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Giulio Paolini, Letters from Turin, 2008
pfc. Via Mora 7 20123 · Milano Italy Phone: +39 0236520367 Fax: +39 0299988190 Mail: mail@pfcarchitects.com
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IN A letter to Alessando 4 | pfc.
2010 Dear Mister Alessandro Mendini, Since some time I was trying to get the right word for writing you. Precisely since when, in Triennale, Andrea Branzi was presenting his new book “Design Portraits”. As a matter of a fact during such an event I listen you to truly fall in with Enzo Mari’s opinion which is rather a sentence to death of the (today’s n.d.r. ) design, of its bankruptcy. I was indeed aiming to convey my enthusiasm, which catchs a glimpse of a phoenix in any heap of cinder, the new in any crisis, a contemporary assuming its own weakness as a challange for expanding culture,knoeledge and sign. I am also convinced, as often Andrea Branzi wrote, that the Italian design is an interesting example of the great energy which cames from incomplete, weak and not basing on as-
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suredness but on the countrary opening to the researching into the new and the different. After I had a glance at the set of shelves of my library in vain, I found the words i was looking for in a Cartoon: Ratatouille, where Anton Ego, an authoritative as well as Disneyan gastronomic critic wrote: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more.” Finally, Togehter with my best whishes that you may to bare the new and to defend it in a such context of fastest, deep and global transformation, whic is economical, social and cultural, I need just to add the point. Published by Domusweb.it on May 15 2010 Pagina Accanto: Ego © Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios pfc. | 5
INDEX 04 A letter to Alessandro Mendini 08 About and philosphy
Portfolio Selected works 1996-2018
14 Product design: Liconi by Alessi, 2012 Petits meubles pour Pascale Moussard, 2011 Andrea and Lawrence, 1998 Nanjing, 2016 Python by Trussardi, 1998 DAAD Dantone Perfume, 2016 Frammenti, 2016 64 Architecutral projects concepts and contest Villamoda, Shuwaikh State of Kuwait, 2001 Sport Centre and shopping mall, Safat State of Kuwait, 2006 L.D.V.I. Mall, Pie’n Polus South Korea, 2008 DAAD Dantone, Shangai Store Concept, 2015 94 Urban requalification projects: New Town, Padova, Itay, 2009 Waterfront, Bexhill United Kingdom, 2009 Driade esign outlet, Fossadello di Caorso, Italy, 2012 106 Country houses Country house, Ziano Piacentino, Italy, 2008 Ca’ del Vaj, Ziano Piacentino, Italy,1996 126 Modern Arab Architecture House 1, Kuwait city, State of Kuwait, 2012 House 2, Kuwait city, State of Kuwait, 2012 158 Interior projects and concepts: Luminal, Milano, Italy, 2005 Babochka gallery, Saint Petersbourg, Russia. 2006 Via Mora house, Milano, Italy, 2004 Private house, Milano, Italy, 2006 Burgan Bank new branch, Kuwait city, State of Kuwait, 2012 Kuwaiti shop, Al Hamra, State of Kuwait, 2012 Allegri flagship store, Milano, Italy, 2008 Gentryportofino flagship store, Milano, Italy, 2013 Jet Store concept, Mexico City, 2017 Maurizio Pecoraro flagship store, Milano, Italy 2014 Private house, Milan, Italy, 2016
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252 More about Biography Bibliography: articles on Domus Press and awards
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PHILOSOP About and Philosophy 8 | pfc.
2010 Design is research, Architecture is a political issue. Both affect people’s lives: how we live, how our children are taught, how we are treated when we are ill and the quality of our neighbourhoods. In history every human settlement has always had a peculiarity of its own. pfc. is an international partnership practicing design, architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. It was established in Milan in 2001 challenging clients and authorities to ensure that good design is valued economically, socially and environmentally. Activities include undertaking professional services, research, publishing, and holding lectures.
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pfc consultants’ team has been selected for high skills and experience of each member. They work closely so as to produce high-quality, rigorous research that will be widely disseminated as well as to help define and then deliver to our client the best long-term solution for their organisation, one that will fulfill all the original aims and requirements of the project. Our practice is committed to design excellence and customer service. Our architecture and interior departments work throughout history and across styles, always seeking to enhance life through good design. We collaborate with our clients and craftsmen to produce personalised living environments as well as the occasional high profile public buildings. As our focus is on client’s need we design the most part of the interiors of the house, in order to have a remarkable result, besides the study and accurate design we also carry out a thorough research on materials and working techniques. At the same time we scout the auctions in Europe, looking for furniture pieces of the most important designers of the 20th century. The calibrated mix of designed interiors and furnitures with the modern and rare pieces makes each home unique because entirely tailored on our customers’s needs. Such way of working very closely to the Italian craftmeship production, has also the advantage of having competitive prices for high quality products .
Published by Domusweb.it on May 15 2010 Beside Page: Claire Fonatine Passe-partout (Glasgow), 2004-2010 Courtesy the artists and Galleria Tognon Arte Contemporanea, Venice. Photography: Francesco Allegretto
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Architecture as People’s flag
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2010 Within the context of the 3rd ESA Sociology of Culture RN mid - term conference entitled Culture and Making of the Worlds at the Bocconi University in Milan, academics and sociologists like Volker Kirchberg, Sasha Kagan or David Inglis who describes himself as a theoretically and historically-oriented cultural sociologist, philosophers like Oleg Koefoed, editors like Carlo Antonelli of Rollingstone magazine, and artists like Howie B and David Haley were discussing about themes like complexity, coolness, art, landscape, ecology, land management, inter-conventionality and autoecopoïesis, as well as about the consequences of the web in our everyday life. They were moreover focusing on the significance of culture for sustainability as well as on sustainability or unsustainability for culture. We start by asking not more than two questions to Wolker Kirchberg, one of the most interesting and representative German Sociologist, who teaches in the United States at the William Paterson Universityand in his country at Leuphana Universität. Pierfrancesco Cravel: Whitin the general context of crisis of the project, how sociology as well as semiology,through your approach, can positively step into a dialogue with architecture since both your case history about Hamburg and Baltimore were demonstrating that weak cities, with less money and power have major chances of solving their own urban problems, which is quite far from the common sense. Shall we use your approach to’ make the project process more authentic?
Beside page: Markus Schinwald, Orient, 2011. Still da video, HD 9 min. Courtesy la Biennale 2011 Austria. © VBK, Wien 2011.
