Lifestyle Guide to the Italian Culture
Lifestyle Guide to the Italian Culture
Christo & Jean Claude's latest project for Lake Iseo will make you walk on water
Lifestyle Guide to the Italian Culture
the world e can change Ride the bik
•6
TABLE OF CONTENTS
19 37 55
WHO
WHERE
WHAT
DESIGN
The poetry of things
STREET ART
When graffiti becomes art
ARCHITECTURE
Goodbye Dame of Architecture
TRAVEL
Wine Route
POSTCARD
The city of love
ART
Walking on water
LIFESTYLE
Ride with style
RECIPE
Cacio & Pepe
CULT OBJECT
Lambretta 9•
E D I T O R / E X E C U T I V E E D I T O R /
Roy Rogers
M A N A G I N G E D I T O R /
Victor Morgan
S E N I O R E D I T O R /
Claire Connor
A S S O C I A T E E D I T O R /
Adam Waters
CO P Y E D I T O R /
Claude Farrell
S E N I O R W R I T E R / D E S I G N D I R E C T O R /
www.it-mag.com hello@it-mag.com facebook/itmag twitter/itmag instagram/it.it Available on
D E S I G N E R / C R E AT I V E D I R E C T O R /
Micheal Vallone Jhonny Smith Karl Boil Elizabeth Ginger
A S S O C I AT E D E S I G N E R /
Beatrix Melon
D E S I G N C O N S U LTA N T /
Anna Morgan
P U B L I S H E R / A S S O C I AT E P U B L I S H E R / P U B L I S H I N G CO N S U LTA N T / P R O D U C T I O N A S S I S TA N T / P H O T O G R A P H Y D I R E C T O R / P H O T O E D I T O R /
• 10
Edward Kind
Josephine Eyes Sarah Purple Martin Fly Francis Sweet Blair Pierce Abigail Hawk
E D I T O R Edward Kind E X E C U T I V E E D I T O R Roy Rogers M A N AG I N G E D I T O R Victor Morgan S E N I O R E D I TO R Claire Connor A S S O C I AT E E D I T O R Adam Waters CO P Y E D I T O R Claude Farrell S E N I O R W R I T E R Micheal Vallone D E S I G N D I R E C TO R Jhonny Smith D E S I G N E R Karl Boil C R E A T I V E D I R E C T O R Elizabeth Ginger A S S O C I AT E D E S I G N E R Beatrix Melon D E S I G N C O N S U LTA N T Anna Morgan P U B L I S H E R Josephine Eyes A S S O C I AT E P U B L I S H E R Sarah Purple P U B L I S H I N G CO N S U LTA N T Martin Fly P R O D U C T I O N A S S I S TA N T Francis Sweet P H O T O G R A P H Y D I R E C T O R Blair Pierce P H O T O E D I T O R Abigail Hawk
EDITOR’S LETTER
Welcome!
magazine started out at the beginning of the year after a real need of the guide for foreigneres living in Italy. We couldn’t be more excited to have made it to this point. From its very first day, the goal of our magazine has been to provide comprehensive journalistic coverage of the most intresting facts of the Italian Culture. The majority of our staff are trained journalists and photographers, and the rest of the team consists of designers, illustrators and blogger. But no matter their professional background – they are all here to make the experience of reading IT memorable for you, so let’s have fun!
Edward Kind
13 •
PHOTO CREDIT : GIANNI BERENGO GARDIN
Edward Kind Editor-In-Chief
CONTRIBUTORS Francis Smith /photographer follow me on instagram @fsmith Francis Smith’s photographs are purely architectural and almost always contain white frames. He’s awesome at noticing humorous things that are slightly off in otherwise normal situations.
ILLUSTRATION BY Rafael Mayani
Niel Thomas /architect follow me @archthom
Sara Phillips /architect follow me @philly Sara & Niel are two american architects who work in Rome since 3 years. With a multi-disciplinary approach to complex design issues, Pier 5 has extensive experience in public space planning.
Donna Grand /fashion designer follow me @donna.g One of the most wellknown and outspoken fashion designers in the world, Donna Grand launched her career after graduated at Parsons. Now she lives in Milan owning her company.
Claire Martin /blogger follow me @c_martin A French native, Claire shares her quick and easy Italian recipes on her food and photography blog JustOneCookbook.com. Her authentic recipes will make you feel comfortable cooking at home.
Join us!
Would you like to expound upon that love and contribute to our magazine? Contact us at hello@ITmagazine.it !
15 •
WHO = chi /ki/
21 24
18
STREET ART
When Graffiti becomes Art Agostino Iacurci
ARCHITECTURE
Goodbye Dame of Architecture Zaha Hadid
cover story
DESIGN
The poetry of things Ettore Sottsass
Go online & check all the stories it.com/people
WHO / DESIGN
TO READ
The
poetry of things Ettore Sottsass:
eclectic architect & designer who became one of the most celebrated figures of Italian design
new!
Ettore. Mr. Sottsass Jr. il mistero degli oggetti, graphic novel by Massimo Giacon
by Sara Jam
H
is designs are smart, elegant, always surprising and idiosyncratic, all hallmarks of true Italian design. Although born in Austria, Italy became the adopted home for Sottsass and his father, a well-respected architect of the rationalist movement (Sottsass always referred to himself as Ettore Sottsass, Jr., in deference to his father). After his study architecture school in Milan, Sottsass worked at the office of George Nelson in New York before returning to Italy as a design consultant to the Olivetti company. This appointment produced numerous oncepts for adding machines, computers, and furniture, culminating with the Valentine
Olivetti typewriter (1969) that he designed with Perry King. A cherry-red portable plastic typewriter, it broke away from the office equipment stable. Meant for use in any place but the office, the Valentine supremely embodied Sottsass’ constant challenge to the predictable everyday object. As Sottsass moved away from the pure functionalism of his school days, he began to experiment with designs that had explicit social and historical dimensions.
S
ottsass became leader the Anti-Design movement, which opposed the “correct” and “good taste” of functionalism. In 1981, Sottsass led a group
VALENTINE TYPEWRITER, 1969 One of the most famous examples of 1960s Italian design and a quintessential favourite in MoMA’s Architecture and Design gallery “Valentine” is a love letter to playful design.
Scritto di notte, by Ettore Sottsass, Adelphi
Foto dal finestrino, by Ettore Sottsass, Adelphi
Sottsass 700 Draws, by Hans Hollein, Skira
Sottsass, by Thome Philippe, Phaidon • 18
of designers who were interested in an alternative to the coolly functional designs of the period, exemplified by the matte black electronic box. Memphis, as the group called themselves, exploded riotously with colors and materials the design world had not seen before. Under the aegis of Sottsass, a design movement was born. Memphis’ colorful, multifunctional and ambiguous pieces were designed by a stable of talented designers that included Michele De Lucchi, Andrea Branzi, Michael Graves, and Sottsass himself. These designers broke with unventional forms and poked fun at the seriousness of functional objects. Neon, exotic veneers and wildly text here patterned plastic laminates became our signatu-
WHO / DESIGN
res of the group. Even after the Memphis movement had crested, Sottsass continued to produce provocative work and question the rigid parameters of the functionalist movement.
