture we spent another hour just going through the showroom taking pictures and touching everything.