T Volker Kirchberg: It is very interesting that you used the word common sense because sociology always looks at words and somebody used a word like a New Order - which in Italy is also the name of a non costituitional party of the extreme right” n.d.r. -.... Wait a minute I don’t like the words New Order consequently I don’t like the word common sense because it implies that we already know what sense is, what makes sense so that there are some groups in society - most of architects actually work for them - that decide what is common sense and what is not common sense. First of all I love most of the Modern architecture. Yesterday I went to the Triennale and there is an exhibition of the winners of Premio Mies van der Rohe which I visited and I agree with those choices: I like that they gave the first prize to the Norwegian National Opera and all the others buildings, so that it is like a first statement of the architecture: flagships but not only flagships. The NL Architects’ Basketbar, for instance - so that’s why I was so interested in this exhibition - in their project you understand that there was the need of a public air and you could put it anywhere. I like the fact that public spaces that were not used as public spaces any more, or not yet are invented or reinvented by architecture so that you just symbolize that this is actually a place that could be used as a public place. It was not huge architecture but there was just this small important idea that we are planning for the people, to help them find a place where they can get together and communicate. We are not doing it just as a signal or as symbol for the power and for the efficiency of our cities. So what
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I want to say is that the time of flagship is an illusion of the sociologists who think that urban lives should be shaped by people who live in the other spaces, because it is shaped by the people who have the money and the power, so they create flagships and a flagships development is what makes it so difficult to normal people to live in these cities. So let us finish the statement. I am very schizophrenic on that, on the one hand I see flagships as a twisting on the other hand I like them a lot. pfc.: The German Pavilion in Biennale of architecture was totally dedicated to the German concept of Sehnsucht Coud it be a way of joining some authenticity in designing spaces? w.k.: I am not an architect even if I am very interested in architecture. Anyway Max Weber, made this idea of disenchantment. So we live in a time of modernity, of rationality of efficiency of control of predictabilty and of quantification and this time lets our lifes become more ad more disentchanted...Emotions, all these feelings that are related to our lifes are taking out, are vanishing. I do not want to become religious - I am not at all - but I think that in religion you also find some elements that are illogical but that lack of logic is filled with emotions. In architecture you find the same way of this enchantment that you find in our own life. Some times architecture tries to work against that. There are some of the architects who tried a way out of modernity, - some years ago. It was postmodernity - to re-enchant our lifes through architecture, but it doesnt’t work like that. The re-enchantment of our lives through architecture in our urban enviroment - I think, the
source for it - happens mostly through old buildings that have been used and restructured by the people who used it. Old buildings today have been rebuilt by major architects. I mean our old industrial buildings became shopping malls, the churches became shopping malls or restaurants and so on. This is not what I mean because this has been done by investors. They should look authentic. Authenticity is another nice word for enchantment - but the purposes remain that they are profit oriented, which are purposes of modernity, of rationalisation, of making money. And now I am coming to what I was telling yesterday in Bocconi University, when I talk about those old delimited small projects of warehouses in the peripheries of cities and if you allow artists, which I think are the craftsmen of enchantment a vision very far from Bonami’s disenchantment of yesterday where during the same meeting he presented art as buisness and himself like somebody who deals with money and assholes (good artists in his language) n.d.r. - , if you allow them to create their own lives in these buildings, this is a real reenchantment of this industrial delimited areas. And that is more and more where architecture should go. Baltimore is a good example, Hambourg, Austria, Vienna are good examples of the opposite. They have buildings that they have to rebuild in a major way by major architects with a lot of investments so that people can make money. These are changes that are not generated from inside, and that is not what I want. I want that those old buildings are restructured by the people who live in, I mean they have to be secure but I mean let people to decide what they want to do with them.
Published by Domusweb.it on October 31 2010
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Tom Sachs a part of a full scale model of ‘unité d’habitation’ Tom Sachs ’mcbusier’ by tom sachs (2002) courtey: Vanhaerents art collection, brussels
Andro Wqua, Pink Wave Hunter. 2010-2011 Installation, 15 sculptures on a pedestal. Courtesy la Biennale 2011
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DE GN 98
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LICONI
Photography
Armin Linke
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photography Francesco Mattuzzi
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“In recent years design has moved forward by reproducing itself, as if the world didn’t exist. It looks into the mirror like Narcissus. In so doing design has reached a very high level of saturation and perfection; always elegant, intelligent, and sophisticated. This road could carry on to infinity, but nowadays it doesn’t lead anywhere... Its selfreferential language no longer has any connection with the world around it; with history, life, and love or even with geography and Alpine lakes. This tray by Francesco Cravel for Alessi seeks to break through this isolation. In fact, it is not an object but rather a segment of land, a narrow Alpine valley at the bottom of which lies Liconi Lake; a small lake in which design can observe its own reflection and, like Narcissus, run the risk of falling in and disappearing...” Andrea Branzi
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Pierfrancesco Cravel and Marco Ruschetti in Alessi factory, photography Armin Linke
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Liconi Lake, photography Armin Linke
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Liconi Surface con vista from Mont Blanc To Gran Paradiso
Liconi is a tray, table centrepiece and bowl made from stainless steel mined from the area around its namesake, high altitude glacial lake facing Gran Paradiso in the Mont Blanc Mountain Range. It represents the results of a design process similar to that of primitive man who, not having to depend on his choice of aesthetic criteria, looked for items that could be useful to him in nature and turned them into everyday objects such as arrows and axes. Unlike natural materials gathered by our Neanderthal ancestors, Liconi is a natural shape, digitally cut from its context. It is therefore a pure geographical surface derived from a stereoscopic satellite shot of the lake that is situated 2555 metres above sea level approximately 4 hours walk from Courmayeur or Morgex. A sophisticated geographical surface, pressed and forged from a flat steel sheet 18/10 with the skill and competence of the Alessi technicians who accurately reproduce a piece of the Liconi landscape on scale 1:2193 and transforms it into a table centrepiece. The stretch of water, the planes and the jagged edges of the mountain range are reflected in the design of the object. The three dimensional formation of the landscape is an abstract object that represents, in an instant,
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the maximum point of equilibrium reached by the forces that constantly shape the earth’s crust: a seemingly eternal shape but in reality very fragile and destined to change at any moment. This is indeed the profile of Mont Blanc rising and shrinking due to the ever changing winds, snow and sunshine. These changes are undetectable to the eye but are no more less significant than those that can be seen immediately from a volcano or a tidal wave. These project trays explore a new and contemporary relationship between object and place, investigating how technology is changing the perception of the landscape as the use of the latter can influence the way of looking at it similar to how or if climate change can also be a resource. Today we know nature in an electronic format; from three-dimensional maps enhancing reality like Humanists knew their classics through the medieval copies kept in their monasteries. Through an ever increasing mass of digital data , we now have the opportunity to know our neighbourhood, the lake in the mountain and craters on Mars, and hence live in unknown and inaccessible worlds, with the same accuracy as the world we know and live in. This tangible reality that we
Darren Almond Between Here and the Surface of the Moon 2011 33 7/8 x 24 7/16 in. (86 x 62 cm) Cast bronze
call nature will eventually exceed the historical boundaries of experience of the individual and society as a whole. Although Nicholas Negroponte would have argued the reverse process in his book “Being Digital”, the steel tray is a digital form that has returned to being analog and real, a collection of particles that have returned to atoms. Liconi preserves its past and part of it will continue to live on the web: a QR code and a URL are engraved on the surface of the object providing access to the non-analogical - a project realised in conjunction with the Valle d’Aosta region. These traces that fuse together atoms and particlesboth components of the object, refer back to the website www.alessi.com/liconi where you can also see a short film “Mermaid’s Night” by Virgilio Villoresi and documentaries by Armin Linke, writer of the film “Alpi” and Francescso Mattuzzi who describes and tells us about the lake.