Whilst the Memphis movement in the 1980s attracted attention world wide for its energy and flamboyance, Ettore Sottsass began assembling a major design consultancy which he named Sottsass Associati. The studio was established in 1980 and gave the possibility to onstantly challenging the status quo with build architecture on a substantial scale as well new forms, he reaffirmed the need for design as to design for large international industries. itself. Sottsass Associati, primarily an architectural Revered internationally as a key figure of late practice, also designed elaborate stores and 20th century design, Ettore Sottsass is cited as showrooms for Esprit, identities for Alessi, a role model by young foreign designers, such exhibitions, interiors, consumer electronics in as Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, for the breadth Japan and furniture of all kinds. The studio as well as the quality of his work. Soutstanding was based on the cultural guidance of Ettore contribution to the field of design. In the 2000s Sottsass and the work conducted by its many his work was the focus of a number of exhibiyoung associates, who often left to open their tions and retrospectives. own studios. Sottsass Associati is now based in London and Milan and continue to sustain the work, I make no special philosophy and culture of the difference between architecture and design, studio. they are two different Sottsass had a vast body of stages of invention. work; furniture, jewellery, ceramics, glass, silver work, Ettore Sottsass, 1975 lighting, office machine design and buildings which inspired generations of architects and designers. In 2006 the main place of America ALos Angeles County Museum of Art held the first major museum survey exhibition of his work in the United States.
C
“
Go online and check all the latest exhibition
DESIGN Exhibition of the month
Through April 26, Kartell goes Sottsass. A tribute to Memphis Kartell flagship store Paris www.kartell.com/exb
April 12-17, Salone del Mobile/ Furnishing Exhibition, Different location Milan www.salonedelmobile.com
“
Through September 4, Superstudio 50, MAXXI Rome www.fondazionemaxxi.it
CARLTON BOOKSHELF, 1981 Carlton room divider, designed in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass, in wood and plastic laminate. The vivid colors and seemingly random interplay of solids and voids suggest avantgarde painting and sculpture. Unlimited edition with a numbered metal label.
Through September 4, W. Women in Design, Triennale di Milano, Milano www.triennale.org
19 •
WHO / STREET ART
Above: Skyscraper mural for the Fubon Art Foundation in Taipei. Below: Solo exhibition at Die Kunstabentin in Germany.
When Graffiti becomes Art
Agostino Iacurci’s public artwork all over the world. by George Smith
S
treet art is an essential part of the city DNA and a powerful output of the urban creative culture. Particularly popular to tourists and locals alike are giant murals embellishing the old firewalls. Some of these murals even get certain fame and have the potential to become even a steady landmark of the city. But street art in opposition to public art (art created and funded by an institution or the government) is not supposed to become a landmark or to be perceived as steady. No wonder that the famous artist Blu decided to paint over his magnificent work leaving nothing else than a black shadow behind. Even if some street art might disappear over time there is still place and space for new art. Iacurci paints figures enlarged to an enormous scale to create his outdoor murals. His storybook characters adapt to the contours of a building’s surface whether it’s an apartment building or prison yard. One of the most important influences on the young artist was the work of Italian painter Bruno Munari who also worked with a style that emphasised geometric shapes and bold colour. Iacurci says that another of his main influences is Otto Dix and that he aims to a create a certain serenity and a sense of the future with is massive figures. Iacurci’s work in Rome can be seen in the international context of his projects that now stretch from Moscow to Paris. And his paintings, drawings and etchings have been presented at exhibitions and festivals in Europe and Asia. The proliferation of public art in central London comes at a time when the city has attracted a concentration of international wealth, bloating property prices and making it the undisputed capital of Europe’s art market, if not creativity. 21 •
WHO / STREET ART
Latest mural work for St+Art India Festival in New Delhi
Painting outdoors “ is an amazing experience.
It’s very interesting and funny to collect different feedbacks about your work in real time
“
This kind of creative dialogue between Berlin and other places in the world is a beautiful way of creating a positive exchange especially now where Berlin is becoming more and more international. Sentiments two occasional affronting solicitude travels. Took sold add play may none him few. If as increasing contrasted entreaties day looked our behind moment coming. Artists represented by their work can become positive ambassadors of their countries and people think that way more countries and region in the world should try this approach instead of the classical boring tourist advertising. The artwork of Agostino Iacurci is a personal invitation to the people of Berlin to explore his homeland. At first glance, his street art appears as though it was painted for a children’s playground: flat colors and shapes, precise lines and outlines, like cartoons, characters that indulge in some peculiar situations, yet those eventually come to be everyday events and feelings.
Mural for LGZ Festival in Moscow All the pictures are courtesy of the artist
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE check more artist on it.com/art
• 22
MILLO Millo paints largescale murals that feature friendly inhabitants exploring their urban setting.
BLU Blu lives in Bologna and has been active in street art since 1999. He is best know for his work in Berlin.
Visionary British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize renowned for her swooping, strongly sculpted buildings and well known in Italy to be the designer of Museum MAXXI in Rome, has died at 65. by Blair Kamin
• 24
25 •
WHO / ARCHITECTURE
Zaha Hadid’s Best building
Olympic Aquatics Centre, London, UK, 2011
n 1978, in the inaugural issue of the short-lived art magazine Viz, an image of Zaha Hadid appeared alongside fellow members of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, the two architect-artist couples Rem Koolhaas and Madelon Vriesendorp, and Elia and Zoe Zenghelis. This “influential and controversial” group, reported the writer, “develop mutant forms of urbanism … which accept the megalopolitan condition with enthusiasm.” “I would hate,” he concluded, “to live with their buildings. I would run screaming from among their barrack-like walls and their prison-like cages: I would look anxiously upwards to see whether their absurd sculpted heads are going to shout slogans at me.
