Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our next movie from Milan, architect and designer Fabio Novembre takes us to a converted farm near the city centre and explains why he sees the project as an important response to Italy’s ongoing economic crisis.

“Milano used to be a place full of farms,” Novembre explains. “Most of them were in the city centre, very close to the Duomo, and this was one of them.”

Called Cascina Cuccagna, the farm is pressed-up against apartment buildings in the Porta Romana district of Milan, to the south-east of the city centre.

Novembre explains that the eighteenth-century buildings had been derelict for many years, until they were restored and converted into a cultural centre in 2008 by a consortium of local companies and residents.

He believes this bottom-up approach to redevelopment is a “very interesting example of how Milan can evolve” in the face of a lack of government investment.

“A group of citizens asked the city government, that is now without any money, to rent the place for 20 years,” he says. “It’s really a new way that we can approach the [economic] crisis as Italians. There is no public money any more, so we have to really organise ourselves on a smaller scale to have different solutions for evolution.”

Novembre shows us round the new facilities, which include a restaurant and bar, organic grocery store, gallery and a community garden where the fruit and vegetables for the restaurant are grown.

All these facilities are available to the public and Novembre believes it is this local community spirit that makes the farm special: “The restaurant here is called Un Posto a Milano, which means ‘a place in Milan’ – that’s the essences of this place, that’s the spirit of this place.”

Cascina Cuccagna also has a special place in Novembre’s heart for another reason. “Fourteen years ago, exactly in this place, I met my wife,” he reveals. “There used to be a very small, tiny restaurant here [where we met]. Now we are able to come here with our daughters and enjoy it all day long.”

Watch all our video reports from Milan here.

We drove out to Cascina Cuccagna in our MINI Cooper S Paceman.

The music featured is a track called Where are Your People? by We Have Band. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

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full of farms” appeared first on Dezeen.

Product news: this armchair by London designer Benjamin Hubert weighs just three kilograms.

Called Membrane, the chair by Benjamin Hubert for German brand Classicon comprises a steel and aluminium frame covered in 3D-woven mesh fabric.

“The chair stems from research into the construction of tents and sports products with a focus on space frames and stretched textile,” says Hubert.

The CNC-shaped framework is wrapped in a 3D-woven stretchy textile cover with integrated seat pads, fastened with zips.

“The combination of metal frame and padded textile allows Membrane to use a minimal amount of polyurethane foam – a conventional armchair would be covered almost entirely with foam – therefore reducing the carbon footprint of this type of product,” Hubert adds.

The design was presented at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in April.

In London last year Hubert launched a collection of lamps made from underwear fabric stretched over wire frames that was also based on tensile structures.

See all our stories about design by Benjamin Hubert »
See all our stories about chair design »
See all our stories about Milan 2013 »

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for Classicon appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2013: bamboo trees sprouted up around a topographical landscape of stone and water at this installation created by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma in Milan last month.

As one of three architect-designed installations for the Urban Stories exhibition of contemporary living, Kengo Kuma‘s Stonescape was designed as an interpretation of a traditional Japanese Zen garden.

Cascading stone strata formed a series of undulating curves around the room. Pools of water formed at some of the lowest levels, while others contained clusters of bamboo trees planted in gravel.

“The clean and pure Pietra Serena stone is used so as to recreate a topography that, as in real landscapes, moulds the shape of water, guides our walking and gives a context to the objects to better admire them,” says Kengo Kuma and Associates.

The installation was located in one of the buildings of the Porta Nuova Varesine complex, a new skyscraper district designed by architects including Cesar Pelli, Stefano Boeri and Nicholas Grimshaw. It was used as a showroom for furniture between 9 and 14 April, alongside spaces designed by Michele de Lucchi and Diego Grandi.

Other recent projects by Kengo Kuma include an experimental house in Japan and a fashion boutique in China. See more architecture by Kengo Kuma.

See more projects from Milan 2013, including offices of the future imagined by Jean Nouvel and a courtyard installation of rotating cork platforms by the Bouroullecs.

Photography is by Giovanni Desandre, apart from otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from the exhibition organisers:

In the spectacular skyline of Porta Nuova Varesine in Milan, on the occasion of the Fuorisalone collateral event, three exceptional architects are ‘staging’ three extraordinary suggestions of contemporary living.