Nine items progressively numbered 1 to 9 together with information on the design project and images by Linke will be sent to Museums and Art Collections after Duchamp turning a massproduced object (and not an objet trouvé) into an industrial sculpture. L’opera sarà anche esposta in modo permanente presso il Castello Gamba, a Châtillon in Valle d’Aosta, e presso il museo Maxxi in Roma. Pierfrancesco Cravel
*Source: Dati matriciali del Modello Altimetrico digitale della Regione Valle d’Aosta Art N. 1386 del 04.01.2010.Liconi cen Liconi Cententerpiece made by Alessi photohraphy Francesco Mattuzzi
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Petits meubles pour Pascale Mussard 32 | pfc.
2011
I designed a writing desk, a small table and a consolle for Pascale Mussard, who was trying to introduce the recycling into the luxury, that is the possibility of using waste matter form industrial manufacturing, apparently two worlds in contradiction. Modern luxury is “reinvention,” says Mussard, whose current project is a decidedly upscale take on recycling: skins that used to be discarded because of tiny flaws and leather leftovers will be remade into objects of beauty. Going through the work of Tony Cragg, who transforms garbage into artwork, I tried to use the contemporary art itself as raw material. The planes of the pieces of furniture are the theoretical cut of “Sculture di linfa” by Giuseppe Pennone, two big log made of leather exposed at the 52nd International Art Exhibition Biennale di Venezia. These hand crafted pieces of furniture, produced in few pieces, allow Hermès craftsmen to transform flaws of the waste matter from leather manufacture into the imperfections of the nature they try to imitate.
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Giuseppe Penone, exhibition held at the Padiglione italiano during the 52nd Esposizione internazionale d’arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, June 10-Nov. 11, 2007.
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Andrea and 1998 Lawrence
Prototypes, modular sitting system designed with Andrea Branzi for Lawerence Steele house an thed for driade. Ph.: Francesco Bolis
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2016
Nanjing concept design
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Tussardi Python Protoype snd gentype of Trussardi Python essence - Photgraphy Francesco Mattuzzi
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Uma Wang for DAAD Dantone Profumo, Photography Piero Martinello
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pfc. | 55Martinello Photography Francesco Van Straten (left).Piero
“The solidity of the marble, the lightness of the crystal, the fuidity of the silver. The sensual elasticity of the leather. The smooth surface of cylindrical shapes and of faceted irregular pentagones, add and overlap in the disegns of bottle and box, like the ingredients of a sumptuous visual and tactile alchemy. Exceptional shapes, weights texture containing the fragrance created for DAAD Dantone by Meo Fusciuni. Immaterial evocative smell of wood and incense, natural spots and odorous landascapes, made of archetypal essences, aromas of memory and ancestral scents. Sunlight and ncturnal, fragrant and fortified notes in a perfect balance build and harmonious olfactory architecture, a pyramid of faceted sensetion and poetry.� Mariuccia Casadio
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2016 Frammenti
Water basin exhibited at Fragile Milan in occasion of the Milan Forniture Fair 2016 Photography: Chiara Quadri pfc. | 59
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““Primo”, console and sink at the same time, made of Portoro marble and brass, was a fragment of Giorgio Dantone’s house. A way of drawing that has its roots in history, culture and the Italian landscape. A little ‘Palazzeschi and a bit’ Goethe, It is an object suspended between modernity and the past. Between Carlo Scarpa and Archizoom, between design and contemporary art...” Pierfrancesco Cravel
Primo, water basin designerd for Giorgio Dantone, Photography Francesco Mattuzzi
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ARC ARCH
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2001 Shuwaikh State of Kuwait Villamoda Luxury Mall
Architect: Pierfrancesco Cravel Engineering: Favero 6 Milan General Contractor: Gulf Consult Client: Green Cedars Photography: Johnatahan De Vilierss
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Grand opening, photography: Johnatahan De Vilierss
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Villamoda main entrance. On the left: outdoor lighting concept.
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Villamoda: Interiors
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Villamoda ground floor plan
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“ (…) the trend was now in full swing, and the pursuit of a new architectural language for the luxury, shopping and leisure facilities, and a new residential and office space dimension, couldn’t help but prompt a new kind of observation of occidental modernity, in order to transfer it to the Gulf Coast and transform it into an expression of ultramodernism. In the spring 2001 Majed Al Sabah, the thirty-something descendant of the Emir sheik Jaber Al-Amad Al Jaber Al Sabah, opened the Villa Moda emporium in Shuwaikh, on the sea that glimmers by the coast of Kuwait. With this cathedral of international fashion in the desert Al Sabah wanted to change the notion of the “Gulf States” replacing the traditional association with “oil” with some adjective like luxury, modernity, sensuality, taste. In the hands of the Italian architect Pierfrancesco Cravel the design of Villamoda has developed as a light construction using glass and transparency, a sort of large architectural seashell with rigorous geometry, marked by a series of stainless steel pilasters that glitter like a mirage and like the entire construction in the building light of a desert dune. In the interior, the steel pillars are repeated to mark the paths between the glass cubes that have become boutiques for the world’s leading fashion brands: Gucci, Prada, Bottega Veneta, Salvatore Ferragamo, Fendi Etro, just to name a few, compose the sequence of spaces of this unusual, ultramodern high fashion marketplace.The furnishings of the restaurant and bar by B&B Italia, together with the pieces by Cappellini scattered in the connecting space in a discrete manner, indicate the taste of things Italian in this space fir elite shopping that rightfully assumes its place in the ranks of the new Gulf architecture (…)”
Antonella Boisi, Matteo Vercelloni “Arabian Dream” Interni N. 530 April 2003 p. 290-293
Villamoda
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Sport centre and Shopping mall 78 | pfc.
