Sep 6 Fri 2013 ITALIAN INSTITUTE Young Italian Designers Seek - and Find - the Platonic Ideal
Sept 6 Fri 6pm Italian Design Competition Winners
On the occasion of 2013 The Year of Italian Culture the Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to invite you to the
SLOW DESIGN EXHIBITION Young Italian Industrial Designers Prize
Italian Slow Design competition
Friday, September 6
6:00 pm
Italian Cultural Institute
686 Park Avenue, New York
R.S.V.P. 212 879 4242 ext. 360
saracarbonari.iicny@gmail.com
The Italian Cultural Institute will proudly display designs by the ten winners and finalists of the Top Young Italian Industrial Designers Prize. The winners were chosen based on academic achievement, design innovation, and the production functionality of their individual projects. Their visit to New York will bring the winners international visibility, as well as the opportunity to meet and network with industrial design professionals, museum curators, and academics. The contest was created to remind the world of the important role Italians have played in the field of industrial design since the New Renaissance (1950), and to provide young talent with opportunities to flourish and succeed internationally.
The prize was created by Riccardo Viale, director of the Italian Cultural Institute, and is curated by architect Massimo Vignelli, president of La Fondazione NY. Collateral initiatives promoted by the Italian Trade Commission aim at bringing the designers’ talents to the attention of entrepreneurs and prospective financiers. La Fondazione and the Italian Cultural Institute would like to continue this annual competition and demonstrate the outstanding vitality of Italian design through innovation, harmonious proportions, sustainability, and functionality.
The exhibition will be on view at the Italian Cultural Institute from September 6 until September 27. A few of the winners’ most impressive works will be on display alongside a series of other related initiatives.
In collaboration with Italian Trade Commission and La Fondazione
Created by Riccardo Viale and Curated by Massimo Vignelli and Presented by Pirelli
For more information on the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, please visit: http://www.iicnewyork.esteri.it
Communications Office Gisella Ingraffia
Italian Cultural Institute New York
686 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
Tel. 212 879-4242 ext.333
Fax 212 861-4018
===================================================
HOW IT TURNED OUT – The new Italian mode in designing objects was celebrated at this typically limited attendance event at the comfortable mansion on Park Avenue at 68th Street which is home to the Italian Cultural Institute, and the event included perhaps thirty or forty well dressed people, including four of the young winning design contestants who had arrived from Italy the same day.
The ten winning designs were arrayed in the center of the floor of the main meeting hall on the second floor, where they were surrounded by the elegant crowd as Professor Viale, the wide ranging intellectual who had thought up the contest in the first place.
The colorful set of typically spare, modern classic functional designs of useful objects including two small round tables, a large red table, large green cloth and black strut chair and a smaller green and wood single chair, a group including two tiny remotes, a small heater and three sports water bottles, two round hand mirrors with handles, a spiral umbrella stand, and three chunkily disarming, oversized Art Deco painted remote video cameras.
Professor Viale the director of the Institute introduced the event, which had emerged from his own broad imagination, saying that design was different from styling, which is ephemeral; eg this year’s model. He introduced a partner in the initiative a white haired gent who otherwise kept his head down as he stood by, who repeated the same distinction.
The winner in our book was by Paolo Cappello : a small glass topped table of classic purity where two metal struts had been bent across each other to provide three legged support and a pillar supporting the top at the center. It was hard to think of how the essence of a table could have been made any simpler. It was the very incarnation of table as Platonic ideal.
(Paolo Cappello Design, via Batorcolo 17, 37045 Legnago, Verona, Italy. tel + 39 346 5033074 - + 39 349 4762346 http://www.paolocappello.com - info@paolocappello.com p.i. 03753940232)
After schmoozing with two top drawer friends from Larchmont (Jim and Nina) who chatted at length with Fabio Triosi the Attache for Cultural Affairs at the Institue (tel 879 4242 x 337 fabio.triosi@esteri.it http://www.iicnewyork.esteri.it)the organizer of events at the Institute, and taking pictures of some of the guests including Sylvia Piccirilli a young and happy camera subject who was visiting from Rome where she works in the defense industry after a degree in economics, who came with her friend Dr Matteo Meloni (matteomeloni@yahoo.it) , who like her was an economist, whose original conceit was to write his tel number on his card as tre due nove tre cinque uno sei quattro tre sei, we shot all the prize winning objects and their labels.
Subject of conversation with the two economists: Freakonomics, which they had never heard of. Also, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath tale and its mora: what every woman wants is to command her manl.
Outside, we interviewed Paolo Cappello, who designed the red table for a restaurant supplier (the Chinese had copied his table for 20 per cent of the cost he confided cheerfully, which proved its “global acceptance”) as well as the masterpiece of simplicity in his glass topped circular table, who showed us a lot of his other designs on his iPad in the dark, such as tables and coat racks, all of them of extreme spare simplicity. Although he was 180 cm tall, he had designed a 155 cm bath for a builder who was constructing the kind of small apartments desired in China.
About the trend towards the Platonic essence of an object that seems to be the direction of Italian designers now he said “Simplicity is the most difficult to do. What can you remove is the question. At the same time you have to leave a strong identity. Combining them is most difficult.”
We suggested that since he had designed such a beautifully simplified table that he might take over the world with a beautiful and simple bicycle, and were encouraged when he said that a friend of his built bikes. But the friend had scorned his suggested designs for bikes as losing the important technical advances of modern bikes, he said.
That was possibly the typical defensive move of experts who defend their stock in trade, we said, and we believed he owed the world a perfected design and we believed he might sell millions in a world where, judging from New York City, more and more women were riding bikes in big cities, and surely they would like a beautiful design in the Italian mode.