Michele De Lucchi, Diego Grandi and Kengo Kuma, ‘tell’ their Urban Stories, through unique and thrilling installations, for an eagerly-awaited event, which supplements the busy schedule of Fuorisalone events.

Urban Stories, organised by MoscaPartners, with the collaboration of Hines, is a spin-off from the extraordinary success of Bologna Water Design 2012, the exclusive event dedicated to water design, which involved the city’s most prestigious venues during the Cersaie show in September.

The limelight is therefore cast on Urban Stories and its stars, who thanks to the enthusiastic participation of major leading companies in a variety of industries will give rise to charming captivating set-ups.

The focus of Urban Stories is the Porta Nuova Varesine complex, which is the result of an ambitious urban and architectural replanning project involving large areas of the Isola, Varesine and Garibaldi districts, developed and implemented by famous architects, including Cesar Pelli, Stefano Boeri and Nicholas Grimshaw, under the direction of Hines Italia Sgr, promoter and investor.

The original installations created by Michele De Lucchi, Diego Grandi and Kengo Kuma will transform the important display spaces of the ‘new centre of Milan’ into an exceptional cultural box, ready to welcome the curious multifarious public who animates the most important and eagerly-awaited international design event every year.

Urban Stories are therefore not just simple installations, but proper ‘seductions’, resulting from a sensitive way of designing to imagine the landscape within our cities and outside them.

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by Kengo Kuma appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2013: Netherlands-based designer Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny presented a solid marble chair at the Bagatti Valsecchi exhibition curated by Rossana Orlandi in Milan.

Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny collaborated with sculptors at the Henraux Foundation – a company that specialises in marble production – when creating the Bust chair.

“After an exchange of ideas, the fluid robust form with cantilevered seat offered itself to a beautiful combination with marble. The chair is a sculptural study on comfort and ergonomics,” explains the designer.

The Bust chair exists in both an indoor and outdoor version, the latter of which is equipped with small holes for drainage.

Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny is famous for his series of honeycomb vases made by bees. We’ve also featured his cabinet stained with ink from a ball-point pen and paper vases turned on a lathe.

The Henraux Foundation has previously worked with some of the world’s leading artists including Henry Moore, Hans Arp and Isamu Noguchi.

The Bagatti Valsecchi 2.0 exhibition by Rossana Orlandi also featured a sofa with a cast concrete seat by JamesPlumb and a purposefully inaccurate time-keeping device by Maarten Baas. Read more about the Bagatti Valsecchiexhibition.

See all our stories about chair design »
See all our coverage of Milan 2013 »

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Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in the first of a series of films recorded at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan last month, MINI head of design Anders Warming explains the thinking behind the brand’s presentation during the furniture fair while Johanna Agerman Ross, editor-in-chief of Disegno magazine, gives her opinion on the highlights of the world’s most important design week.

“The MINI Paceman Garage is centred around how people act within a MINI community,” says Warming (above), explaining why the presentation – set up inside a car repair garage on Via Tortona – included features such as a record store, a coffee shop, a barber and a cinema. “They end up talking about anything that involves their life. And that’s why we have these different stations. It’s sort of like the extended life around the MINI.”

As part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour, we set up a video studio within the garage, where we conducted interviews with some of the world’s leading design authorities to get their thoughts on the week.

Agerman Ross of Disegno, our first interviewee, believes a key theme this year was the renewed focus on the official fair, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, at the expense of the independent exhibitions that take place around the city.

“I have found in the last few years that going to the city and going to the independent exhibitions have been where things have been really happening and interesting,”she says. “But I feel there’s a return to the reason why we’re all here – the commerce of the fair, the wheeling and dealing and the showing off of new products by the bigger brands.”

“Milan this year was more subdued that previous years, with the ongoing economic crisis clearly affecting many companies. This has led to a more pared-back and business-like week without the frivolity of previous years,” says Agerman Ross.

“I think so. After all if the industry doesn’t work, the other things can’t happen either. There needs to be an economy and a network for these things to function. The designers and the brands need to make money in order to exist, and without a healthy commercial branch of design, the other things won’t exist either. One supports the other.”

“Everyone’s taking a step back, trying to be quite precise in what they’re putting out and trying to show products that seem quite close to hitting the market, rather than being just a product for show that won’t go into production,” she says. “It’s a tighter output altogether.”

See all our stories about Milan 2013.

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commerce of the fair” appeared first on Dezeen.