2006
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Shuwaikh, Sate of Kuwait Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Andrea Bolla Giusepe Galli Engineering: Favero & Milan S.p.A. Client: Sheikh Majed Nasser Al Sabah
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Kuwait sport centre, three dimensional computer- generetated image Views of the interiors
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Kuwait sport centre, three dimensional computer- generetated image. Pole
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Kuwait sport centre, three dimensional computer- generetated image Wiew of the interiors
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LDVI mall Seoul, South Korea Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Matteo Alfonsi Alessndro Brancaleoni Engineering: Favero & Milan S.p.A. Client: L.D.V.I. Italia
2008
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Previous page: Architectural project of sustaineable shopping mall in Pie’n Polus. Existing building shape is proposed entirely covered by local vegetion. This page: Interior concept design
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2015 Shangai People’s Republic of China DAAD Dantone Store Concept
Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Mattia Andrea Ferrari Tal Berman 90 | pfc. Martino Foglia Taverna
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Daad Dantone is a Milan famous multibrand shop in Via Santo Spirito, between Via della Spiga and Via Montenapoleone, the most exclusive shopping area in Milan. The brand aims to explore ways of being, wearing clothes and living the city. Together with the fashion industry, Daad Dantone expand its offering towards a wide range of upmost innovative selection of brands combined with some famous ones. This selection has been cherrypicked among those brands which made their distinctive features contemporary and that’s what we all call it Style. (1) Together with a selection of innovative garments, the new Daad Dantone’s shop will also welcome accessories, fragrances, body care solutions, design pieces, food and beverage production. They will all represent Giorgio Dantone’s Italian taste and aesthetics. Daad Dantone’s identity is the result of a never ending research and meticulous selection of garments taken from innovative yet consolidated brands in which Giorgio Dantone sees their potentials in the designs, materials, compositional variaty. These contemporary and distinctive features belong to Daad Dantone’s idea of the world and its aesthetics. That’s why Daad Dantone is expressed within a fl uid as well as constantly changing space which could, to some extent, remind of The Archizoom Associati space. (2) Daad Dantone isn’t a “Shop in Shop” concept enthusiast. Their spaces are constantly evolving and infl uencing each other. Against what usually happens in a Shop in shop or in traditional brand corners, the Daad Dantone’s ground floor, which will welcome some of the brands designed set ups, will have temporary as well as seasonal set ups and their area will not be bounded by any architectural element. By the Wusong river., Pierfrancesco Cravel, Daad Dantone’s architect, will defi nitely keep the 1929 Davis Gilbert&Co’s industrial building with its own ‘patina’. The concept of a conservative repair itself is very special to John Ruskin and, around those years, Alois Riegel gave a description in his writings. (3) Despite Daad Dantone’s change of end use, the interiors will remain as much unchanged as possible. This way, the two almost symmetrical parts will keep the entire building separate. Although the facade will need to go under some changes - making the 3rd fl oor windows bigger and ope-
ning several showcases on the ground fl oor – beams as well as the set of columns and all the windowsills, which give rhythm to the whole structure, will be kept. The project envisages a car park area of one or more fl oors on the rooftop, where all the technical features have been installed, which directly lead to the 3rd fl oor. This usually titillates the shopping palate less, because it seems harder to attract clients who would come all the way from the ground fl oor to explore the shop. Some “magnets” have been included as part of the project to attract more clients who will be more likely to visit the 2nd floor: a restaurant, a designated area for runaway shows and events, a lounge and a tailor’s shop. These two have been designed to meet the needs of the top exclusive clientele. Premiere clients do require more privacy when shopping and they have access to this floor directly from the top of the building. This fl oor can be accessed even when the shop is closed. That is also why both offices and warehouse have been designed close by. On the middle floor clients can fi nd more than 100 brands which have been selected by Daad Dantone. Clients are more likely to get to this floor from the ground fl oor as well as the top floor; shopping is only one of the reasons clients fi nd themselves on the top floor. The ground floor represents Daad Dantone’s business card. It’s where clients are directly involved the most. The utmost signifi cant Daad Dantone’s world elements are here. The clothing and accessories shopping activity is here. Two main entrances on both sides are the same as the original project. By designing the roofi ng, which divides the two environments, for the entire height of the building, the project is likely to include a great entrance hall as well as a fascinating and architectonically interesting rest area: a bar among showcases and temporary shops. On this floor, Daad Dantone will seasonally welcome those brands that are already well established – with their own concept and shops - but they still don’t break the mould in China. Not only does the “temporary” nature of this environments match with Daad Dantone’s inner concept, but it would also lead these brands to open their monobrand shops around the area which may be managed by Daad Dantone themselves. This will create a real “quartier” where passers-by will get in contact with the upcoming fashion trends and the whole area will receive a dramatic boost in sales.
1. For example, Albert Elba and Riccardo Tisci have reinterpreted with a modern edge two brands’ most inner identities which came to life more than two centuries ago: Lanvin e Givenchy. 2. “Archizoom Associati” from Florence was founded by 4 architects in 1966. It consistes of Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello e Massimo Morozzi. Later in 1968 the designers Dario e Lucia Bartolini joined in. Their vision culminates with the No-StopCity concept: a city with no boundaries and the elimination of the value of architecture and its forms matching with the fluidity of the metropolis, the online networking, surrounded by an unexpressed silence of the historical and architectural scenario. At the same time, with its “continuous movement” “Superstudio” came up with a different yet plausible idea (opposed to the No-Stop City concept): “architecture without city”. It establishes the supremacy of the monument within the space recreation as well as the “Quaderna’s squared surface”
covering from great territorial grids to tables for Zanotta. 3. According to Riegl, when operating the restorer is to be fully aware of the existence of different values, trying to make them communicate with each other. “The historical value” aims to guarantee the readability of the historical document (asking for the reintegration of missing or lost parts); “the value of the antiquities”, instead, claims for a no intervention, (against the conservation process itself) to protect the effects of the time passing (therefore it goes in favour of the “patina” surface - very special to John Ruskin); “the novelty value” which helps instincts to come to a new life is tangible in Viollet-le-Duc restoration projects; and finally the “use value” that guarantees the survival of the historical document, which is no longer considered as mere archeological piece. Thanks to Riegl’s academic contribution, Austria saw the very first systematical national law for the protection of the monuments come to force.
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Urban requ
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ualification 2009
New Town San Lazzaro, Padova, Italy Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Alessandro Allemagna Matteo Alfonsi Lorenzo Caddeo Engineering: Favero & Milan S.p.A. Client: Europa Rispsorse Real Estate s.r.l.
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Rob Pruitt, iPainting (Cow), 2009, inkjet print on canvas, acrylic paint, cm. 61 x 41 Courtesy Franco Noero Gallery, Turin.
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Padova New Town, design concept Architectural, landscape design and urban requalification project of the area “Padova New Town� in San Lazzaro, Padova, aimed at the realization of commercial and leisure areas and areas dedicated to managment and tertiary services. The project was integrated with an environmental salvage plan with the establishment of a urban park and naturalistic reserve within a urban context.
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Michelangelo Pistoletto, Labirinto e grande pozzo, 1969. Maze made of rolls of cardboard Exhibition held at Unlimited, section of Art Basel. 2011. Coutesy Art Basel
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2009
Waterfont Bexhill, United Kingdom
Next Wave: Shelter & Kiosk Design RIBA Competition Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Alessndro Brancaleoni Lorenzo Caddeo And designed with British artist Richard Wood Engineering: Favero & Milan S.p.A.