person and her work, one feeling that Hadid rarely elicited was indifference. Born on 31 October 1950, she died at the end of March , shockingly and much too soon, aged 65. Had she, however, barely reached half that age, she would still have a place in architectural history. In 1982-3 she produced her competition-winning designs for the Peak, a leisure club in Hong Kong, with a project of breathtaking confidence, daring and individuality. It was a series of angular planes, without visible means of support, which translated the geology of the mountain on which they were sited into seemingly airborne geometry. They were represented with drawings and paintings which were themselves mesmerising, and made the congested city,
So, if the office does start to build, I hope – despite my prejudices – that the viciousness is retained, the spirit is retained, the spirit is turned into awesome, upsetting flesh.” Almost 40 years later the same author, architect and architectural teacher Peter Cook, wrote the citation for Hadid’s royal gold medal for architecture. Its admiration is much less qualified: “surely her work is special. For three decades now, she has ventured where few would dare: if Paul Klee took a line for a walk, then Zaha took the surfaces that were driven by that line out for a virtual dance and then deftly folded them over and then took them out for a journey into space … those of us lucky enough to see the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku in the flesh can surely never have been in such a dream-like space, with its totality, its enormous internal ramp and dart-like lights seeming to have come from a vocabulary that lies so far beyond the normal architecture that we assess or rationalise.” In the first case, to be sure, Cook is describing the style of the whole group, of which Hadid was a junior and lightly attached member, but the two statements together nonetheless exemplify her ability to divide opinions, even within a single person, while never failing to provoke or fascinate. For, in her
the landscape and her proposal into a single dynamic, semi-abstract composition. The young architect (not indeed quite an architect, as she hadn’t completed her professional qualifications) had created an extraordinary consistency and originality of intent, design and representation. It had a clear and acknowledged debt to the paintings and architecture of Russian constructivism but was also very much her own, and it opened up the formal repertoire of building in ways many other architects have been exploiting ever since. Even those who criticise her might sometimes wield an angled or hovering plane that wouldn’t be there if it were not for Hadid. he Peak came at a nervous time for architecture, when the profession was on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown, self-flagellating for the perceived and actual failings of the modern movement. In Britain Prince Charles was about to emerge as the influential spokesman for a new conservatism. At the Architectural Association (AA) in London, where Hadid studied and then taught, it had been fashionable to abandon building in favour of farming in Wales. The Peak was magnificently oblivious of such
Evelyn Grace Academy, London, UK, 2011
Issam Fares Institute, Beirut, Lebanon, 2012
Museum of Transport, Glasgow, UK, 2012
Issam Fares Institute, Beirut, Lebanon, 2014 • 26
WHO / ARCHITECTURE
uncertainty, asserting instead the liberating power of inventing new forms and spaces. It also expressed a love of city life, of its density, dynamism and congestion, that reversed the tendencies of earlier modernists. Le Corbusier, for example, had wanted to replace teeming streets with expanses of verdure. The Peak proposed a new kind of space for a new kind of world – international but still diversified, in which old hierarchies of west and east vanish – that Hadid herself inhabited. Her own education was a bizarre combination of a Catholic school in Baghdad, a boarding school in Switzerland, Berkhamsted school for girls, the American University in Beirut, and the AA. aha’s work reached places previously untouched by famous architecture. She based her career in London but was often frustrated by it. She loved Miami, the city where she died, for its hedonism and modernity. The Peak project was cancelled, and for the next two decades she became known as the famous architect who never got anything built. This wasn’t quite accurate: she realised a fire station for the factory of the German furniture company Vitra, a block of flats in Berlin and
some smaller works, a portfolio with which other young-ish practices might be satisfied, but the finished output didn’t match her ambition and reputation. She notoriously failed to realise her designs for the Cardiff Bay opera house, despite twice winning competitions to do so. Some civic leaders in the city simply didn’t want her work – something they might now regret: they could have had the first major work by a world-famous architect; they could have outdone Bilbao, with its Guggenheim, in the game of building city-changing icons, but they didn’t. Her fortunes changed in the first decade of this century, as the idea of “iconic” buildings, designed by “starchitects” took hold. Hadid, as remarkable in her person and her personality as in her designs, was perfect for the role. Her office, in an old schoolhouse in Clerkenwell, London, expanded into a warren of adjoining and connected spaces, the number of her employees. Painting and drawing, especially in her early period, are important techniques of investigation for her design work. Her architecture has been shown in exhibitions worldwide and many of her works are held in important museum collections.
Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2014
d’Leedon, Singapore, 2014
Born in Baghdad Iraq in 1950, Zaha Hadid commenced her college in Beirut, in the field of mathematics. She moved to London in 1972 where after graduation she joined the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. She began her own practice in London in 1980 and won the prestigious competition for the Hong Kong Peak Club in 1983. 27 •
WHO / ARCHITECTURE
Z
he completion of MAXXI ten years after the design competition is a moving event: the transformation of a radical concept into a project, of the project into a building, and finally the transformation of the building into a living institution.
the building as architectural manifesto. Radical architectural innovation can exist here due to the openness of the very institution of art within contemporary society. The purpose of all architecture is the framing and staging of social communication and interaction. The purpose of all art is to experiment with new forms of social communication that project an alternative view of the world.
Z For us MAXXI started ten years ago as a theoretical project, as one more competition entry in a series of such entries understood as radical experiments in design research. After its completion MAXXI remains a theoretical project in the sense of projecting an architectural manifesto demonstrating the capacity of a new architectural style: parametricism. What characterizes the new style are new concepts and new values, both in terms of an expanded formal repertoire and in terms of a new understanding of function or performance. Parametricism pursues the very general aim to organize and articulate the increasing complexity of the social institutions and life processes of post-fordist network society. For this task parametricism aims to intensify the internal differentiation and cohesionwithin an architectural design as well as the design’s external continuities within given urban contexts. Parametricism offers a new, complex order via the principles of differentiation and correlation that is clearly distinct from the principles of separation and repetition that characterized modernism. Prominent cultural buildings, especially contemporary art centres, are the perfect vehicles for stating general architectural positions. It is here that avant-garde architecture finds the occasion to be critically recognized as worthy dimension of socio-cultural development. The particular institution of the contemporary art museum is able to give discursive space to • 28
rt today is an open-ended platform to reflect new social phenomena and ideas. It is all about the playful invention and dissemination of radically new perspectives on life. Contemporary art centres thus offer a frame or clearing for the unknown and untested to burst forward. A pertinent brief for an art centre is thus rather abstract, openended, and essentially paradoxical: calling for an anti-institutional institution. It is a vacant field defined only negatively as the refusal to perpetuate the status quo and as a demonstration that things might be otherwise. There can be no strict typology as there is no positively specified content. “Art” is subject to the open-ended series of re-interpretations of the very concept of art by each new generation of artists. The only certain constitutive characteristic is that it is public, i.e. that it initiates public events and constructs a public space of engagement. It is here that society can experience itself as self-made and self-making. In this sense art and the art museum have replaced religion and the church as space of society’s self-encounter. The creative has replaced the sacred. In principle any political, social, economic, moral, cultural or technological question can be brought forward for public exposition, reflection as well as critical and creative exploration within the domain of contemporary art. Nothing is off-limits. Art is also the domain where new technologies and media of communication are first explored. It is the zone of incubation for all ideas - including architectural ideas - that need space to develop before facing the performance pressures of the real world. The architectural frame - the museum - should thus be a catalyst and incubator with respect to experimental modes of public exhibition, collective communication, and social gathering.
