DesignTaleStudio will be present at SIGEP, the International trade-fair for ice-cream, confectionery and bakery industries opening today in Rimini.
DesignTaleStudio ceramics, in fact, cover the Costa Group stand (Pav. A3 - Stand 186), the renowned company leader in the planning of shops and venues dedicated to food and entertainment, a company that has already chosen our Pareti d’Autore for its most prestigious projects such as the Bar Gallery in Vicenza and Il Guscio in Genova.
We will post again in the next few days to tell you about the trade-fair and to show you some pictures of the stand.
Published on 26 January 2008 by Alberto under Events | 0 Comments |
Wallpaper magazine has just published the Design Awards 2008 in its latest issue, that is to say the complete list of top-drawer design: places, furniture, fashion, designers…
Wallpaper is the bible in the field of design and coolness, there is no doubt about that and we are fans of the magazine. Leafing through the list of Awards, two aspects in particular, stand out:
Italy is still one of the most important countries in the world in terms of design: as well as the award for the best hotel (the Riva Lofts in Florence), many of the category winners have an Italian “soul”, as they have been designed or marketed by Italian designers or companies;
Perhaps it is a coincidence, but none of the award-winning interior design projects has been realized using ceramic materials. Does this mean that ceramic is out? This doesn’t seem to be the case to us, looking at the market and the increasing interest in ceramics recently shown by designers. The only reference to the ceramic world is the nomination of Jaime Hayon, a promising young Spanish designer who has recently worked much with ceramic materials.
To find out more about the Wallpaper Design Awards 2008:
The complete list of award winners on the magazine’s web-site, with comments and photos.
In the week leading to Christmas I had a free Wednesday afternoon in Milan and grabbed the chance to visit the Triennale Design Museum. Paolo, our Marketing Director, had attended the inauguration on December 6, but, obviously, the worst day to savour the splendour of the exhibition was on the opening day… luckily, when I visited, the exhibition was not too over-full, so I had the time to go back and forth, contemplating, taking notes, just the way I like viewing.
Once inside the Triennale I felt immediately at home: the Museum is designed by De Lucchi, the exhibition of Fiorucci was on the lower floor… but that is not all. At the start of the day, there were only 3 of us in the entire museum: me and a famous Indian designer, with his interpreter. And who was the designer? Ironically, another familiar face: Satyendra Pakhalé, who, at the Triennale, took part at Design On Stage. A great taster.
As we know, the Museum is not set out as a traditional permanent exhibition, but instead has a series of “long-term short stay exhibitions” of around a year. The first is dedicated to “obsessions” in Italian design: a path that winds through 7 themed spaces, where pieces that have re-written design history from the ‘30s, and since been eulogised by videos made by some of the most renowned Italian directors (Olmi, Martone, Luchetti, Corsicato…). Greeting us at the entrance, a resounding work by Peter Greenaway entitled Ouverture. The herald of trumpets! 2000 years of Italian creativity.
In anticipation of going into greater depth in later posts, I will limit myself to making a general comment on the exhibition. Mine was a very positive experience: the history-graphic interpretation by curator Andrea Branzi, which, on first impression seems a bit cryptic, does, in fact, allow us to experience the works as they were originally designed to be, transforming them into veritable cultural objects, rendered with an intrinsic symbolic value that makes them unique, irrespective of the “who-designed-then-and-when”. The arrangement allows for various levels of interpretation, from one which is very aesthetically tight to a more technical and expert one, but, in my opinion, it transgresses in a couple of aspects: the videos of the Italian directors cannot receive the appreciation they deserve, as they are projected onto giant surfaces but in a limited space, while the informative presentations on the mini-display video alongside the works are graphically poor and too long and articulated to be of use. What a pity too, that, on the day I attended, the section dedicated to works of light was closed for refurbishment.
Here are some other opinions of the Triennale Design Museum:
Yesterday, we all awoke to some sad news: Ettore Sottsass, the dean and guru of Italian design, died as 2007 was coming to an end.
At the very time President Napolitano was giving his final year’s address to the Italian people, appealing to the Italian creativity, Sottsass passed away, and with him one of our greatest contemporary creative talents, an all round talent who was able to test himself constantly with modernity, to recreate himself and to be able to pit his wits against the greatest talents of the new generation. As were, at different times, Michele De Lucchi, Andrea Branzi, Matteo Thun and Aldo Cibic, to name but a few of the main “sons” of Sottsass.
We are pleased to remember that ceramic was one of the main materials Sottsass used to express himself: so, in this sense, it is worth remembering the longstanding partnership he had with Bitossi in the ‘50s and ‘60s, geared especially towards the creation of the vases and design pieces, that launched him towards the very summit of Italian design.
The exhibition to celebrate his 90th birthday, Vorrei Sapere Perché, in Trieste, which runs until March 2008; and, less we forget, Ettore Sottsass - Work In Progress, held in London last Spring and which is the subject of the video at the start of the post, and the Design Museum at the Triennale in Milan
The Christmas break brought some wind of change to DesignTaleStudio.com. In fact, the web-site architecture has been radically renovated: a brand new home page opens on the main information section, targeted at corporate and product information with partially renewed graphics. The Blog and the Store are now managed as satellite mini-web-sites at the addresses blog.designtalestudio.it and store.designtalestudio.it.
The reason is quite clear. When we launched the site in march 2006, DTS project was still under construction and a blog seemed to us the right “platform” to gradually think about the final positioning and the communication identity of the brand. In the meantime, we created new products, organized two important events such as Design On Stage and The Grand Design Tour, and published our first general catalogue. After the Cersaie trade-fair, we understood that this first phase had come to an end: it was time to start a real corporate communication on and for DesignTaleStudio brand.
We would like to stress that the motivation behind the decision is not to reduce the blog. On the contrary. By placing it on a partially independent sub-site, and not on the main site, we have the opportunity to exploit the peculiarities of this web format to the maximum, to open it to outside influences and, at the same time, set it free from the urge of product focusing.
So, a hearty welcome to 2008 hoping that you’ll appreciate this decision.