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The design of the shelters is the projection of a seaside landscape: scattered houses under a pine wood at the shore. Like a forest the tree-structures collect energy from the sun and transform it into light and heat for the night and winter. Additionally they protect the promenade from the sun and rain as they can be repeated homeomorphously along the entire promenade. Like stem cells they start an open and flexible system growing and spreading out to generate new overlaying and linked areas by defining new landmarks and mirroring the landscape of the shoreline. The design creates the sensation of (temporary) living at the sea: sound effects, light and heat melt within an abstract house perimeter: a white landscape providing a highly reflective canvas for designed or classical benches as art work - distributed throughout the site.The two houses (shelters) are placed along longitudinal and transversal axes to protect visitors from altering winds. A smaller one is designed in children’s size. The underlying spirit is an architecture in dialogue with its sourrounding landscape, the emotion of the site, its history and stories We worked with a British artist Richard Wood on restoring and redesigning the surfaces of the existing kiosk, located within our architectural pine-wood.“The kiosk has two different aspects: open and working during the summer days or closed and empty during the evenings and bleaker winter months. In summer the doors can be wrapped around the building - disguising the architectural ‘pattern’ and revealing local signs for ‘ice-cream’ etc.
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Next Wave: Shelter & Kiosk RIBA Design Competition
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2012
Fossadello di Caorso Italy Driade design outlet Architectural and urban requalification project of the industial area no lobre used by Italian design company Driade s.p.a. in Fossadello di Caorso Piacenza, aimed at the realization of commercial and leisure areas and areas dedicated to managment and tertiary services. The project was integrated with an environmental salvage plan with the establishment of a urban park and naturalistic reserve within a urban context.
Architects: Andrea Branzi David Chipperfield Pierfrancesco Cravel Italo Rota Engineering: Favero & Milan S.p.A. Client: Driade S.p.A.
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House in Ziano
Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Project assistant: Angelo Garioni Engineering: Crosti Client: Tiziano Gusti Photography: Stefano Pandini
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The project retraces a recurrent form among the oltrepo of Piacenza, a two-floor plant together with a four-floor tower. The residence is realized with a structure of reinforced concrete and upside down girder foundations in order to give more stability to the plant that lies upon clay soil in a seismic area. Outer walls are made of several layers of insulating material and a brick wall made with bricks recycled. Their stratigraphy designed on the inside, tells a story of the building totally invented. The reinforced concrete structure allows the overhanging of the floor of the second floor of the tower that would not be possible were the walls bearing-walls made of full bricks. A window opened at the intersection of the tower with the main buillding underlines the absence of a structure beneath a wall apparently made of full bricks revealing a clue on the real composition on the wall, the reinforced concrete. “In architecture, time does not respect the linearity of the tyrant clock, but rather the labyrinthine paths of the memory� said Fulvio Irace.
Andro Wequa, Pink Wave Hunter. 2010-2011. Installation, 15 sculptures on a pedestal. Courtesy la Biennale 2011
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Andro Wequa, Pink Wave Hunter. 2010-2011. Installation, 15 sculptures on a pedestal. Photography Giovanni Hänninen
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Previous page: Cyprien Gaillard, Angkor Beer Series (working title), 2010 This page: John Divola Los Angeles International Ariport Noise Abatement Zone, Forced Entries 1975-76 1979-80 Next page: Cyprien Gaillard, Rubble and Revelation exhibition featured at Nicola Trussardi Foundation 2012
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Darren Almond, Mono Chrono Pneumatic Red 2007. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery New York
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Architect: Pierfrancesco Cravel Client: Tiziano Gusti Photography: Stefano Pandini
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2012
Modern Arab Architecture
State of Kuwait Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Fabrizio Casiraghi Davide Pontoni Client: Mr. Abdullah Al Sultan
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“I’m Lave” film directed by Luca Guadagnino, Villa Necch interiors
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The two following projects retrace, translate and elaborate known shapes, personal and collective memories. In the first project the plan of Villa Necchi di Campiglio is deconstrued with the rotation of the axes of the lateral bodies of the building, clearly understandable by the design of the layers on the faรงade, rotated by 90 degrees with respect to the original drawing of the famous milanese villa, while the staircase leading from the garden to the hall is proposed identical to the original.In the second project, the decorating plastic aspect of islamic architecture is given by the pattern of level curves generating a unique interior landscape informing architecture and nature to the same origin of their composition.
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Besides page top: Villa Necchi Campiglio ground floor survey and picture of the entrance from the garden Constructed between 1932 and 1935 by the Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi, Necchi Campiglio Villa. Architecture, decorative arts, furnishings and collections express as a harmonious whole the high standard of living of the owners, who belonged to the upper middle class of Lombard industrial families. At the same time, the fervor of daily activity is adequately witnessed by the service areas of the house, the pantry, the kitchens and bathrooms, all still graced with their original facilities.
This page: Arab contemporary house, project A, plan and elevation
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Arab contemporary house, project B three dimensional computer- generetated images
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Arab contemporary house, project B plan
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2015
Pier 88 Giza
Cairo, Egypt Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Mattia Andrea Ferrari Giovanni Forte Client: Naguib Sawiris
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2005
Luminal Club Milano, Italy Architect: Pierfrancesco Cravel Client: Driade SpA
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The club occupies the entire ground floor of a Art Nouveau building at Viale Montegrappa 14, with three windows nine metre high giving overlook the street. I chose not to restore the faรงade. on the inside instead, I eliminated all that was added during the ages in order to get back to the original project of an elegant ballroom from early 20th century. Far from establishing new languages, after having liberated it, I designed the interior with Meyer Sound technology, lights and combining the original parts, the polished cement, big chandeliers made of smoked crystals illuminated by a digital system, mirrors with golden background on which I made engrave a graphic motif from a Charle Eames sketch from 1939. The venue is composed by a lobby with the first bar completely made of golden and engraved mirrors. Two smoked crystal chandeliers are placed symmetrically with respect to the staircase leading to the ballroom. The ballroom has polished cement floor and a circular plan, is dominated by a glass dome 15 metre diameter. The second bar is tangential to the ballroom, it is a parallelepiped 12 metre long with black mirrors reflecting the light of three chandeliers
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Babochka
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a Gallery
2006 Saint Petersbourg, Russia Architect: Pierfrancesco Cravel Client: Hatullia and Timur Avsadzhanashvili
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Amnesie Andrea Branzi’s exhibition and the Italian neoclassic architect Antonio Rinaldi are the design references. The merging old times allure and sheen with different indoor and outdoor places. All the modern pieces are ligned up in the center of the ancient building, with its Ionic decoration and original volumes.