WHO / ARCHITECTURE
All disciplines, discourses and practices use the art system as their brainstorming platform. Avant-garde museums that dare to enlist avant-garde architecture to re-define the frame within which they invite curators and artists to construct these platforms are thus venturing into a second order brainstorming: brainstorming about brainstorming. To the extent to which innovation and thus extended brainstorming becomes the order of the day in many or most arenas of social life the design of a contemporary art centre might entail, reveal, and accentuate features that might be of general relevance to way architecture should frame the contemporary spaces of social communication in general. This is the premise according to which MAXXI can offer a pertinent manifesto statement for the architecture of the 21st century. The features that are worthy of generalisation are those that increase architecture’s capacity to construct spaces that achieve higher densities of communication and event participation through strategies of continuous differentiation, deep layering, and simultaneity.
In the photos of this page the images taken by Iwan Baan during the preview opening day of the museum, have a direct impression of the building, before the installation of the art collection, in April 2010.
he design took its initial point of departure from the geometry of the immediate urban context. Two urban grid-directions meet at the site. The two directions are drawn into the project-site. The resultant angle-divergence of 51 degree is mediated by means of curves. The second, decisive design concept was the imposition of a strong, rigorous formalism: the formalism of striation involving parallel lines that bend, branch, bundle or intersect. These lines were later interpreted as walls, beams, and ribs, as well as staircases and lighting strips. The formalism gained particular functional significance by taking the essential functional substance of the museum - the wall, everywhere understood as potential exhibition/ display surface – as the fundamental spacemaking substance of the project. The design is thus constituted via the “irrigation” of the site with exhibition walls. The walls run mostly parallel. 29 •
• 30
31 •
WHO / ARCHITECTURE
• 32
WHO / ARCHITECTURE
In the photos of this page the images taken during different exhibitions. From the top left: Istanbul, Passion Joy Fury Hou Hanru, 2016 Hubble Bubble Choi Jeong-Hwa, 2015 Whatami garden, stARTT, 2011 Yoga Day 2015 Golden Lotus Choi Jeong-Hwa, 2016 Bâton Serpent Huang Yong Ping, 2014 Fotografie Olivo Barbieri, 2015 Up Chair Gaetano Pesce, 2014 Zaha Hadid Opening, 2010
The curves that mediate the change of urban direction are taken as opportunities to change the spacing between walls, or as opportunities to intersect walls, while maintaining the condition of parallel flow, as well as tangential branching and confluence. The play of parallel walls, augmented by branching and intersecting wall trajectories, produces both interior and exterior spaces. The walls are not always grounded, but the play of walls operates on three primary levels. This implies that some of the walls operate as long spanning beams, or as farreaching cantilevers. ne set of walls takes a sloping trajectory that leads to a terracing gallery on the inside. The walls allow for broad openings so that long, deep beams result. Between the walls arrays of ribs participate in the overall laminar flow of lines and thus further accentuate the directionality of the gallery spaces. These ribs structure the glass roofs that filter natural light into all gallery spaces. A continuum of correlated architectural elements is established: walls, beams, and ribs. Everything joins the formalism of linear, streaming elements. This also involves the ramps and staircases and thus ultimately the circulatory flow of the audience. The flow, bifurcation and confluence of architectural elements affiliates to the multiple trajectories of the urban context and embraces the existing buildings on the site that are incorporated into the new institution. The project’s unity and coherence is thus constituted internally as field rather than externally as object. The building turns the corner and partly embeds itself into the context. It has no overall shape that can be visually grasped in a single glance. Instead it opens a characteristic “world” to dive into (rather than a building that confronts you as signature object). The new urban campus is organised and navigated on the basis of directionality and the distribution of densities rather than through boundaries or key points. This is indicative of the character of the MAXXI as a whole: a porous, immersive field condition. The field is a force-field of lines. These lines cannot be individuated (and individually arranged) like elements in a modern composition. Within a field the single element is never of concern. What matters are field-qualities that emerge from the interplay of a multitude of elements. 33 •
WHERE
Go online & check all the stories it.com/place
= dove /dรณ โ ข ve/
39
POSTCARD Venice The city of love
37 42
TRAVEL Wine Route
tory
ART
cover s
Walking on Water Lake Iseo
WHERE / POSTCARD
Postcards from
the city of love
Venice: the art of getting lost in the labyrinth of narrow streets and bridges text by Matt Douglas pic by Sarah Bell
“Venice counts
420 bridges and more than 150 canals. There are just over 400 officially licensed gondoliers who own their own boats and can work in tourism.
G
etting lost is a given. The crowds can be beastly. And yes, the whole place is sinking — literally under rising sea levels, and figuratively beneath the weight of day-tripping tourists. But these obstacles have not hindered this beguiling city from establishing itself over the past decade as the preeminent place in Italy for contemporary art. More recently, a wave of high-end hotels has opened along the Grand Canal, and back alleys have been set abuzz with new nightspots and a revived restaurant scene. So leave the famous sights to the crowds and instead drink up the less overt charms of this watery wonderland.
37 •
“
WHERE / POSTCARD
On previous page: Typical view of venetian houses On this page: Gondolas on Venice’s canal and on Grand Canal
Send us your picture to be published on the next issuu
• 38
39 •
• 40
From June 18 to July 3, 2016, Christo will reimagine Italy’s Lake Iseo. The Floating Piers will consist of 70,000 square meters of shimmering orange fabric floating on the surface of the water.
by Carol Vogel 41 •
WHERE / LAND ART
Jean-Claude & Christo’s Artworks The wrapping of the Reichstag was completed in 1995. For two weeks, the building was shrouded with silvery fabric, shaped by the blue ropes, highlighting the features and proportions of the structure. • 42
Valley Curtain was installed between two Colorado mountain slopes in 1972. The orange curtain was made of woven nylon fabric. 28 hours after completion, a gale made it necessary to start the removal.
