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Milan 2014: objects made out of lava from Mount Etna in Sicily will be presented by design duo Formafantasma in Milan next week (+ slideshow).

Sicilian-born Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi of Formafantasma experimented with cooled lava from the volcano’s eruption last year to create the De Natura Fossilium collection, made in collaboration with Gallery Libby Sellers.

“When Mount Etna erupted on 20 November 2013, the dramatic event was broadcast by a haunting noise of rumbling stones and a vast plume of dark smoke that completely obscured the sun,” said the designers.

“Mount Etna is a mine without miners – it is excavating itself to expose its raw materials.”

After the eruption, the lava cooled and solidified into dark grey basalt rock. Formafantasma collected samples of the rock from Etna and nearby Stromboli, which they melted and blew to create glass, wove into fibres for textiles and milled into various shapes.

“When we experimented with the melting, mouth blowing and casting of lava, the research and tests took a really long time,” Trimarchi told Dezeen. “The difficult part was to understand the right cooling time of the material. We had thousands of tests made that just cracked during the cooling time.”

The pieces were used to create stools, coffee tables and a clock with linear forms that reference the work of Postmodern designer Ettore Sottsass.

Paired with brass elements, the rock has been cut to reveal strata and textures formed as it cooled quickly.

A crater of powdered stone forms the base of a circular clock, which has brass hands that turn inside the depression.

Sections of the tables and stools patterned by the air holes formed in the rock are held in place with brass plates and secured with threads.

The glass was mouth-blown into vessels or moulded into boxes shaped like the dwellings at the foot of the volcano.

A black mirror suspended on a string over a brass frame is balanced using a chunk of rock.

Formafantasma’s collection will be shown at Palazzo Clerici in Milan city centre from 8 to 13 April.

Here’s some more information sent to us by the designers:

“When Mount Etna erupted on 20th November 2013, the dramatic event was broadcast by a haunting noise of rumbling stones and a vast plume of dark smoke that completely obscured the sun. After the smoke, black earthen debris began showering down over the villages and cities within the immediate vicinity of the mountain. From the highway through to the Greek theatre in Taormina, everything was covered with black. Mount Etna is a mine without miners – it is excavating itself to expose its raw materials.”

Studio Formafantasma, in collaboration with Gallery Libby Sellers, present De Natura Fossilium – an investigation into the cultures surrounding this particularly Sicilian experience to bring both the landscape and the forces of nature together as facilities for production.

As in their previous projects Autarchy (2010) and Moulding Tradition (2009), Formafantasma questions the link between tradition and local culture and the relationship between objects and the idea of cultural heritage. De Natura Fossilium is a project that refuses to accept locality as touristic entertainment.

Instead, the work of Formafantasma is a different expedition in which the landscape is not passively contemplated but restlessly sampled, melted, blown, woven, cast and milled. From the more familiar use of basalt stone to their extreme experiments with lava in the production of glass and the use of lavic fibers for textile, Formafantasma’s explorations and the resulting objects realize the full potential of the lava as a material for design.

In homage to Ettore Sottsass, the great maestro of Italian design and an avid frequenter of the volcanic Aeolian islands, this new body of work takes on a linear, even brutalist form. Geometric volumes have been carved from basalt and combined with fissure-like structural brass elements to produce stools, coffee tables and a clock. The clock itself is deconstructed into three basalt horizontal plates to represent the passing of hours, minutes and seconds. A brass movement spins around the plates, shifting three different ages of lavic sand that have been sampled from three different sites on Stromboli.

Lavic glass, procured by remelting Etna’s rocks, has been mouth-blown into unique vessels or cast into box-like structures that purposefully allude to the illegal dwellings and assorted buildings that have developed at the foot of the volcano. Drawing on their own vocabulary, these solitary glass boxes and mysterious black buildings have been finished with such archetypal Formafantasma detailing as cotton ribbons and Murano glass plaques. By returning the rocks to their original molten state Formafantasma are reversing the natural timeline of the material and forcing a dialogue between the natural and manmade.