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letter to Alessandro
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Via Mora House Milano, Italy Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Phptography Alberto Ferrero
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“A different altitude� Milan, Colonne di San Lorenzo. Photography Olivo Barbieri
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In Milan, near the Colonne di San Lorenzo, such an hybrid architecture is a unified space tempered with ‘rooms’ that are permeable to light and visual, organized as an architecture within an architecture. Spaces becomes a series of evanescent theatrical wings, not reaching the ceiling or touching the walls but shaping a glass cube, which is an hybrid between on object and an architecture, a solid and a void. It is a typological attempt to resolve architectural design in a project of communication, while at the same time remaining detached from both. Without the pretense of updating an aesthetic language, we just organized a series of communication elements of space trough empty volumes that indicate possibilities for spatial use. Pierfrancesco Cravel “The trans-opaque loft” Interni n. 535 October 2003
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Via Mora House, 2005. Interiors views. Phptography Alberto Ferrero
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Andrea Branzi: Open Enclosures. March 28 - June 22, 2008. Fondation Cartier, Paris, France
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One could describe this project as a kind of essay in loft design,” inasmuch as it involves the transformation of an empty ground-floor warehouse situated in downtown Milan into an ingenious scheme that explores the concepts of mass and void, the states of open and closed, ingeniously defying the container’s classic featureless long and narrow floor plan while successfully imposing all the necessary separate functions of a home. The outcome is most engaging, and offers an accomplished dissertation on conversion method itself. The unassuming plainness of the container is endorsed by the blanket application of white for ceilings and all vertical surfaces, within which is suspended a sort of open cube defined by floating panels of frosted glass that divide up the space into distinct areas, but leave it eminently permeable owing to the nature of these slender translucent partitions. This curious architectural device subdivides what is intrinsically a single space into three distinct functional areas, relegating the kitchen and service facilities to the bottom end beneath the sleeping quarters. But most of all, the device performs the subtle but expressive task of rendering the functional com partments distinguishable in both logical and perceptive terms, within the single spatial entity of the container. Effecting a sort of architectural sleight-ofhand, the idea’s mixture of sheer simplicity and basic materials defies all the established stereotypes of loft design by delineating an abstract space, dissolving thresholds and yet affirming their existence by means of these suspended transparent panels, which allow the “rooms” to flow seamlessly into each other, and whose layout is only really be perceived when passing physically through them. Given this challenge to the very idea of a loft typology, the project is equally unfussy about stylistic congruency, so by the same logic we find the traditional smooth white beola stone in the service areas side-by-side with such modern materials as resin, which benignly effaces the original !industrial wooden floor. Silvio Sanpietro e Paola Gallo, Lofts 2 in Italy, Edizioni l’archivolto 2003
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Via Casale House Milano, Italy Architect: Pierfrancesco Cravel Client: Alessio Rotondi Phptography: Alberto Ferrero
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Casa di ringhiera is a kind of public housing, chiefly for the lower classes, consisting of a series of flats, typically two-room ones, aligned alongside a shared balcony. Originally, those flats often had no running water, so toilets were also shared. They are typical of the age of the first massive industrial development in Italy (early 1900’s), and can be found especially in Milan and, more broadly, in Lombardy. Their inhabitants lived side by side and shared not only services, but also, more broadly, common social conditions, and necessarily spent a lot of time together; they didn’t live in isolation, and community live was often lively and vibrant. The project created a trhird room, with a dining area, optically separataed from the living.
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Burgan Bank, Sate of Kuwait Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Andrea Bolla Francesco Bolis Engineering: Favero & Milan S.p.A. Client: Sheikh Hamad Nasser Al Sabah
New branch banking 2012
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Halamara, Sate of Kuwait Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel, Lighting design: Arup London Client: Sheikh Majed Nasser Al Sabah
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Al Hamra interior concept
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The Al Hamra Tower is a topped out skyscraper in Kuwait City, Kuwait. It is the tallest building in Kuwait on completion in 2011 at 412.6 m (1,354 ft). The tower includes 195,000 m2 (2,100,000 sq ft) of commercial and office space. The building connects to a five-story retail mall which totals 23,000 m2 (250,000 sq ft) of retail space and includes an integrated theater complex and an 11-story carpark. A 54 square meters sales corner dedicated to cakes and accessories. The logo is Olafur Eliasson’s sun and reproduces dawn and sunset; the light temperature follows according to the outdoor light
Al Hamra Tower, Kuwait City, State of Kuwait. Photography SOM, Pawel Sulima
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Al Hamra sohp 1. Three dimensional computer- generetated images, views of the interiors.
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Olafur Eliasson - The Weather Project, installation in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, 2003
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Milan, Italy Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Angelo Garioni Engineer: Andrea Bolla Lighting design: Arup London Client: Dismi 92 S.p.A.
2008
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It is about future looking backwards to the past, François Roche defines it “Vintage notion”. A future that necessarily replicates our déjà vu and déjà vécu. It retraces, translates and elaborates known shapes, personal and collective memories. A future meant as interaction, stratification and reinvention of classic modern cultural étant donné, this vision has affected also the two following projects. Two possible ways of merging old times allure and sheen with different indoor and outdoor places. it is above all, two possible ways of evoking and interpreting Allegri’s world reprogramming and re-elaborate its context, its characters and its references. In the first project, the combination of zen garden with modern organic view of Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn goes as far as the contemporary imitation of the nature by Yoshioka or Eliasson, inspiring the evanescent all-embracing candor of space. An absolute white interrupted by the black of the cabin of the elevator, which is reflective with purplish glare, has wooden floor, a fireplace and conceptual artwork chandelier like “In Girum Imus Nocte, Et Consumimur Igni” by Cerith Wyn Evans (2006, for more information please visit the White Cube Gallery London website). midway between superposition and rarefaction, hall and elevator. Many archetypes of garden and house interior are evoked. Stones in dosed disorder from zen garden, Nordic Pavilion interiors by Sverre Fehn at Biennale in Venice, the evanescent candor of the fireplace, chandelier and armchair, satinized light coloured glass in the hall, the contrasting presence of the elevator which slides in a tower covered with mirrors and with a light blue stroboscope which transforms it in a stage machine. the colour of the neons at 4000 kevin, à la Philippe Rahm, alined on the top and on the bottom. In the second project, perspective and chromatic relationships redefine the identity of the space. an abstract landscape à la Kandinsky able to evolve and modify itself like the prototype of BMW G.I.N.A car, acronym for “Geometry and Functions in N Adaptations”. A multifaceted prolificacy of volumes and surfaces on which lay, spread out, show garments on sculpture-pedestals. In this case the commercial area becomes shopwindow and the structure furniture, in an alternation of shields echoing modern artists’ works like Tobias Rehberger and Tom Burr (for more information, please visit the websites of the following art galleries Giò Marconi, Milano, and Franco Noero, Turin). Mariuccia Casadio
Cerith Wyn Evans, Exit, 1994. Plastic found objects 7’ 2 5/8” x 52” (220 x 132.1 cm) 10-Nov. 11, 2007. Atelier Van Lieshout, Michelangelo, 2004 Cerith Wyn Evans, In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, 2006 courtesy Jay Jopling, White Cube London Atelier Van Lieshout, The scientis, 2002 Tokujin Yoshioka × Lexus L-finess, 2005-2006. LEXUS Installation / Italy / lexus.jp
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Allegri concept 1, 2008 Three dimensional computer- generetated image Views of the interiors
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” Tom Burr, Patterned After Pleasure, 2011. Wool and wool blend blankets, shirt, jacket, steel tacks, steel push-pins on stained plywood, 159 × 121 x 10 cm image courtesy of Stuart Shave/ Modern Art, London Beside Page: GINA, (Geometry and Function in N Adaptions ) BMW Sport car concept, 2001 designed by Chris Bangle Tom Burr, Addict-Love. Installation View, SculptureCenter, NY *Image description at bottom of page Image © 2008 SculptureCenter and the artist. Photo: Jason Mandella
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Allegri concept 2008 Three dimensional computer- generetated image Wiew from the top of the ground floor
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Martin Boyce ‘Our Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours’, Installation view, Tramway, Glasgow, 2002 Courtesy The Modern Institue
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ClĂŠment Rodzielski, Untitled, 2008. Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Carlos Cardenas, Paris.