WHERE / LAND ART
I
t’s been a decade since those 16 days in February 2005 when the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed 7,500 gates along Central Park’s walkways, each adorned with shimmering saffron-colored panels creating what Christo described as “a golden river appearing and disappearing through the branches of the trees.” It was a spectacle like no other in the park’s long history. The $20 million project, financed by the sale of Christo’s artworks, pumped nearly $250 million into the city’s economy and attracted four million visitors. “It put New York City in the international headlines for something hopeful for the first time since 9/11,” recalled Patricia E. Harris, the former deputy mayor and, for decades, a leading supporter of the project with her boss, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “It reminded the world that our city’s artistic spirit was alive and well.” And also showed the world that art has the power to change the landscape. Whether they were
wrapping the Reichstag in a million square feet of fabric, or raising a 365-foot-high curtain across a valley in Colorado, Christo and Jeanne-Claude produced visual feats that resonated with the public in a way few artists ever have. “People become part of the dialogue,” said Germano Celant, the Italian curator. “These projects are a kind of dream, one that everybody can understand and everybody can participate in.” But since Jeanne-Claude’s death in 2009, from complications of a brain aneurysm, some wondered if the dream had died too. It seemed to many that Christo had disappeared from public view. The couple had been inseparable for 47 years, collaborators for most of that time. She was the more vocal and visible, with her flaming red hair, a shade she enjoyed telling people was specially chosen by her husband. They even shared the same birthday, June 13, 1935, and a penchant for using only a first name. Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon. In fact, Christo has been quietly
busy, juggling several projects at once. And now, he is poised for a comeback on his own. His first commercial art exhibition in nearly 50 years opens on Nov. 6, at the Craig Starr Gallery in Manhattan, with examples of some of his earliest works, his Show Windows and Store Fronts, architectural installations he started making in the early 1960s, shortly after he and Jeanne-Claude arrived in New York from Paris. But it is “The Floating Piers,” his first fantastical outdoor installation since “The Gates” and the first project conceived since Jeanne-Claude’s death that consumes his every waking hour. For 16 days starting June 18, on Italy’s tiny Lake Iseo, the public will be able to walk for nearly two miles on water, atop 200,000 floatable cubes covered in glittering, dahliayellow fabric fashioned from tightly woven nylon. “They will feel the movement of the water under foot,” Christo said. “It will be very sexy, a bit like walking on a water bed.” A wiry figure with tufts of snowwhite hair, Christo speaks quickly, with a thick Bulgarian
The projects are These a kind of dream, one t hat everybody can understand and partecipate in The project originated in the 1960s, when the artists first proposed to wrap 178 live trees with woven polyester fabric. The Wrapped Trees in Riehen, Switzerland were the outcome of 32 years of effort.
In 1983, eleven of the islands situated in Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, were surrounded with 6.5 million square feet of floating pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water.
The 7,503 gates in New York’s Central Park with their free-hanging saffron colored fabric panels seemed like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees. 43 •
WHERE / LAND ART
accent, in a high-octane, animated fashion. He often gets so wound up that he is actually unable to sit still. “I love to work; I love to walk. Basically I like to move around and do physical things,” he said recently, wearing baggy bluejeans and a light blue shirt, pacing up and down the second floor of his SoHo home and studio in a 200-yearold building he and JeanneClaude bought in 1973. This is where collectors come to buy his artwork — impeccably rendered collages of his projects, with the proceeds channeled back into his public projects. Right now the walls • 44
are filled with “Floating Piers” drawings alongside some of his wrapped objects, including an old-fashioned wall telephone clad in canvas and plastic tied together with bits of old string. “I don’t like anything about computers,” Christo continued. “Young people today on their flat screens, it’s all virtual; nothing is real. All our projects involve real things — real wind, real sun, real wet, real danger, real drama. And this is very invigorating for me.” But another very real constant throughout his career is the often excruciating process of waiting — sometimes decades — for a project to
come to fruition. Works are sometimes held up because of politics — securing the necessary government clearances and permits or wading through opposition from local dissenters. Other times, delays are caused by the sheer complexity of the undertaking. Christo and Jeanne-Claude waited 32 years to shroud 161 trees in black and white polyester mesh in a park in Basel, Switzerland; nearly 25 years to get the green light to install “The Gates” in Central Park; 24 years for the German government to give the approval to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin in aluminum-colored
fabric; 10 years for French authorities to approve their vision for shrouding the Pont Neuf in Paris with 454,178 square feet of champagnecolored textile; seven years before they were able to plant a forest of umbrellas in the rice paddies near Tokyo and along the hillsides of Southern California. “I turned 80 in June,” Christo declared one afternoon during an interview at his house. He recalled a car ride he took last year from Stuttgart, Germany, to his warehouse in Basel, Switzerland, with his nephew Vladimir Yavachev, and Wolfgang Volz, his
WHERE / LAND ART For exclusive live updates from the grounds check in on Instagram daily @floatingpiers
photographer and the project manager of “The Floating Piers.” “I cannot wait so long anymore,” he told them. “I am not sure I will live another 10 years. I think we should do something not so complicated. Something we can manage. Something we can actually get done.”
In the photos of these pages the images taken during the work in progress on Lake Iseo. More then 500 people were involved during the process.
