Current Issue: Domus 1001

In this issue

Domus, Evviva

In April’s editorial, Nicola Di Battista affirm that Domus is a magazine for architectural design and not about architectural design: meaning that he is no less interested in the end-product of that design than he is in the theoretical and practical work that underpins it.

Domus 1001

Cover: graphic reworking of the plans for the “Arch and Art” pavilions created by David Chipperfield and Michelangelo Pistoletto, Michele De Lucchi and Enzo Cucchi, Hans Kollhoff and Mimmo Paladino, Eduardo Souto de Moura and Jannis Kounellis, and Francesco Venezia and Ettore Spalletti in the Triennale Gardens to mark the XXI International Exhibition.

Editorial: Domus, Hurrah

Now that the celebrations surrounding the thousandth issue of Domus are over, we are left with a vivid awareness of the extraordinary human adventure undertaken by this magazine throughout its almost century-long history – an adventure recognised for the occasion by the large community of Domus as well as by a wider world.

The stolen image

The theoretical assumption that every single work of art is based on a preceding work is the theme of the exhibition organised by Thomas Demand at the Fondazione Prada di Milano. The German artist, once again assuming the role of curator, explains to our readers the story and the reasons behind this exhibition.

The beginning of design

The Chinese architect Wang Shu is the first in his huge country to have been awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize. We present his teaching activity, which he has been pursuing alongside his design work since 2001, when he founded an actual School of Architecture in Hangzhou to train students in the technical and practical principles of the profession.

School of Design, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenaghen

The product of a merger between two institutions – the School of Architecture and the School of Design – The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts focuses on local traditions, but with an eye on the international professional market. The teaching programme, which is based on a collective approach, is founded on three pillars: studies in the humanities, theory, and design praxis.

Design meets materials

In Treviso, a one-year project offered over 100 IUAV students and recent graduates direct experience with the industrial production of furniture. Denise Archiutti gives an overview of this fruitful experiment that used listening and explaining to create a virtuous model for the exchange of knowledge.

Around the table

In its first collaboration with Emeco, the Industrial Facility studio has introduced new designs and materials into the American firm’s catalogue. An aluminium bench was been used as the basis for an entire collection of furniture and accessories inspired by the informal atmosphere of sharing that is created around furniture in public spaces.

From chair to chair: Remo

Presented at the 2015 Milan Salone in the original wooden model, Remo now comes in a version with a plastic shell. This is the fifth chair designed by Konstantin Grcic in a period of over ten years for the South Tyrol furniture maker Plank: the five chairs though are profoundly different objects. The conversation here provided an opportunity to ask the designer what prompted his latest product and his other chairs, a furniture type of particular importance to him.

Brazilian design: a native flavour

A search for refinement by the gallery owner Nina Yashar brought her to unearth Brazilian design dating from 1945 to 1970. An exhibition with a sumptuous catalogue sheds light on the work of five exceptional craftsmen from that period, whose work was penalised by the weight of a business culture that did not adjust to growth in the design sector.

Urban waking dreams

The Bouroullec brothers return to Rennes and “their” Brittany to create the most complete review of their work to date. On the eve of the opening, Ronan Bouroullec told us about their vision of design, which, for the first time, unexpectedly embraces the urban environment.

Gabriele Basilico: landscape in movement

A fine catalogue accompanies the Gabriele Basilico exhibition at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio. Here, in a sneak preview, landscape architect João Nunes looks back at the photographic oeuvre of the Milanese photographer, with a special focus on his idea of landscape associated with the constant mutability of the elements sustaining it and the ephemeral and ever changing signs that constitute it.

The invention of territory

Vittorio Gregotti, the current focus of an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou which recently acquired a number of documents from his archive, invites us to reflect on the need for architectural design to return to an awareness of the culture of places and to a relationship with its own history in order to construct a reasonable future.

Design as a mix of culture and industry

On the occasion of the 55th Milan Furniture Fair, the president of both Federlegno Arredo (since 2011) and the Furniture Fair (since 2015) tells Domus about the strategy he adopted to overcome the crisis. By internationalising the Italian market from Moscow to Shanghai and from Tehran to Miami, he aims to export the Italian design industry as well as Italian culture, all the while giving support to entrepreneurs and creating training opportunities for young people.

The Nadir Afonso Foundation in Chaves, Portugal

A new museum by the Portuguese master Siza lies on the edges of a riverbank. It shows his skilful ability to take control of a spot and create a great concatenation of space. The light and the views onto the surrounding landscape became the tools he wielded in forming the plans and facades of the building.

The Supreme Court of The Netherlands, The Hague

The complex interconnected workings of the Supreme Court designed by the Dutch architects are dissimulated in a building that, with few details and a measured but monumental scale, fits elegantly into the urban fabric of The Hague’s historic centre to reflect the civilised and symbolic meaning of justice.

The Dalton House, Kenya

In a very natural African context, Alberto Morell has inserted a strongly geometrical construction that relates solely to the Indian Ocean before it and the sky, thanks to a large staircase, the fulcrum of the whole design and generator of an admirable and powerful spatial order.

Vacation house for an artist, Parre

The house designed by Pino Pizzigoni in 1964 for the artist Claudio Nani represents the fine result of the extraordinary study of spatial quality conducted by this architect from Bergamo throughout his career, by which he skilfully and sensibly marries formal compositional elements with an in-depth knowledge of technique and construction.

Furniture by Pino Pizzigoni

The design of furniture or fittings for a room was
for Pizzigoni an opportunity to make innovative
and groundbreaking proposals in the context of
spaces that were then still characterised by an
inflexible layout of rooms.

Design icons in movies

The opening of the 55th Milan Furniture Fair, the Salone, is an opportunity to revisit the art from which design icons originate, seen through the eyes
of the cinema. The objects of design have been chosen for their capacity to create and to configure exemplary domestic spaces.

Objects versus icons or when does an object become an icon?

In search of a global project

In the English countryside outside Sheffield, the collective Universal Everything operates under the guidance of its founder and creative director Matt Pyke. This versatile graphic designer tells us about his way of combining digital art, graphics and architecture, and how communication and imagery bind with architectural surfaces to create engrossing atmospheres that are sometimes interactive.

Feedback: Alessandro Mendini’s Milan

Elzeviro: The multiple image

The manipulation of digital images now offers a field for infinite alterations. Simultaneously it distances the spectator dangerously from the original work.
The (imagined) fiction of the work imperceptibly takes the place of our direct experience of the original.