The architect and designer Mario Bellini has always been a creative mind playing with provocation. Let’s think about his “Kar-a-sutra” ,a car concept he designed for the MOMA in New York in 1974 which has recently been rebuilt for an exhibition on the 70s at the Triennale in Milan, for which he has organized the setting. Bellini will be our guest in a no-holds-barred meeting with the journalist Roberto D’Agostino in the afternoon of Saturday, April 19, inside DesignTaleStudio’s Trascreativity set, opposite the Triennale.

To meet Mario Bellini on April 19 at the Triennale, you can request your free invitation.

Milan-born Mario Bellini is one of the most renowned designers in the world. His work ranges from urban and architectural drawings to furniture and industrial design. His career as a designer started in 1963, as an industrial design consultant for Olivetti, for which he designed typewriters, calculators, computers and video appliances with special care given to the user’s needs, even if Bellini believes that ergonomics is just a starting point as man is more complex than a mere series of measurements. Amongst his products, the Divisumma 18 calculator in particular, will be remembered for its tactile feel and the plastic coloured carter covered in a rubber membrane. Another revolutionary product was the Yamaha ’73 cassette-recorder with its typical wedge-shaped design. During his career, he has collaborated with many Italian and international companies such as Artemide, B&B Italia, Cassina, Yamaha, Renault, Rosenthal, Vitra. Moreover, Bellini has been a consultant for Renault and Editor in Chief of Domus magazine. He was awarded the Compasso d’Oro as well as many other international awards and some of his work is permanently on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since the 80’s, he has predominantly worked as an architect in Europe, Japan, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Who better than Vivienne Westwood could personify the concept of “transgressive creativity”? In the world of fashion, Vivienne Westwood has been a symbol of impartiality, provocation and desire to break conventional concepts. Her ceramic slab prototype designed for DTS confirms this approach, she will be present to show her work on April 17 at the Triennale during Trascreativity.

Here are details of the original drawings. To see the ceramic slab and to meet Vivienne Westwood, you can request your free invitation.

Vivienne Isabel Swire married Derek Westwood when very young. In 1971 she began designing clothes and she opened her first shop in The King’s Road. Her fashion became synonymous with the Punk movement and she was arrested for hosting a catwalk along the banks of the Thames with Sex Pistols during the Queen’s Jubilee. In 1982, she became the first British fashion designer since Mary Quant to host a fashion show in Paris. She designed the ‘Statue of Liberty’ corset, the first corset to be introduced into outerwear.

The American editor John Fairchild included Vivienne, the only woman, in his list of the top six fashion-designers of the world. She was appointed professor at the Applied Art Academy in Vienna and at the Berliner Hochschule der Künste. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II, she married Andreas Kronthaler and created the Mac Andreas tartan, which appears in the official archives of the Lochcarron Museum. British TV dedicated the show Painted Ladies, a documentary film about the relationship between fashion and art, to Vivienne. Amongst other honours, Vivienne Westwood’s creations were also awarded a place in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the most important exhibition dedicated to a living British designer which then also went on to open in San Francisco and at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Vivienne Westwood Ltd has more than 20 collections, 30 flagship stores, exports to over 86 countries and is present in 700 points of sale around the world. Vivienne Westwood is one of the most influential deans of world fashion.

Let’s start with the list of the guests who will be present at the forthcoming Design On Stage “Trascreativity” at the Triennale in Milan with Alessandro Mendini, who will be present on April 17, introducing the audience to his ceramic slab project for DesignTaleStudio. Below are details of his original drawings, a creation which is a composition of six slabs in 60×120 cm size.

To see the ceramic slab and meet the designer, you can request your free invitation.

Architect and designer, Alessandro Mendini is considered one of the foremost design masters of today. In 1989 he founded the Mendini Atelier in Milan and he has designed objects, furniture, planned spaces, installations, buildings always adding a personal touch. The Editor in Chief of magazines such as Casabella, Modo and Domus, various monographic volumes on his work and on his partnership with Atelier Alchimia have been published and translated into many languages. His main interest is neo-modern and contemporary design, and he is a design consultant of international repute, whose collaboration for international brands such as Alessi, Philips and Swatch as an image and design consultant has led to the creation of world-wide famous products. He is an honorary member of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, he has been awarded the Compasso d’Oro for design, the Architectural League prize of New York as well as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. A Professor of design at the Hochschule fur Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, he has organized many exhibitions in Italy and abroad. His work can be found in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His architectural projects include, Alessi’s house in Omegna, the Bicchieraia theatre in Arezzo, a memorial tower in Hiroshima, Japan, and the Groningen Musem, Holland.

Following last week’s taster, we are ready to “officialise” the calendar for Trascreativity, the DesignTaleStudio event for Fuorisalone exhibition 2008, this year centred around the theme of creativity and transgression.

The suggestive space planned by Laura Villani in the square opposite the Triennale will see the presence of many guests such as Elio Fiorucci (16 April), Alessandro Mendini and Vivienne Westwood (17 April), Karim Rashid (18 April, at 19.00), Mario Bellini and Roberto D’Agostino (19 April), Mariuccia Mandelli Krizia (20 April), and Vito (20 April). In the next few days we will find out more about them.