Jeanne-Claude had taken care of the practical side of their projects — the organization and financial details — leaving Christo to throw himself into the creative end. “I have always worked alone,” he explained about his art. He has kept his studio a family affair, relying on Jeanne-Claude’s two young assistants: Mr. Yavachev, now operations manager of “Piers,” and Jonathan Henery, JeanneClaude’s nephew, who runs Christo’s office. “I’m always missing JeanneClaude,” Christo said a bit wistfully. A brilliant problemsolver, “her ferociously critical mind” has left a huge void, he said. Christo is carrying on the couple’s two remaining projects, both challenging. One, intended for an oasis about 100 miles west of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, was conceived in 1977 and is an immense trapezoidal benchlike structure called “The Mastaba.” It would be the tallest project in his career, reaching nearly 500 feet high, fashioned from 410,000 multicolored barrels. (He is working with the ruling family of Abu Dhabi on the logistics of the project.) “The Mastaba” is to be one of Christo’s few permanent installations and — though it may have been designed years ago — it feels fitting to ask if he isn’t seeing it in different terms now, perhaps as a marker of his life and mortality. Balking at the premise that it is in any way about death, he instead called this monumental work “a very natural, threedimensional shape that is 45 •
WHERE / LAND ART
older even than a pyramid.” The other work in progress is “Over the River,” begun in 1992, a temporary installation that involves suspending 5.9 miles of silvery fabric panels high above the Arkansas River in south-central Colorado. Approved by the federal and state governments, it faces opposition from a local group, which contends that “Over the River” will be destructive to the environment and the wildlife in Bighorn Sheep Canyon. A suit to overturn permits issued for the project is pending in federal appellate court. In contrast, “The Floating Piers,” 60 miles east of Milan, has been a breeze. “Giuseppe Faccanoni, the president of the lake, helped us get the permissions in less than a year,” Christo said. “I wanted to go back to Italy. We have done projects there before. There’s great food, beautiful landscape.” Lake Iseo is perhaps the least known of Italy’s northern lakes, an idyllic spot with two small islands not yet overrun with tourists (unlike Lake Como, known for celebrity residents like George Clooney). To Christo, Lake Iseo also offers a storybook landscape. “It has beautiful small villages and houses and churches and Roman ruins. To go to the mainland, residents go by traghetto,” he said, using the Italian word for a small boat or ferry. “The Floating Piers” will connect the islands to each other and to the mainland. “You will be able to walk the entire area,” Christo explained. The project will also be visible from the surrounding mountains. As the light changes throughout the day, the view of the piers will change, too, from deep yellow to shimmering gold to a reddish hue when wet. About a half-million people are expected to visit “The Floating Piers,” its opening timed to • 46
coincide with the last two days of Art Basel, the contemporary art fair, an easy pilgrimage of roughly 275 miles. The project is estimated to cost about $11 million, money Christo said he has already raised from the sale of his art. (Works for sale in Craig Starr’s show range from $400,000 for a collage to $7 million for one of the 1960s Store Fronts, similar to the ones first shown by Leo Castelli, the legendary dealer.) Mr. Celant, the project director of “The Floating Piers,” helped Christo get the necessary approvals. Scientists, structural engineers and divers, along with teams of construction workers, have been involved in the Piers creation, floating a section with the covered fabric on a lake in Germany last year to see how they would look. In February, Christo tested the structural integrity of the piers for wind and wave heights by placing sections in the Black Sea. Starting in December, divers will place 140 five-ton anchors up to 300 feet deep in Lake Iseo. Right now, about one million square feet of fabric is being specially woven in a factory in Germany. The final installation is expected to take a week and will involve a team of some 600 workers. Again, as he and JeanneClaude did beginning in the 1980s, Christo plans to give each visitor a party favor of sorts, perhaps an actual piece of fabric from the installation. “Normally it’s a postcard you bring home,” Mr. Celant said. “A bit of fabric becomes a part of history.” Given the ephemeral nature of these installations, all that remains is the indelible memory. “It creates an incredible urgency,” Christo said, “because it will never take place again. That’s why it’s so exciting.” Same presentation, but in a high marble hall to a modest
audience of local swells. The prefetto, square-jawed, handsome, humorless in a perfectly tailored blue suit, leads off. Then Christo. “What I make is useless. Absurd,” and so forth, through the years and the projects. He spends a few minutes on two future possibilities. Over the River, and The Mastaba, a massive architectural undertaking, permanent this time, an Old Kingdom tomb hundreds of feet high built of oil drums in the deserts of Abu Dhabi. When Christo speaks at these things, you get the sense—infrequently but powerfully—that he’s waiting for Jeanne-Claude to finish his sentence. After the PowerPoint the power, and a party for the local gentry in the prefetto’s official suite of rooms. Fancy appetizers, tiny and ambitious, to be eaten standing. Franciacorta in flutes. An entire tabletop of fresh panettone. For the next hour Christo stands in place as a stream of local dignitaries present themselves. He shakes hands and leans in to listen to each of them. Antonio floats by with his camera.
That art has t he power to change t he landscape land
WHERE / LAND ART
It w ill be very sexy, a bit like w alking on a w ater bed.
Why Italy? ome projects are conceived for a specific place, such as the “The Gates” in 2005, designed to Central Park. Instead, for other projects we had an idea, but we not the space to put it in. That’s what happened with “Valley Curtain” and “The Umbrellas” and even with “Over the river,” a project that’s still actual, and for “The Floating Piers.” In 1970 we met an Argentine art historian and curator, Jorge Romero Brest, who asked us to
do something in Buenos Aires. Thus was born our proposal to create “The Floating Piers” on the delta of the Rio de la Plata, 200 meters of boardwalk. It never happened because we never got a permit. Twentyfive years later, in 1995, after finishing the job “Wrapped Reichstag,” the idea of ”The Floating Piers” was still running around inside our heads, so we proposed making two floating piers 150 meters long, covered in fabric, which connect to two artificial islands in Tokyo Bay and continue on to Tokyo Bay park. Again, after drawings and sketches, a permit wasn’t
granted. Now let’s return to 2015. I just turned 80. I wanted to do something easy and fast to build. We’d already worked in Italy: in Spoleto in 1968 (The fountain in Market Square and the medieval tower), in Milan in 1970 (the statue of King Vittorio Emanuele II) and in Rome in 1974 (the Aurelian Walls). Returning to Italy after 40 years is wonderful. I’ve been familiar with Lake Iseo since the 1960s, but I suddenly remembered that the lake island Montisola is the highest in Europe and that its population, about 2 thousand inhabitants, has to take the ferry to reach the
lakeshore. The first walkway suspended just above the water on the lake connects Sulzano to Peschiera. The route then continues for a few kilometers on the mainland to Montisola, then from Peschiera Maraglio to Sensole. In two points during this overland walk, two footbridges head into the distance, at first parting ways, then meeting again in the middle of the lake 200 meters from St. Paul island. The footbridge a this point will give definition to the entire perimeter of the small island and then return to east shore of Lake Iseo. 47 •
WHERE / LAND ART
Charming and romantic, Lake Iseo offers to the visitors the calm majesty of its landscape. Green hills, olive groves and overhanging rocks surround the wonderful Monte Isola, one of the “Borghi più belli d’Italia” (Italy’s Finest Villages) and Eden Award 2010. It is also famous for its production of handmade nets and little
known wineries where the highquality Franciacorta (sparkling wine) is produced and jealously kept. Not to be missed are the abbey of San Nicola at Rodengo Saiano, the Convent of Annunciata at Rovato and the Romanesque monastery of San Pietro in Lamosa founded by Cluniac monks at Provaglio
“I “ w anted to go back to Italy. We have done projects t here before. There is great food and beautiful landscape.” wood boats. To enjoy the beautiful panorama from the lake, nothing is better than a boat trip. Small villages follow one another along the coast from Paratico to Pisogne, along the old coastal road. Iseo focuses its dynamic social life around Piazza Garibaldi, the castle and the church of Sant’Andrea. In Pisogne, right in the main square, stands the bishop’s medieval Tower. At the beginning of the road up to Val Palot lies the XV century church of Santa Maria della Neve decorated with splendid frescoes by Romanino. The green of the olive groves of Marone, recognized as città dell’olio (olive oil town), compete with Franciacorta vineyards. A short journey on the hills above Marone takes you to the erosion pyramids (geologic phenomena) at Zone. This is the starting point of several paths leading up to the top of Monte Guglielmo (1949m. slm). South of the lake, beyond the Natural Reserve of Torbiere del Sebino, the gentle land of Franciacorta begins: ancient hamlets, villas, castles, abbeys and monasteries, and, what is more, vineyards and well• 48
d’Iseo. Guided tours are organised to Palazzo Torri at Nigoline – Corte Franca and to the castle at Bornato. The gastronomic tradition is renomated. The Association Strada del Vino Franciacorta (wine route) preserves and promotes the local products. The famous tinca ripiena al forno (oven baked stuffed tench) is the main speciality of Clusane, while the manzo all’olio (beef meat cooked in olive oil) is Rovato’s speciality. Gussago is the capital town of the spiedo (spit composed by meat and game). In trattorias and restaurants one can enjoy the traditional dishes and the Franciacorta as well. At the end of the meal a good local grappa is needed. The upper Lake Iseo area is I need some text to fill this place, I love Italy but is a good place just for holydays, ney york city is my favorite spot on the world found on the northern Bergamo province shore of Lake Iseo, just kilometres away from the cities of Bergamo, Brescia and Milan and from Orio al Serio, and Linate international airports, to which it is linked by an efficient public transport network.
