GamFratesi

Pure designers with little time for self-production, GamFratesi explain their installation at the Istituto Filologico centred on how a project takes shape in the artist’s mind. #MDW16

They are classical designers – such that they are an anomaly on the contemporary panorama where designers have specialist training in the discipline or borrow procedures and references from the art world. Instead, Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi are pure designers in the most traditional sense of the word.

Firstly, because they both trained as architects, something increasingly rare for their generation. They met in Ferrara while Stine was on his Erasmus exchange and had just completed work experience in Fumihiko Maki’s office in Japan. They instantly discovered a shared passion for products and furnishings in particular, which they see as a means of generating behaviour in a space. Indeed, none of their designs can be considered free from spatial reference and the body’s movement in a certain context. In a way, their approach to design resembles that of the first-generation of Italian masters, in the style of Castiglioni or Zanuso who never failed to conceive a use for their objects in a space, whether designed by them or not. It is an inclination to also visualise furniture when not in use or being used by different people. Worthy heirs of this history, GamFratesi designs are often actually micro-architecture or microcosms, entertaining a broader relationship with their surroundings.

GamFratesi, view of the installation at Circolo Filologico, Milano

Another focal point is a preferential dialogue with industry and a sizeable indifference to self-production: “We are old-fashioned designers. We like the fact that the industrial process is executed by people and are fascinated by the love created by many people who write a story together.”

Their design also contains a strong measure of the Scandinavian masters, not just in their reference to organic forms and their colour palette but primarily because those designers – especially the Danish ones of the 1950s with whom they are very familiar – had a clear main objective: the physical and mental wellbeing that an honest and well-made piece of furniture instils in its user. Some of them, such as Finn Juhl and Poul Henningsen, even cared deeply about the social role played by design in their country, aided by a political class that recognised this facet, notwithstanding the small involvement or total absence of industry and its economic drive. It is, therefore, no coincidence that Stine and Enrico decided to make Copenhagen their professional and personal base.

One design that clearly conveys their vision is a desk with an acoustic-protection screen produced a few years ago by Ligne Roset. “Rewrite – explains Fratesi – is a search for a private space in which to concentrate. People must be able to identify with a product’s basic and traditional functional components but an iconic feature triggers new forms of interaction. It may just be a small detail that changes the way a product is experienced. It is a very subtle behavioural prompt.” So, once the function has been perfected, the piece needs a story but it is a different story for each potential user. That is why much of their design process centres on imagining uses and very different user profiles, and why the function comes long before the type. There is always a story behind their designs, even the most iconic ones. This is the case of last year’s installation in a mediaeval cloister that captivated visitors to Milan Design Week. “We spoke to the San Simpliciano caretaker and he told us that it was a space created for reflection. We instantly thought of reflecting the whole square with mirrors!”

This year once again, they will focus on an installation and curating project at the Istituto Filologico Milanese in Via Clerici, dedicated to the way a project takes shape in the artist’s mind, from the initial cerebral input. Seeing the mind as the first project becomes a mental form in itself. The idea was again inspired by the venue: “The Filologico is a place where they think about how things originate. So, we thought of going back to the origins of the first project and the answer was the mind.”

On the product front, they continue to work with Gebrüder Thonet Vienna (a modular coat-rack inspired by the constant turns of the classical Viennese waltz) and Porro (Voyage, a chair that continues the aesthetic language of Traveller but with new materials and proportions, and a wood and metal desk).

Moving from the living room to the bathroom, they were also asked to work with Axor on the Waterdream 2016 project and with Ceramica Globo, for which they designed Display, a series of ceramic washbasins designed to share the washing space with a number of personal spaces and areas.

All of their projects, past and present, are instilled with the consistency that only design awareness constructed over time can produce but is there anything they would never design or from which they would distance themselves? I ask Enrico who, on the one hand, is convinced that “design has no limits” and likes living in a city such as Copenhagen where a focus on good design permeates every public and private space. On the other, he remembers the times he goes home to Italy, to the provinces where so much is “wrong”, not designed or badly designed. He adds: “The risk of design conformism frightens me. When everything is wrong, you can let your mind run free but when everything is over-designed you become a slave.” So how do you maintain the authenticity? “By restricting yourself. During the design process, creativity encounters a limit. It takes time to digest ideas.” So sometimes – as they do – it is important to know how to say no and stop because you cannot have good design without a happy designer.

GamFratesi

Pure designers with little time for self-production, GamFratesi explain their installation at the Istituto Filologico centred on how a project takes shape in the artist’s mind. #MDW16

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