D E S I G N
Oriente/Occidente dining table, Glas, 2006
The design research carried out by the architect starts with direct contact with the craftsmanship, with the experience and knowledge of the processes involved in the materials. The craftsmanship is therefore perhaps the meeting point between the sculptural act and its function, where the term sculptural act signifies the abstraction of the imaginative expression that is the purpose of the designer, while function refers to the concrete, practical use of each object positioned in the space. Silvestrin’s design products possess a double value: on the one hand, they constitute the point of arrival of the research conducted within the tracks set out each time by the programme of the producing company, but yet, on the other hand, they represent at the same time exalted, liberated moments of rising to meet new design challenges. This is indeed seen in condensed form in the washbasins and the paving for the bathroom of a private dwelling in Venice in Lecce stone, in the red sandstone lamps for Abitare il Tempo in 2001, in the red sandstone and yellow shrub tables for Abitare il Tempo in 2002, the lines of the later washbasins for Boffi, the kitchen floor for Minotti, the “night” lamps for Viabizzuno and the “H&O” writing desks for PoltronaFrau. Silvestrin has stated: “Stone is earth.” This is perhaps the earth on which we walk, capable of rumbling beneath our feet and on which we place our houses; this is the earth which attracts us with its fruits, which fills the air with fragrance following rain and weather events, while showing our eyes the chemistry underlying its behaviour. If a sensitive reading was the key to the correct way of interpreting, it would be a way of inquiry that is inborn and rooted in the human condition. It should be read strictly in the sense and through the perception of the time of each one of us. The earth came before us and lives on after us, and after our everyday experiences. It endures for a long time, extending well beyond the moment. To our senses, it transmits solidity, security, stability: these are the values that are typically perceived sublimally by the user, as if through radiation, by only sensitive contact with Silvestrin’s design. From the fundamental designs for the washbasins and bathtubs of the I Fiumi collection for Boffi, we will go into more detail in the description dedicated to the project, La Cava, assessing possible connections in the approach and formal outcome. For Minotti kitchens in 2005, Claudio Silvestrin designed the Terra line. The sought-for expression of atemporality in the shapes of this kitchen in any event also includes state of the art technical
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elements within its profile, thus introducing the design theme of subtle antithetical combinations. We freely report in Italian the description offered to us by the architect in the English language. “The earth - its waters, forests and mountains - is extraordinarily beautiful of itself, solely through its simple presence. In contrast with everyday artefacts, in which use and function are predominant, the earth is that which is, independently of what we are, of what we make and of the sense we attribute to it. In conceiving the Terra kitchen, I imagined an object that was useful, functional and that was present with the same force of nature: solid, timeless and abstract. I expressed the enormous value of the earth in rigorous geometrical form and natural materials - stone and cedar wood. To cook on a work surface in porphyry that is twenty eight million years old makes me feel all at once reverential and happy. The Terra kitchen is available in different materials and combinations: light or dark coloured porphyry, cedar wood, and most recently Labradorite stone.”1 A year after the Terra Kitchen, Claudio Silvestrin designed the collection of the H&O management office for Poltrona Frau. The solidity of the proposal for Minotti kitchens was no less in these work furnishings in which, in truth, the hardness of the stone was softened by leather coverings of typical Poltrona Frau workmanship. The solidity is emphasised to the point that, in certain pieces in the collection, it makes the porphyry support prevail in size over the horizontal surface of the work level in wood, overhanging it. The latter - the floor - completes the mix of the natural elements of the project and makes a bridge between the hardness of the stone and the softer consistency of the support on the opposite side. The thicknesses, generous where necessary, are coupled with materials in a personalised way: the leg in more massive porphyry, the work level of a consistency able to accommodate by its height the approaching grasp of the palm of a hand, the thinner legs clad in Frau leather. East/West was a dining table for Glas, in 2006. In this case too, we do not find precision legs, but levels of minimum consistency in thickness, almost superficial. The two worlds meet with precise bonding at 45 degrees, one the bearer of genuine transparency, the other with a soft opacity in the grey veins of Carrara marble. 2 Visible and invisible, hard and soft, timeless and contemporary, in the design in particular, Silvestrin is sensually oxymoronic and always draws from these direct combinations additional substance beyond the simple sum of the constituent elements.
H_O presidential office collection, Poltrona Frau, 2006
The passage is drawn from and freely translates the design report. We translate from the design report: “The grey-veined surfaces are in Carrara statuary marble and ultra-fine transparent glass, 19 mm thick. The glazed top is formed by bonding the trimmed edges at 45° of a central crystal to the edges of the two lateral marble slabs. The supports, fixed to the glazed surface by steel plates, are made up of two glass slabs bonded together.”.
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