WHERE / LAND ART
Those picture are taken during the installation of the artwork. The floating pier will be ready in june and Christo and JeanneClaude’s goal has always been to create works of art of joy and beauty, without charging any viewing fees. Thus, no tickets will be necessary to see, enter and enjoy The Floating Piers. The project will be completely free of charge. For moro infos www.floatingpiers.com
All workers for all of Christo and JeanneClaude’s projects are paid. Currently, all construction work is being done by paid professionals. For the final stage of the project, many nonskilled workers will be necessary to complete The Floating Piers.
Some projects are conceived for a specific place
49 •
WHERE / LAND ART
Some questions to Christo The Floating Piers will be your first art piece that has been realized since you did The Gates in Central Park, correct? “Each project has its own journey and they take a long time to realize. Over the past 50 years, Jeanne-Claude and I realized 22 projects but we got permission to do 37 projects. Some projects were not realized and we didn’t want to do them because we lost interest. From all the refused projects, some stay in our hearts and our minds and that is the story of the project.” How did The Floating Piers all begin? “In 1970, we were invited us to do a project in Argentina. We were excited to do The Floating Piers and proposed to do it at Rio de la Plata near Buenos Aires, but we never got permission. We did a lot of projects between 1970 and 1995, after that we were excited to do a project where you can walk on water, so we started working again on The Floating Piers.” How did it come together? “We have projects where we start with the site, like the Reichstag project and Central Park for The Gates, but with others, we start with the idea and then find the site. With this project, we were yet to find the right site. Jeanne-Claude said we should do it in Japan; we might have fewer problems to get permission. We had many meetings with engineers but failed to get permission. In 2014, it was a matter of getting permission – quickly. Last year, I turned 80 and thought I’d like to run through this project very fast.” How do you work with other people to realize your projects? All of our pieces are meant to be interacted with. For example, one of the reasons • 50
we chose the Arkansas River for “Over the River” is because it’s very accessible. So, before we even began, we had to go present to the chamber of commerce in the towns of Salida and Cañon City. They gathered citizens, and we presented the project and our past work. Almost all the land along the river for the project is owned by the Bureau of Land Management. We prepared a 2,000-page application and report, which ended up costing over a million dollars. The federal government looks at that study and says, “Okay, now we’re going to hire a group of engineers to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement and you will pay for that study.” So that study ended up costing $2.5 million dollars. Then we were summoned to present in an auditorium in Washington, to give a lecture to 700 employees of the B.L.M., so that their experts could ask questions about the project. Through all of this, we went to countless town hall meetings. People are worried that there will be traffic, which could interfere with ambulances if someone in that area gets sick. So we agreed to pay for two helicopters to be on standby. So, on and on. For the “Over the River” project, I still can’t tell you when it will be installed. But in this way, these projects reveal their identity through this whole process. When I’m starting, I only have the slightest idea of how the work of art will exist. Thousands of people will participate in the work before it exists physically. You don’t have a traditional artist’s studio, so how do you work on these very large-scale projects? The most important part to grasp is that all of these projects are originated by us — I do not do commissions.
Jeanne-Claude always said that these projects exist simply because we want to see them. They’re totally irrational and absolutely unnecessary. They cannot be bought, you can’t charge for tickets. The world can exist without them. And this carries a kind of absolute freedom. Do you have a favorite part of the process? No. Though Jeanne-Claude would always say that “we have to spend time with our babies.” So for the umbrellas project, we spent time with each umbrella in Japan and California, to see it in the morning, in the evening light. I’m not a masochist! I did not choose to have the process be so complicated. And sometimes it’s very nasty. In Colorado, we needed to have the sheriff at the meetings because people would come with guns. For the Reichstag project we had 17 bodyguards and had to wear bulletproof vests. This is a real thing, it’s not theater. But the satisfaction comes from there. It’s very gratifying to know that you’re creating thinking in so many people. [Laughs.] That’s also why it would be useless to wrap another building or do “The Gates” again. After that project, there was a line of cities around the world asking us to go to their park and install gates. It was idiotical. Do you ever have moments where you doubt these projects? Of course! Anything can happen. But that is the exciting part! These projects are something dynamic, they’re not orchestrated. When the project starts, we don’t really know what it is. But all of this is an adventure. I think it would be absolutely boring to work the way many artists do. The art world is boring!
WHERE / LAND ART
Christo was born in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. His father, Vladimir Javacheff, was a businessman and ran a fabric factory, and his mother, Tsveta Dimitrova, was the secretary at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. Professors from the Academy who visited his family observed Christo’s artistic talent while he was still of a very young age. Christo studied art at the Sofia Academy from 1953 to 1956. He earned money by painting portraits, which he likened to prostitution and signed with his family name “Javachef” while his early works were signed “Christo”.
51 •
WHAT
Go online & check all the stories it.com/things
= cosa /cò • sa/
cover story
56
LIFESTYLE Ride with style
67 69
RECIPE
Cacio & Pepe
CULT OBJECT Lambretta
The bicycle offers a non-polluting, non-congesting, physically active form of a transportation in a country, and in a world, that increasingly seems to need such options.
• 54
55 •
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
Architects and designers such as Ron Arad, Richard Sapper, Marc Newson, and James Dyson make out a hero in the recently deceased British engineer and bicycle builder Alex Moulton, who also developed the rubber suspension system used by the legendary original Morris Mini. In the same way that the revolutionary pieces of steel-tube furniture by Bauhaus artists Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer, and Mies van der Rohe were once realized with components made by Italian bicycle manufacturer A. L. Colombo, the use of design principles and individual technical solutions from bicycle technology in a transdisciplinary manner remains a viable option today. No wonder,
then, that enthusiasm for bicycling runs especially high among creative professionals. More than a few of them move about town on custom or vintage models of their own.
