IlbagnoAlessi
producer of ceramic sanitary ware, the Finnish Oras, the
leading Scandinavian producer of bathroom faucets, and
the Italian Inda, which for three generations has had a
prominent position as a producer of high-quality bathroom
furniture and accessories. Together with these companies
we have put together an operational model for a virtual
company, in which Alessi addresses strategic marketing,
design management and communications, and our partners
concentrate on project engineering, production and
distribution. Each partner takes care of the sale of its own
products through its own distribution channels, that anyway
are coordinated and brought into line with those of the
other partners, with the aim to exploit the considerable
synergistic effect achieved by combining the different
distributive capabilities of the three companies in their
respective countries. Thanks to the project skills of Stefano
Giovannoni, we have created the most complete scenario
for the bathroom that has ever been realized on an
industrial scale, as can be seen from this catalogue: from
ceramic sanitary ware to faucets, from accessories to
mirrors, from furnishings to shower boxes, from lighting to
bathroom textile. Conceptually, the project takes as its
point of departure the work of psychoanalyst Franco
Fornari, according to whom childhood erotic instinct is
evoked by two fundamental moments when the child's
attention is captured by its mother's face and smile: feeding
and bathing. These two events mark the poles about which
the child's life alternates. It is not a coincidence that the
bathroom has become one of the most interesting areas
where people home imaginary can expand. As a place
where cleaning is performed, the promise contained in the
bathroom relates to a primordial loss, the loss that occurs
for each one of us when our mother's attention starts to
diminish and we have to think of performing our toilet
ourselves. The beginning of this independence is usually
associated with a sense of coldness and solitude (a sort of
new birth or separation) and with the memory of a hurried,
soapy hand that rubs our face, almost suffocating us in its
rush, because we refuse to wash our own face. The space
and attention that we assign to the bathroom in keeping with
our current interior design
philosophy can be read as a
“return of that which has
been suppressed”, that is, an
attempt to recover a
maternal culture that is
prepared to dedicate a
special place to the less
valued manifestations of our
corporeality.
Seen as a
whole,
therefore, the
bathroom
scenario is not
only the place
where we clean our bodies.
It is much more: it provides
us the symbols to mediate,
within ourselves, the
conflict between certain affective codes that recall the less
valued aspects of our Self, between the wish to regress
and the need/wish to grow, between the maternal code,
centred on the gratification of the child that is in ourselves
and meeting its needs, the childhood code, which is
centred on play, the code of erotic corporeality, which is
centred on the contemplation and exhibition of our body,
and the paternal code, which is centred on performance
and stimulus to growth. This scenario assumes many
different levels of meaning in whoever enters this space:
these levels clearly recall the universe of dreams. For all
these reasons, after spending so many years in the theatre
of the kitchen, I had the wish to bring Fantasy, Humour,
Emotion and Poetry of our best designers to this area of the
home. Most of the bathrooms actually on the market are
centred on the paternal code, that is, functional
performance and the related technological search. When it
comes to the deep imaginary of the public, however, the
results are quite disappointing, and when it comes to
design, well, frankly, they are sometimes ridiculous:
electronic components that promise astounding
performance but that look like instruments of torture;
futuristic shower boxes featuring all the latest technological
gadgetry but that are devoid of humanity; whirlpool baths of
the ultimate in sophistication but that convey a twinge of
fear when you step in. Elsewhere, one can find attempts at
using the maternal code or the erotic code, but the results
here are not very satisfactory either: baths that clumsily
allude to the maternal lap, or two-person baths that are
designed to convey an inviting message of family gathering,
however rare or unlikely they may be, but that in reality
don't really encourage one to step in. In terms of design,
therefore, the solution we have chosen is based on an
expressive language from the oneiric, playful matrix in
which the designer has combined the four affective codes
in inspired fashion. Some components, markedly centred
on the maternal code (in particular, the ceramic ware, with
its round and soft shape) are placed alongside other
components that clearly belong to the paternal code (the
furniture and metal accessories, with their simple, austere
lines), the erotic code (such as the faucets, which are
resolutely phallic) and the childhood code (such as the
playful hideaway of the bath faucet, or the way the cabinet
drawers open). I believe the formal outcome of this project
is highly innovative and sets a fine example: by
harmoniously combining the four affective codes, Stefano
was able to overcome the practice of the personal stylistic
codebook that characterised practically all top design from
the eighties and nineties. Using a strongly innovative design
approach, that I would describe as meta-style, he has
drawn freely and masterfully from the vast repertoire of
forms available to us to create objects that are both more
exciting and more human. I think this may be a valuable
indication of where new design is heading for in the 2000s.
Alberto Alessi
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IlbagnoAlessi - Indholdsfortegnelse