As last year, the lens of Claudio Porcarelli will create a sort of “parallel diary” of the days, while Radio Montecarlo and Ultrafragolaweb-tv will have live broadcast and interviews with the guests.

Entrance by invitation only: to request your free invitation, please fill in the registration form on the Refin web-site.

An event organized by Laura Villani, here is the logo for Trascreativity, the DesignTaleStudio event for this year’s Fuorisalone. It is in keeping with Design On Stage, last year’s event, but including a touch of transgression.

Trascreativity is the name of DesignTaleStudio art installation on the occasion of Fuorisalone 2008, which will take place in the square opposite the Triennale exhibition in Milan, from 16 to 21 April. Trascreativity is the union between “transgression” and “creativity”, two key concepts that will be delved into by the designers and architects invited. During our brainstorming, we took the following notes.

I am not an art critic, but I have the clear sensation that the concepts of creativity and transgression started to merge only over the previous century. That is to say, not before the Dada, cubism, futurism, conceptual art. Only starting from that moment, transgression began to become a code.

Transgression in the language, transgression against shared values and schemes, transgression in the lifestyle. Deliberate transgression as a reaction to the status quo, but also spontaneous transgression, an instinctive and surprisingly natural event.

Transgression that is sometimes the be all and end all, a superficial mask to easily attract visibility to talentless works of art. But also innovation, the statement of something never-before-seen, revolution. Creation in an almost divine sense.

Transgression is not implicit creativity. It is just one of its facets, perhaps the most powerful, complicated and controversial. 
Actually, I have had second thoughts. Transgression is not the centre of creativity, it is its end yet its purpose.

In March, architects and designers reach fever pitch: the count-down to the Salone del Mobile exhibition in Milan starts, probably the most important event of our sector, world-wide. The anticipation is focused on the events and ephemeral settings of the Fuorisalone, in the Tortona district and of the Triennale. Last year, we created Design On Stage, a “design lounge” designed by Laura Villani opposite the Triennale, with the participation of many guests, such as Elio Fiorucci, Michele De Lucchi, Karim Rashid, Satyendra Pakhalé and Sandra Bermudez, each one the designer of a ceramic slab prototype for DTS.

And this year? We will be there again, don’t worry. Would you like some “teasers”? We will be once again in the square opposite the Triennale with a new setting by Laura Villani, with Claudio Porcarelli‘s photographic set and an intriguing theme: creativity as transgression. Among the protagonists, we will have a legend of the Italian design and two international fashion-designers…..all of them famous “transgressors”.

Keep an eye on the blog, we will reveal more in the next few days…

The final event of Design On Stage was scheduled for Sunday 22, when we played host to Sandra Bermudez, the conceptual and feminist artist of Columbian descent, who has always had a close association with the world of fashion in Italy.
Sandra told us what being a feminist means to her and explained the relationship between her art and fashion. The visual theme of her DesignTaleStudio project is crushed paper; her porcelain stoneware slabs are created in such a way to look like cascades, from “extremely crushed” to smooth, and have dashed pink grouts cutting across the work, symbolic of the feminine presence.

[tags]Sandra Bermudez, art, feminism, Design On Stage, blogmilano[/tags]

On Saturday 21 Design On Stage at the Triennale should have seen the presence of Peter Halley who unfortunately had to call short his trip to Italy due to a sudden engagement. Satyendra Pakhalé, designer for, amongst others, Philips, Alessi, Cappellini and Moroso, accepted to stand in for Halley and spend the afternoon with us.

During his intervention, Pakhalé, who loves to call himself a “cultural nomad” touched upon various aspects associated with the cross-cultural relationship. According to the designer, it is pointless today to talk about a “western” culture rather than an “eastern” culture, but about a “human culture”, a mix of atmospheres and influences recalling many different places in the world, even faraway one from the other. Ceramic, a material as ancient as the world itself and at the same time technologically advanced, is the perfect symbol of his concept of a future that must be linked to tradition; and, in this sense, he is excited by today’s opportunities for architects to re-invent the “tile”.

[tags]Satyendra Pakhalé, design, India, video, Triennale, Design On Stage[/tags]

Yesterday, Karim Rashid came to visit us on the Design On Stage set. There was a lot of anticipation surrounding his awaiting, as he is one of the most recognisable and influential designer of popular contemporary culture; and, judging from the public participation, the expectations were more than fulfilled.

The live unscripted appearance of Rashid was principally centred around his vision of design as an expression of values of the time in which we live, and as a fundamental part of bring life to the future. His was a very profound chat, more a philosophical-anthropological one, rather than one on style. But, beyond trends and fashion, Rashid believes that, planning industrial goods means changing the every-day behaviour of people, society and the world. And that today is marked by an excessive anchorage in the archetypes of the past, and by the need, for designers of material objects, to fill the deep void and cultural aesthetics that separates them from the digital universe, characterised by the design of much more innovative products in line with today’s time.

Rashid’s very presence and his charm was testament to the fact that, today, he can be considered as an authentic popular icon. The watching public was made up of many students from around the world, who took part in the debate, often with very direct and provocative questioning, such as whether it should really be considered that glamorous to be one of the best designers in the world (Karim’s answer is at the end of the video, so we do not want to spoil the surprise for you…).