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Allegri concept 2 2008. Three dimensional computer- generetated image. View from the top of the ground floor
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Gentryportofino Milano, Italy Architect: Pierfrancesco Cravel Designers: Giuseppe Barone Tal Berman Corrado Galzio Salvo La Corte Lighting Design: Viabizzuno, pfc. And conceived with italian fashion designer Maurizio Pecoraro
2013
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2017 Store Concept
Mexico City Architects: Pierfrancesco Cravel Alberto Sandroni Client: Jet Store
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2014
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On the occasion of the opening, five of the twenty pieces of “call anything you want” by Paola Pivi have been exhibited together with two prototypes of “Liconi “ from Alessi Museum. As in works of Llyn Foulkes, space controls the superimposition of signs in an imaginary dialogue between Carlo Scarpa and mies van der rohe, between licini’s, mondrian’s, cyprien galliard’s and paola pivi’s abstract art. “it is necessary to make possible the coexistence of planning logics distant from each other in order to adapt project complexity to that of the contemporary world”1 The result is provisional equilibrium of materials and colours that lose their volume on the decorative area in order to explore fictitious relationships of reality, between the intense reds of brass, dark purple and many shades of gray that multiply in the marbles, marquetries and plasters. Thin walnut wood lines traverse the whole architectural space. The tangible expression of the fracture method used in the project appears to search for the sense of a sampling of fine and sophisticated signs with materials and finishes combined in a seemingly absurd way. Exposed along the wall that faces the window are showcases that cross into one another with the collection hanging in a new frame of broken lines, black with sections of brass in the style of munari where same mirrors made between 1945 and 1960 are set with fine, curved, woden frames. From a higher level, the mirrors catch glimpses of the landscape outside and retraces the inside as if to suggest that fashion is a tale of a life of elegance, sophistication and culture: contradictory volumes, mistaken colours and improbable combinations find shape, density and sense. 1. Corrado Levi, “Trattatino di architettura”, Tranchida 1993
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2016 Private house
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It is natural for an architect to desire to leave a highly personal imprint with his or her work. Not only in the concept of space, but in every single choice, from materials to the most hidden details. Milan-based Pierfrancesco Cravel succeeded in this goal by designing an interior project for Giorgio Dantone of Daad Dantone, a famous multibrand shop in the center of Milan. Dantone is a sophisticated buyer, highly attentive to the constant evolution of fashion, who has transformed the family tailoring buisness into a profoundly innovative concept store. For his client, Cravel has realized a tailor-made highdesign project, steeped in the design culture of Milan. While fully reflecting the poetry of Cravel’s work, the residence also opens a dialogue with historic artists and designers, paying homage to many talents. The first is Italian architect and designer Andrea Branzi, to whom Cravel entrusted the entrance. Somewhat eccentric compared to the rest of the house— which mostly features gray hues paired with marbles and woods of varying colors and textures—the entrance includes a fresco from the famous Giardino di Livia of the Roman era, printed on canvas, to which Branzi added shrubs, adding colorful birds and fruit. A long corridor, its walls covered in horizontal and vertical patches of flamed rosewood and ebony, leads to the living room, where a similar wall pattern emerges in five shades of gray plaster, divided by thin brass edging. All of the geometric wall patterns were created by Cravel, who was inspired by Italian frescoes from the 1930s for the shapes. Cravel chose the brass accents perhaps as an homage to Carlo Mollino, who used the material on the ceiling of the Lutrario nightclub in Torino, employed there in a circular pattern. Mollino is only one in a long list of 20th century talents, mostly Italian and Scandinavian, whose designs were either borrowed from or used in this project.The living room’s chandelier was designed by Gio Ponti for the 1964 grand hotel Parco dei Principi in Rome and recently manufactured by Arredoluce. Nearby hangs a brass ceiling lamp with a perforated shade, glass diffuser and counterweight pulley pendant designed in 1948 by Paavo Tynell in Finland. Just below, Japan chairs by Finn Juhl join an Egyptian
table designed by Mogens Lassen, inspired by folding stands found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. The room’s 1940s lounge chairs, designed by Otto Schultz, are upholstered in a gray silk velvet that complements the walls. A marble and onyx floor adds a contemporary touch and leads to the terrace, furnished simply with a 1960s Domus 1 lounge chair designed by Alf Svensson. On the opposite side— past the dining area’s custom ebony table and ebony and palisander Arne Hovmand-Olsen chairs upholstered in purple and black silk velvet—the kitchen is sheathed in Rosso Lepanto marble. The hall’s dramatic paneling wraps around one corner to line an entire wall of the kitchen and serve as storage. A Poul Henningsen chandelier hangs above an island that recalls the planes of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. It holds a Gaggenau cooktop, across from which is a faucet from Gessi, highlighted by a backlit element that adds to the room’s resemblance to a jewel box. In a bedroom, yellow and black 1950s lamps join a leather headboard that turns a corner before ending almost as a piece of art edged in wood and metal; the yellow is picked up on the outside lining of the draperies. A single Fior di Loto brass ceiling lamp, designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa and manufactured by Flos, is among the only furnishings in the master bedroom, whose faceted, multi-hued leather headboard of Cravel’s design rises high upon one wall. The adjacent dressing room is lined in palisander wood, its round mirrors resembling a streamlined yacht. The layering of materials continues in the bathroom, where an Emperador marble bathtub feels like a seamless extension of the floor and other surfaces. Flanking a round mirror, which refers to those in the dressing room, are 1950s Dahlia sconces by Max Ingrand. In this space, as tailored as its owner, Cravel has managed to create an elegant profile that allows for different functions. His was an organic vision for a house in which he balanced a harmony of space, forms, furnishings and materials, one that draws from the lessons of the past, rooted firmly in the present. Chiara Dal Canto “Well dressed”, Interiors 2017
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Contemporary Art and Modernism, with their elegance and patina are the themes around which the work and research of Pierfrancesco Cravel gravitate, ranging from high-end residence projects, retail spaces, to design. He graduated from the Architecture School “Politecnico di Milano”, where he attended lectures by Arturo Dell’Acqua Bellavitis, Andrea Branzi and Corrado Levi; after their academic relationship, Levi issued one of Cravel’s projects in his “Trattatino di Architettura”, about the Pirelli tower building, provocatively designed with the language and the taste of the American De-Constructivism. Together with Andrea Branzi, Cravel designed several furniture pieces for the house of the American fashion designer Lawrence Steele (1996), Grand Vases (1997) Genetic Tales (1998) and, lately, the Lobby of Giorgio Dantone’s milanese residence (2016). A few years after graduation Cravel became Creative Director for the Trussardi Group. One of his creations, the Python perfume bottle, was conceived as a disruptive zoomorphic shape. During the late nineties, he also worked with Nicola Trussardi and photographers Satoshi Saikusa, Steven Klein, Armin Linke and Francesca Rivetti on the whole communication of the brands of the group.