“Yes I will try again,” he vowed.
A party for the prizewinners will take place on Monday.
Read MoreOn the occasion of 2013 The Year of Italian Culture the Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to invite you to the
SLOW DESIGN EXHIBITION Young Italian Industrial Designers Prize
Italian Slow Design competition
Friday, September 6
6:00 pm
Italian Cultural Institute
686 Park Avenue, New York
R.S.V.P. 212 879 4242 ext. 360
saracarbonari.iicny@gmail.com
The Italian Cultural Institute will proudly display designs by the ten winners and finalists of the Top Young Italian Industrial Designers Prize. The winners were chosen based on academic achievement, design innovation, and the production functionality of their individual projects. Their visit to New York will bring the winners international visibility, as well as the opportunity to meet and network with industrial design professionals, museum curators, and academics. The contest was created to remind the world of the important role Italians have played in the field of industrial design since the New Renaissance (1950), and to provide young talent with opportunities to flourish and succeed internationally.
The prize was created by Riccardo Viale, director of the Italian Cultural Institute, and is curated by architect Massimo Vignelli, president of La Fondazione NY. Collateral initiatives promoted by the Italian Trade Commission aim at bringing the designers’ talents to the attention of entrepreneurs and prospective financiers. La Fondazione and the Italian Cultural Institute would like to continue this annual competition and demonstrate the outstanding vitality of Italian design through innovation, harmonious proportions, sustainability, and functionality.
The exhibition will be on view at the Italian Cultural Institute from September 6 until September 27. A few of the winners’ most impressive works will be on display alongside a series of other related initiatives.
In collaboration with Italian Trade Commission and La Fondazione
Created by Riccardo Viale and Curated by Massimo Vignelli and Presented by Pirelli
For more information on the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, please visit: http://www.iicnewyork.esteri.it
Communications Office Gisella Ingraffia
Italian Cultural Institute New York
686 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
Tel. 212 879-4242 ext.333
Fax 212 861-4018
===================================================
HOW IT TURNED OUT – The new Italian mode in designing objects was celebrated at this typically limited attendance event at the comfortable mansion on Park Avenue at 68th Street which is home to the Italian Cultural Institute, and the event included perhaps thirty or forty well dressed people, including four of the young winning design contestants who had arrived from Italy the same day.
The ten winning designs were arrayed in the center of the floor of the main meeting hall on the second floor, where they were surrounded by the elegant crowd as Professor Viale, the wide ranging intellectual who had thought up the contest in the first place.
The colorful set of typically spare, modern classic functional designs of useful objects including two small round tables, a large red table, large green cloth and black strut chair and a smaller green and wood single chair, a group including two tiny remotes, a small heater and three sports water bottles, two round hand mirrors with handles, a spiral umbrella stand, and three chunkily disarming, oversized Art Deco painted remote video cameras.
Professor Viale the director of the Institute introduced the event, which had emerged from his own broad imagination, saying that design was different from styling, which is ephemeral; eg this year’s model. He introduced a partner in the initiative a white haired gent who otherwise kept his head down as he stood by, who repeated the same distinction.
The winner in our book was by Paolo Cappello : a small glass topped table of classic purity where two metal struts had been bent across each other to provide three legged support and a pillar supporting the top at the center. It was hard to think of how the essence of a table could have been made any simpler. It was the very incarnation of table as Platonic ideal.
(Paolo Cappello Design, via Batorcolo 17, 37045 Legnago, Verona, Italy. tel + 39 346 5033074 - + 39 349 4762346 http://www.paolocappello.com - info@paolocappello.com p.i. 03753940232)
After schmoozing with two top drawer friends from Larchmont (Jim and Nina) who chatted at length with Fabio Triosi the Attache for Cultural Affairs at the Institue (tel 879 4242 x 337 fabio.triosi@esteri.it http://www.iicnewyork.esteri.it)the organizer of events at the Institute, and taking pictures of some of the guests including Sylvia Piccirilli a young and happy camera subject who was visiting from Rome where she works in the defense industry after a degree in economics, who came with her friend Dr Matteo Meloni (matteomeloni@yahoo.it) , who like her was an economist, whose original conceit was to write his tel number on his card as tre due nove tre cinque uno sei quattro tre sei, we shot all the prize winning objects and their labels.
Subject of conversation with the two economists: Freakonomics, which they had never heard of. Also, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath tale and its mora: what every woman wants is to command her manl.
Outside, we interviewed Paolo Cappello, who designed the red table for a restaurant supplier (the Chinese had copied his table for 20 per cent of the cost he confided cheerfully, which proved its “global acceptance”) as well as the masterpiece of simplicity in his glass topped circular table, who showed us a lot of his other designs on his iPad in the dark, such as tables and coat racks, all of them of extreme spare simplicity. Although he was 180 cm tall, he had designed a 155 cm bath for a builder who was constructing the kind of small apartments desired in China.
About the trend towards the Platonic essence of an object that seems to be the direction of Italian designers now he said “Simplicity is the most difficult to do. What can you remove is the question. At the same time you have to leave a strong identity. Combining them is most difficult.”
We suggested that since he had designed such a beautifully simplified table that he might take over the world with a beautiful and simple bicycle, and were encouraged when he said that a friend of his built bikes. But the friend had scorned his suggested designs for bikes as losing the important technical advances of modern bikes, he said.
That was possibly the typical defensive move of experts who defend their stock in trade, we said, and we believed he owed the world a perfected design and we believed he might sell millions in a world where, judging from New York City, more and more women were riding bikes in big cities, and surely they would like a beautiful design in the Italian mode.
“Yes I will try again,” he vowed.
A party for the prizewinners will take place on Monday.
