Alain Elkann has mastered the art of the interview. With a background in novels and journalism, and having published over twenty books translated across ten languages, he infuses his interviews with innovation, allowing them to flow freely and organically. Alain Elkann Interviews will provide an unprecedented window into the minds of some of the most well-known and -respected figures of the last twenty-five years.
The Hot House is in part a manifesto and in part a noncanonical history of the most progressive and heretical experiments in the applied arts and design. Covering two centuries of avantgarde designs, but concentrating on the 1950s to the present, the book looks at architecture and urban design as well as graphic, interior, exhibit, industrial, and fashion design. It discusses the role that such magazines as Casabella, Domus, and Modo have played on this lively front, and provides an insider's view of such figures and groups as Alessandro Mendini, Gaetano Pesce, Alychmia, Global Tools, Michele De Lucchi, Ettore Sottsass, and-the design world's hot new movement-Memphis. It also elucidates such concepts as banal design, soft design, radical architecture, and color cultures, and relates these and other design developments to social and political issues. Protagonist of many of these experiments, Andrea Branzi calls for a theory and practice in which the old methods and instruments - pencil, square, and compass - are rendered obsolete, and the formal commandments of modernism - comfort, function, and style - are banished. If Branzi's vision of the new domestic landscape bears any relation to the future home, the places we live and objects around us are on the verge of being radically transformed. The Hot House dramatically expands the theoretical and operative limits of design. While precedents to Il Nuovo Design (The New Design) can be found in everything from Art Deco to De Stijl to Pop Art to California funk, Italy is the center of this new phenomenon and the "hot house" of its most intense activity. Beginning in the 1960s, there emerged a number of design studios that went by names like Archizoom, 9999, Superstudio, and UFO; their products redefined the basic architecture of furniture and clothing and polemicized an entire discipline. Andrea Branzi, architect and designer, has been a leading force in Italian design since the 1960s. As the founder of Archizoom Associates and member of the experimental design collective Global Tools, he is responsible for many of the experiments described in this book. He lives and works in Milan, where he is Educational Director of Domus Academy and Editorial Director of Modo.
Featuring 165 expertly reproduced visionary architectural drawings from The Museum of Modern Art's Howard Gilman Archive, this collection brings together a selection of idealized, fantastic and utopian architectural drawings.
Beauty provides the dynamic catalyst for sixteen very charged and individual discussions about architecture and design. Based on a series of interviews by Yael Reisner, Architecture and Beauty has been developed into sixteen individual chapter/portraits, written up by Fleur Watson, that eloquently recount the thoughts of some of the world's most creative designers. Each interviewee candidly expresses their beliefs and experiences and espouses their own distinctive position on aesthetics. Offering up rare and often highly personal insights into the minds of today's most progressive and high-profile architects, the book is lusciously illustrated with the works that the architects discuss. Featured architects: Will Alsop, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Peter Cook, Odile Decq, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Zvi Hecker, Mark Goulthorpe, Kolatan/MacDonald Studio, Greg Lynn, Tom Mayne, Juhani Pallasmaa, Gaetano Pesce, Eric Owen Moss, Wolf Prix and Lebbeus Woods.
Visionary architect, designer and artist Gaetano Pesce will have his first solo, New York exhibition in 25 years at Fred Torres Collaborations from March 21-May 25, 2013. The show focuses on issues of love and empathy, be it for ourselves, each other or the world, that have been important themes in Pesce’s work. L’ABBRACCIO, (The Hug) the name of the exhibition, refers to a cabinet designed by Pesce in 2009 of two people locked in an embrace. In addition to its “namesake” cabinet, the exhibition will feature some of Pesce’s rarely seen drawings from the 1970s, maquettes, lighting and furniture.
In celebration of Cassina's 80th anniversary, this book seeks to avoid the rigid rules of simple historical reconstruction. This publication was conceived to form part of a complete and valuable historical document of great interest to students and experts of international design. The core and most substantial part of the book is the section dedicated to those important international designers who have had the strongest influence on the evolution of Cassina, including Gio Ponti, Vico Magistretti, Gaetano Pesce, Archizoom, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Andrea Branzi, and Philippe Starck. In the broad sections dedicated to the various designers and their "visions" for Cassina, some of the best-known products in the history of Italian and international design are presented, often through images unknown to the public. Some of the company's better known designs are out of production and for some time now have been highly sought after in world auctions of major pieces of international design.
The 1940s marked a period of transition in interior design: the quarrel between ancient and modern was outdated, the combination of function and art was essential, and interior designers were more focused on new creations rather than on post-war reconstruction. The style of this period exhibits all the contradictions that arise from a society that was in a general state of shock, unsure of what the future would hold. Exemplary cabinet making marks the period, featuring famous names like T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbing and George Nelson from the United States. In France, Adnet, Arbus, Dominique, Kohlmann, Jallot, and Leleu produced sumptuous ensembles, with beautiful detailing. "Furniture and Interiors of the 1940s" features the work of numerous designers in 300 archival images and recent color photographs that shed new light on this transitional period in design, as it evolved both in Europe and in the United States.
"The 1970s - a revolutionary decade born out of the turbulent late 1960s, during which militant outspokenness and cultural unrest shook up society with lasting effects. Protest against cultural norms and a disillusionment in consumerism went hand in hand with a strong sense of social commitment that propelled radical creative and functional changes in design." "Furniture and Interiors of the 1970s bears witness to the fusion of influences - both societal and individual - that took hold during this explosive decade and catapulted design into its contemporary framework."--BOOK JACKET.