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Articles on issued on Domusweb.it in 2012-2010
Tulkus 1880 to 2018 An art report from Rivoli 20 November 2012 ... Pierfrancesco Cravel: Is the sense of this exhibition the ethnographic study of a theocracy in danger of extinction, or the chronicling of the risk of a ...
Migrants to Germany at the Biennale #1 An art report from Venice 08 June 2011 ... film; here, however, it might just take all that light from the famous Venetian painter’s works somewhere else
(Un)Forbiddden City, made in Italy
James Plumb at Galleria Rossana
A news report from Beijing 14 October 2011.
Orlandi, Milan
... to the industrial product. This time, starting from
A news report 26 November 2010
the cultural traditions of both the East and the West.
... school. Pierfrancesco Cravel: Did you meet
Art Basel from the outside
at the university? James Russel: Yes we met at our school, at the foundation courses. ...
An art report from Basel 08 July 2011 A queue of polished black BMWs with dark rear
Matthew Buckingham’s: An Alphabet
windows prepared to receive their
A news report 17 November 2010
VIPs looks like a scene from the 1980s, and
Images can easily be manipulated. Information is
embarrassing for that. ...
often exploited. Knowledge
Migrants to Germany at the Biennale #1
is subject to an increasingly obsolescence so that what ...
An art report from Venice 26 June 2011 ... screen.” This is why their work is consumed with
Interview to Fakepress
a sense of urgency thatepitomises the immediacy of
A news report 02 November 2010
our times.
... Pierfrancesco Cravel: Fake during a conference
Design Miami/: W Hotels Designers of the Future Award
about how culture is making worlds? Why? We would rather look for authenticity. By the way, how’s your son? ...
A news report from Basel 16 June 2011 ... according to the two designers, should fulfill the
Tate Modern Exposed: Voyeurism,
festival’s goal of facilitating encounters between
Surveillance and the Camera
people.
A news reportt 01 October 2010 I think that the thing that is so interesting about the evolution of survelliance, is that is’s impersonal and it continues all the time, expecially now with ...
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“The palace of culture is built with dog
The new Spanish Expressionis
shit” wrote, somewhere, Brecht.
A news report 21 June 2010
A news report 16 September 2010
In Basel, just besides the Art Unlimited, the Design
An intense blue-violet writing installed on an
Miami Pavilion hosts design galleries that are
antique Venetian window with four lights in Campo
presenting theirs furniture collections. ...
Santo Stefano says: Kultur ist ein Palast der aus ... It should be turned Almost Monochromes: a confrontation
A news report 18 June 2010
A news report 05 August 2010
Viennese Galerie Mezzanin set up in its Art Basel
Unpainting unpainted almost monochromes
stand one of the most intellectulally
paintings, almost monochromes. Shimmering
emotional events of the fair by dedicating its entire
silver surfaces that are animated by the the
space to a solo ...
reverberation ... Po(l)etical utopia DESPITE UTOPIAS: ‘Because every city
A news report 16 June 2010
has the right to be called Utopia’ (2002)
Suspended between iconophilia and icoclasm, one
A news report 3 July 2010
of the most amazing, moving and representative
... and architecture, each of them intended to
of our contemporary is Kader Attia’s installation
change urban space into a utopian space, a
“Couscous ...
new symbolic and political space.” Pierfrancesco Cravel: And what ...
After-effect A news report by 23 May 2010
Rising (up) agai
Some days ago this very website published a
A news report 01 July 2010
letter addressed to Alessandro Mendini where
Not so far from the Domus Academy -a Milanese
by quoting the words of a character of a Disney
suburbia that brings to mind the landscape of
cartoon - the famous ...
“Pomeriggi alla media industria”- a building of a company which was ...
Lettera ad Alessandro Mendini A news report 15 May 2010
Sans titre, 11 Mars 2005
Dear Mister Alessandro Mendini, Since some time
A news report 26 June 2010
I was trying to get the right word for writing you.
Young French artist born in Morocco and recently
Precisely since when, in Triennale ...
relocated to Switzerland Latifa Echakhch’s À chaque stencil une révolution is an installation selected by ...
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PRESS Daily Press
Magazines
Charlotte Brune, “Dix Ans, une Décennie de luxe, Série Limitée, n. 78 Les Echos, October 23rd 2009
Chiara dal Canto Zachte Landing December/January 2018 Elle decoration NL
Federica Artina, Un’oasi di modernità immersa nella sabbia, Il Giornale, April 17th 2005
Ulrich Clewing Glamore! December/January 2018 Architectural Digest Deutschland
Gianluigi Parrachini, Moda e design, nel deserto del Kuwait, Corriere della Sera, April 18th 2002 Elsa Molière, Vivre aujourd’hui, Le Figarò, May 2nd 2002 Maria Soave, Villa moda, L’Italian style tra le dune degli sceicchi, Il sole 24 Ore, September 25th 2002
Chiara dal Canto Well Dressed December 2017 Interiors US Irene Tamagnone A Mermaid’s night December 12th 2012 Vogue.it Antonella Boisi e Matteo Vercelloni, Arabian Dream, Interni 530, April 2003 Antonella Boisi e Matteo Vercelloni, Arabian Dream, Interni 530, April 2003 Pierfrancesco Cravel, Il loft transopaco, Interni 535, October 2003
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Books
Jen Ford, Hot house 2002, Spruce*, Spring Summer 2002
Chris Van Uffelen, Clear Glass: Creating New Perspectives, Braun 2009
Jonathan Wingfield, Le chic du cheikh, Numéro 34, June 2002
Chris Van Uffelen, Malls & Department Stores, Braun 2009
Maria Grazia Marchelli, Fashion appeal, Rivista del vetro Anno 26 n.9, Selezione 2002 speciale progettisti. Villamoda
Sara Manuelli, Design for shopping, new retail interiors, Laurence King Publishing ltd 2006
Permanent Food, December 2002
Silvio Sanpietro e Paola Gallo, Lofts 2 in Italy, Edizioni l’archivolto 2003
Tyler Brulé, The house of style, Spruce*, Autumn Winter 2001 Corrado Levi, Tabula Rasa, Ottagono N 102, March 1992
Crisitina Morozzi, Oggetti risorti, Costa & Nolan 2001 Corrado Levi, Trattatino di architettura, Tranchida 1993 Corrado Levi, C’è tutto novembre per pensarci, Dopo Albini, Studio grafico Calvi 1992
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