A black, obsidian mirror that is suspended on a brass structure and balanced by lavic rocks continues this line of narrative, as the semi-precious glass like stone is produced only when molten lava is in contact with water. Formafantasma have also investigated the tensile properties of lavic fibre and woven two different wall hangings.

These pieces combine illustrative references to both the Greek mythological gods of Mount Etna and the microscopic views of lavic rock’s geological strata as ascertained through the designers’ collaboration with the Volcanologist Centre of Catania (INGV). As a sustainable alternative to carbon fiber, Formafantasma’s use of lavic fibre has effectively reappropriated a conventionally high tech material for artisanal ends.

While the collection focuses on a specific locality, the project has been developed in collaboration with a number of European experts: from the CNC cutting of basalt in Sicily to the scientific analysis of lavic stones at the INGV of Catania, through the experiments with lava as glass at both the Glass Museum in Leerdam and Berengo Studio in Murano, to the brass developments with Carl Aubock in Vienna and the textile works with the Textile Museum in Tilburg. The collection is also accompanied by a photographic series by long time collaborator Luisa Zanzani.

All works are part of an edition, available exclusively through Gallery Libby Sellers, London. Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL.

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to create furniture collection appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Milan designer Alberto Biagetti has created a furniture collection inspired by his home city that incorporates materials salvaged from its aristocratic palazzos.

The Bonjour Milàn collection developed by Biagetti’s studio, Atelier Biagetti, comprises a cabinet, a lamp, a large table and groups of side tables made from materials including discarded tiles.

“All of our pieces are hand made in Milan and each material has been selected to represent an historical era, a sort of sedimentation of materials,” the designer told Dezeen.

“This idea made us think that maybe in the future people will search for plastic in the ground as one of the most precious materials, as happens today with many materials that become more precious and rare over time.”

Hexagonal tiles taken from typical Milanese residences act as surfaces for side tables that feature bases made from rectangular brass profiles.

The structure of each table creates a seemingly delicate contrast to the weighty tiles, which are positioned at different heights.

“When I found these parts of a wonderful old floor with this incredible patina I thought that was a treasure and the perfect starting point,” explained Biagetti.

A mixture of discarded materials including copper, brass, plastic laminate and wood are applied to the glass surfaces of the table and cabinet and arranged in patterns that resemble sectional views of stratified rock or earth.

The patterns spread across the glass top of the table and continue onto the upper portion of the supporting trestles, while the top and bottom of the glass cabinet are covered in opaque materials that conceal its contents.

The Parabola lamp features an adjustable brass base supporting a parabolic dish that is inspired by the shape of the huge antennae used for space research.

A small reflector at the centre of the dish directs light onto the domed surface, which projects an even light into the room.

Each of the pieces in the collection is unique due to the irregular combination of available materials and the use of handmade production processes.

The collection was launched at a preview event in Paris last week ahead of a presentation at Atelier Biagetti’s Milan showroom from 8-13 April.

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to make furniture by Atelier Biagetti appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2014: Dutch designer Richard Hutten will launch a multicoloured chair made from 545 stacked layers of Kvadrat’s fabric in Milan next month.

Based on an earlier version of the designer’s aluminium Cloud chair, Hutten has created the Layers Cloud Chair based on the same shape, a cluster of spheres.

The Layers Cloud chair uses 840 metres squared of Kvadrat‘s Divina fabric and references the layered rock pigments found in the Painted Desert, Arizona. “I wanted the design to be about the textile,” said Hutten. “Rather than using the material as a cover, I created an object with the material.”

Each layer of the chair is a different colour, of which nearly 100 were used. The pieces of fabric were drawn separately, cut with a CNC machine and manually assembled one by one.

“With the Layers Cloud Chair Richard has created a fairly baroque furniture piece offering a fulminant display of fireworks in colour.” said Hans Maier-Aachen, curator of Kvadrat’s exhibition for Milan 2014.

The chair will be shown in Milan as part of Kvadrat’s Divina exhibition from 9-13 April during the Salone del Mobile.

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to launch in Milan appeared first on Dezeen.