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The Milan-based studio Attico is the work of Cristina Celestino, who showed her odd and lovely Veneer vases at Salone Milan this year. I’ve been keeping tabs on her ever since, following how she applies the “industrial design quality and research skills” she learned in school as an architecture student “to traditional materials to generate a new projectual philosophy.” What that means can be seen in the aforementioned Veneer vases, which are composed of layers of wood, carbon, glass fiber and adhesive films that are directly wrapped onto steel spindles and polymerized, a process that, in very simple terms, combines many molecules into a new molecular compound. Here, she applies an industrial process to a domestic object with a combination of both domestic and industrial materials. The pieces almost look like offcuts of a larger fabrication, but Celestino’s pattern work, the stripes of color, material and texture, lend each piece a singularity; In fact, no two pieces are alike.
Celestino has been busy this year, coming out with six more new projects, including Luna Park, a seating system inspired by carnival bumper cars. See more of her work.
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Sometimes design weeks can really burn you out. You start each day fresh, but as you’re assaulted by one fabulous chair or sleek table or spectacular lamp after another you start to fade out. Full disclosure: I’m not in Milan this week but I bet that if I was and I was starting to zone out, Hilla Shamia‘s “Wood Casting” would snap me right out of my design induced stupor.
Shamia is an Israeli product designer who works mainly with metal and has only recently begun to introduce wood into her pieces. Her first products featured a range of metals in varying states of rust and decay, but now her products use mostly shining aluminum fused with the warmth of wood.
Her “Wood Castings” (shown here) are made using a whole tree trunk. Molten aluminum is poured directly into the wood, burning the exterior. A plank is then cut lengthwise, flush with the metal base. The final result are unique, one-of-a-kind pieces, their shape and fusing determined by the type of the wood and the pour of the molten metal itself.
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Designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec hit the ground running early on in their career, snagging commissions from Cappellini, Issey Miyake, Vitra and later Magis, for whom they’ve designed two furniture collections including the Pila chair and Pilo table which debuted in Milan this week. It’s almost impossible to say that it resembles their other projects because with a portfolio that includes store design and iPad apps along with furniture, lighting and housewares their work is so diverse it defies categorization. The common link would be craftsmanship and intention of design, which the designs speak to:
“With Pila, our intention was to design a chair that would be brought down to its minimum, using the least quantity of material and assembling items. The plywood seat and back parts of the chair are supported by four very thin sticks in solid wood which are maintained together by a structure in injected aluminum that is almost invisible. The back of the chair, like the blade of a knife, subtly comes into the main frame while guaranteeing high support resistance. We wanted this chair to be as light as possible, to almost float in the space as if it would stay on its feet by magic.
“Pilo answers the same quest for lightness and additionally proposes an open system that allows to compose a table that goes with one’s needs and wishes. Pilo is a table reduced to its minimum: solid wood feet that support a wooden top thanks to discreet and strong aluminum connections.”
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about perrin drumm
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