• 56
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
The rising cost of liquid fuels and the questionable nature of using cars for local trips are moving more and more city dwellers to switch to more environmentally
conscious modes of transportation.
On the left the Bianchi Pista On the right Bici Single Speed designed by Jonny Mole
57 •
WHAT / LIFESTYLE On this page Cigno Seventi, tribute to the Graziella. On the next page Cinelli Gazzetta
Growing in popularity at a pace not seen since the Second World War, cycling is a passion, and for many a part of their identity – be it as a stylish way to get from A to B or as a fiercely competitive sport.
“Cycle Revolution” looks at cycling subcultures through four “tribes” – the
High Performers who reach Olympic speeds, the Thrill Seekers who take on all terrains, the Urban Riders who pedal our cities mile by mile, and the Cargo Bikers who work on two wheels. The quintessential models favoured by each tribe are displayed, from award winning track bikes, to heavy duty freight haulers, as well outfits and accessories – giving an insight into the motivations, passions and achievements of each tribe. • 58
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
Cycling makes for a better quality of life, asserts the musician, all-round artist, and
bicycle activist David Byrne. In his book Bicycle Diaries, he describes the bicycle as a “machine of perception” that permits sensory experience and a direct relationship with one’s environment and with society. Gaining this extra strength and experiencing less suffering with exertion is all a part of fitness. When you become fit, you can produce sudden bursts of energy — perhaps running for a bus or fleeing from a rhinoceros — without any bad effects. So, the more you ride your bike, the fitter you get and the less likely you are to be caught by mad rhinos.
59 •
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
Ride, work, ride, repeat. It’s a scientifically proven system that unleashes some unexpected benefits of cycling. In a recent study in the Journal
of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, scientists found that people scored higher on tests of memory, reasoning, and planning after 30 minutes of spinning on a stationary bike than they did before they rode. They also completed the tests faster after pedaling.
In this page Passoni Selva XXII In the next page Bianchi C4-Pista
• 60
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
Cycling is not like driving. Riding a bicycle is a happy pursuit. It puts you in a good frame of mind, open to ideas and ready to meet people. When you ride on your own, perhaps humming a happy tune, and you find yourself rolling along next to some other contented pedaller going your way, if you don’t speak first, that other cyclist is bound to speak to you. Everyone needs to have fun, but having fun isn’t just about idle merriment. The more fun you have when you do something, the better you’re likely to do it. If you don’t have fun, you become alienated. If you don’t have fun at work, you won’t do your job as well. Fun is one of the most important aspects of your life. It turns ordinary activities into things you can enjoy. Fun is pleasure with excitement. And one thing anyone who rides a bike will tell you is that cycling is fun. Cyclists
start riding a bike and enjoy it — it amuses somehow and continues to do so always. So enjoy the pleasure of cycling.
61 •
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
“You get the same cardiovascular benefits from cycling that you get from any other form of aerobic exercise—walking, jogging or dancing,” says Lisa Callahan, MD, medical director of the Women’s Sports Medical Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Bike riding lets you add a fitness activity into your day even when you think you don’t have time for a workout. “It can be a very effective cardiovascular benefit.”
Bicycles can go practically anywhere. They aren’t terribly good in deep water, but bikes can take on just about any kind of land. And as you ride along, you see
all the little details that make up a real world. You see how people live and work. You see what plants are growing, and your quiet progress may enable you to slowly creep up on timid animals and shy birds.
• 62
WHAT / LIFESTYLE
In this page Amarcord for woman and man In the next page Rizzato Duemila 63 •
WHAT / RECIPE
Check the video recipe online!
Cacio & Pepe Literally “cheese and pepper”, this minimalist pasta is like a stripped-down mac and cheese. It is among the most basic, simplest pastas there is, and suddenly trendy to boot. Why? Because when made right, it is incredible.
4 servings 20 minutes easy
Ingredients Salt 1 ½ cups finely grated pecorino Romano plus more for dusting completed dish 1 tablespoon ground black pepper plus more for finishing the dish ¾ pound tonnarelli or spaghetti Good olive oil
PREPARTION
1
Put a pot of salted water on to boil. In a large bowl, combine the cheeses and black pepper; mash with just enough cold water to make a thick paste. Spread the paste evenly in the bowl.
2
Once the water is boiling, add the pasta. The second before it is perfectly cooked (taste it frequently once it begins to soften), use tongs to quickly transfer it to the bowl, reserving a cup or so of the cooking water. Stir vigorously to coat the pasta, adding a teaspoon or two of olive oil and a bit of the pasta cooking water to thin the sauce if necessary. The sauce should cling to the pasta and be creamy but not watery.
3
Plate and dust each dish with additional pecorino and pepper. Serve immediately.
enjoy!
65 •
WHAT / CULT OBJECT
Cult Object * Italian Design Excellence monthly choosen by the
team *
FERNANDO INNOCENTI, 1947
LAMBRETTA MOTORCYCLE
The Lambretta is an Italian scooter produced by Innocenti mechanical industry of Milan, in Lambrate district, from 1947 to 1972. The name “Lambretta” comes from the Lambro river, which flows in the area where stood own manufacturing facilities. In 1922 Ferdinando Innocenti of Pescia founded a factory of steel tubes in Rome. In 1931 he moved all its business in Milan , constituting right in the neighborhood Lambrate the largest factory of steel pipes without joints. During World War II, the factory was bombed and completely destroyed. Innocent, waiting to recapture by Allied establishments in Milan, the Capital gave life to the study of the product which would have been the post-war
reconversion of the factory: in fact, taking inspiration from their motorscooter American soldiers arrived in Italy during the war , and understanding the need for new engines useful to the population after the war , he decided to devote himself to the production of the revolutionary scooter. Entrusts the design of the new vehicle to an extraordinary pairing of aeronautical engineers: Pier Luigi Torre, which deals with the mechanics (the same who had created the engine seaplane SavoiaMarchetti S.55A of Italo Balbo flight across the Atlantic) and rebuilds the Milan factories, and Cesare Pallavicino who had been the technical director before the Breda until 1935 and then the
Caproni, who took charge of the chassis and design. In 1947 scooters, Lambretta baptized by the artist Daniele Oppi, is ready and will be launched on the market. The enormous success not only domestic caused the Lambretta in almost 25 years of production, were built under license in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India and Spain. Innocenti produced, on the basis of the mechanics of the scooter, also a number of three wheelers, initially called also Lambretta, were then called Lambro. With the economic boom exploded in western Europe in the late sixties the request of the scooters had a decline, while the car was now accessible to all; Innocenti then had to struggle to survive financially. 67 •
• 68
69 •
BE LOCAL
Do you speak
Italian ?
• 70