Body Building

The pieces of furniture, designed by Atelier Biagetti and presented at the milanese Design Week, are firmly fixed, becoming almost oxymorons, their static form and structure conceptually opposed to the movement evoked and referenced by the gym equipment.

The body produced by nature and one constructed by willpower are the two extremes between which Atelier Biagetti’s Body Building collection plays out. Curated by Maria Cristina Didero, it is one of the most intelligent reflections seen at the recent Milan Design Week.

At first glance, the studio space of design couple Laura Baldassari and Alberto Biagetti seems to have been converted to an ultramodern gym, fully equipped with pieces manifestly inspired by traditional gymnastics: from steady rings to pommel horse, wall bars and space for floor exercises. Do not be fooled, the guiding thought behind this project is as sharp and honed as a surgical knife, the very instrument envisaged in the next step of body construction, a surgical procedure. The impact of this work lies in the way it stands on the brink of becoming artifice without ever crossing the line, flirting with the irreversibility of what an iron will can inflict on nature when it pursues an abstract canon. The mind wins, the body loses, and desire transforms, builds and creates muscular structures and a frame to attain a model that often seems as fragile as it is compliant. The absolute and admirable perfection of the finishes on these furnishings – hunted down with the fixation of the most meticulous and dedicated artisan – becomes in itself a reference to the concept of complete and lustrous beauty that renders us helpless in the face of a more or less confessable need to gain approval of our transient physical selves.

The pieces of furniture are firmly fixed, becoming almost oxymorons, their static form and structure conceptually opposed to the movement evoked and referenced by the gym equipment. These functional presences stand out for their flawless beauty, a reminder that aspiring to extreme perfection fuels a constant sense of dissatisfaction and inadequacy. The ancients knew this well and they attributed Vanity with the dual-edged significance of the pursuit of beauty and its ephemeral transience.

The project originated when the design couple purchased a step, an awkward piece of gym equipment that makes its presence felt in every home it enters, often symbolising the domestic cemetery of good intentions and turned into a random rest. It did not take long to come up with the reflection explained by the curator: “Body Building – says Maria Cristina Didero – plays on the concept of truth and fiction, reality and irony, stereotype and artifice. The spark is triggered when standard language of gym equipment is transposed onto domestic furnishings: the gym functions were denied and only the surface of their rigid iconography remains.”

Seeing the body as the basis of the object actually has old roots. In an enlightening text entitled Il corpo come oggetto naturale of 1981, Alessandro Mendini said: “If I sit on the ground I am a chair, if I walk I am a means of transport and if I sing I am a musical instrument.” Purpose and practical need have always been the drive behind the design of a utensil and its support and the history of anthropology is strewn with examples. But Atelier Biagetti’s the objects speak, on contrary, of an unnatural body, one designed and transformed by fashions and desires imposed by fickle and categorical diktats (the famous size 42 being the “burka of the West” according to the sociologist Fatema Mernissi).

It is a postmodern body that has to consider media-image consumption and the fact that appearance governs market and distribution laws, regardless of any moral or philosophical conditioning. These objects give more the impression of an open debate than of a denunciation. No form of prejudice trickles through but they do open discussions and stimulate thought in those who know how to look at them. All irony apart, the image seen in a mirror is square and, for this reason, an orchestrated opening was a key part of the project – a truly playful happening, intentionally legible as light-hearted and a reflection, similar in this to the most original Pop works of the past. Energy drinks were served instead of the usual flute glasses and hyper-protein hard boiled eggs with no fats as virtuous canapés. The layers of meaning can be browsed without difficulty, starting from the surface and then going deeper - but only if we want to and only if we are willing to observe what the mirror says unfiltered. It is up to us to smile at what we see or project something over it, indulging the artifice or keeping it at a distance.

Body Building

The pieces of furniture, designed by Atelier Biagetti and presented at the milanese Design Week, are firmly fixed, becoming almost oxymorons, their static form and structure conceptually opposed to the movement evoked and referenced by the gym equipment.

Latest on Design

Latest on Domus