8 monographs, insights into the creativity of international designers
Deep collection, design Nika Zupanc, Natuzzi
A selection of new books that take us into the design worlds of Nika Zupanc, Jaime Hayon, Drift, Vo Trong Nghia, Pierluigi Cerri, Carlo Colombo, Gianni Pettena and Olafur Eliasson
Nika Zupanc_Breaking the Rules
Her Ribbon Chair took the design world by surprise, as well as thrusting Pantone baby pink into the eye of the furnishing world and decorating a windsurfing board with roses. Her distinctive approach turns forms, materials and functions on their heads, with precise elegance and deliberate eclecticism. This important monograph serves as a real manifesto for the Slovenian designer, who debuted at SaloneSatellite 2007, in which she sets out her creative process and her greatest inspirations. “I believe in a way of imagining, creating, and placing very different things in an unexpected order. I tend to design timeless, elegant, and evocative objects that come with an unpredictable twist, a surprising detail, a different path of understanding” she says.
Her extraordinary hallmark style shines through the four sections – Stories, which focuses on the collections, Characters, on individual projects, Statements, on the limited editions and Universes, on interior design. “The inspiration has to be found in our most ordinary everyday life experiences,” she explains. This fascinating nonconformist’s final message chimes with the title of the book: “Hoping it might become one more step towards a new way of breaking the rules”.
Title: Nika Zupanc_Breaking the Rules
Author: Agata Toromanoff
Foreword: Domitilla Dardi
Publisher: Rizzoli International
Published: 2022, September
Pages: 240, with 245 illustrations
Language: English
Jaime Hayon
The fabulous world of Jaime Hayon – this could be the title of the second volume of Gestalten’s book on the Spanish designer, named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential designers at international level in 2007.
A kaleidoscopic world carved by a surrealistic imagination, inhabited by mysterious ceramic figures, finely worked artisan creations and warm pastel shades, drawing on his Mediterranean origins. Conceived by Hayonstudio and produced with the German publisher, the book is a close-up introduction to materials, colours and technique. It’s an overview of his sources of inspiration and his creative process, permanently imprinted with an almost ancestral optimism, bodies composed of imaginary figures and nature. Particular attention has been given to public and interior interventions, exhibition displays, monumental installations and special projects. The monograph covers 20 years of his work, from 1992 to 2022, tracing the designer-artist’s development, and touching on his work method, professional approach and visual research. Boasting a wealth of illustrations, interspersed with free thoughts from the designer himself, the book is beautifully authored by Marco Sammicheli and Hayon himself, and contains an anthology of items*, a small, dedicated collection of press articles. The studio archive at the end is extremely useful.
Title: Jaime Hayon
Author: Marco Sammicheli
Graphic Design: Zaven
Publisher: Gestalten and Hayonstudio
Published: 2022, August
Pages: 304
Language: English
DRIFT: Choreographing the Future
The relationship between the individual and the collective, and the impact of technology on society through dialogue with nature. This sums up what Drift, the studio set up in Amsterdam in 2007 by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, partners in life and work, is all about. The exclusive group of contributing authors – Bjarke Ingels, who wrote the introduction; Beatrice Leanza, curator and critic and Jane Metcalfe, founder of Wired, are just some of them – explores the duo’s multidisciplinary work, through their kinetic sculptures, light installations, video projections and interactive virtual reality, finding out how this advanced technology has been specifically chosen to stimulate a greater connection with nature and its rhythms. Straddling freedom and control. A concrete block that can levitate in space (Drifter) and dandelion seeds glued one by one to LED lights (Fragile Future), are expressions of the unifying power of Drift’s art. The final section is devoted to what goes on behind the scenes, revealing the complexity of the projects and plunging the reader into an immersive experience of poetics and meditation. In search of a sustainable civilisation, or better still, as the subtitle says: Choreographing the Future.
Title: DRIFT: Choreographing the Future
Authors: Bjarke Ingels, Beatrice Leanza, William Myers, Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, Coraly von Bismarck,
Jane Metcalfe
Publisher: Phaidon. Facebook / instagram / twitter
Published: 2022, October
Pages: 240, with 200 illustrations
Language: English
Vo Trong Nghia: Building Nature
Although still little-known in the West, Vo Trong Nghia is one of Asia’s most acclaimed architects, and set up his practice in Ho Chi Minh in 2006. His story began in 1976, in a poor village in Vietnam, which he was forced to leave in order to study architecture. He chose modern Japan as his field of interest, frequenting the Nagoya Technological Institute and the University of Tokyo, studying under the minimalist architect Hiroshi Naito, who stoked his interest in sustainability and green architecture, and bamboo as a building material, championed by the Colombian Simón Vélez. It was precisely these factors, the hallmarks of all his works, that have netted him a number of prizes, including a World Architecture Community Award and the Wallpaper* Design Award in 2021. Composed of two volumes, Green and Bamboo, the monograph brings together thirty or so projects that include private homes, schools, hotels and cultural centres, all in Vietnam apart from Bamboo Stalactite, designed for the 2018 Architecture Biennale in Venice. Nhaio’s description of his studio, part monastery, office and resort, surrounded by animals, insects and birds that generated an unusual ecosystem within a short time, helps shed light on his work: “Being in a building should be like being in a park, or even a forest,” where not a single living thing, not a fly or even a mosquito, should be killed, according to one of the five precepts of Buddhism, a religion of which he is a faithful follower.
Title: Vo Trong Nghia: Building Nature
Introduction: Philip Jodidio
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2022, January
Pages: 400, 2 vols., with 393 illustrations
Language: English
Pierluigi Cerri
Allestimenti Idee, Forme, Intenzioni / Installation Ideas, Forms, Intentions
The undisputed Master of “putting on exhibitions,” the architect Pierluigi Cerri, one of the founding partners of Gregotti & Associati in 1974, is discussed through 30 or so of his over 100 displays, explored, taken apart and redesigned thanks to a painstaking trawl through the archives by the architects Yuri Mastromattei and Lola Ottolini, who worked alongside him during his tenure at Milan Polytechnic University, from 2000 to 2010, as well as various exhibition installations.
Packed with exhibitions on art, architecture, photography and graphic design, not to mention furniture, objects and cars, as well as on concepts, ideals, ancient peoples, leading figures and a great deal more, this monograph takes us into a landscape of “narrative spaces” in the most varied of places – from ancient palazzi to industrial warehouses, museums, factories and art galleries – that invite the visitor to decode not just the exhibits, but also the signs and objects they reference. According to the curators: “Cerri’s architecture is always silent, it never takes away from what it is meant to demonstrate. It leaves room for interpretation. It suggests, it doesn’t impose. It does not distract.” He is always driven by an endless curiosity, reflected in his many skills as an architect, designer and graphic artist. The displays mentioned also include some of the Salone del Mobile collateral events, such as Italian Furniture 1961/1991. Languages through the Various Ages at the Triennale di Milano in 1991 and Entrez Lentement at the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in 2005.
Title: Pierluigi Cerri, Allestimenti Idee, Forme, Intenzioni / Pierluigi Cerri, Installation Ideas, Forms, Intentions
Authors: Yuri Mastromattei and Lola Ottolini
Publisher: Skira Editore
Published: 2022, July
Pages: 180, with 190 illustrations
Language: Italian
