Design Conversations

This time a prize goes not to one of our products, but to a project we hold dear: The Appartamento Lago. Last Friday, Diego Paccagnella, the creator and Art Director of the project, collected the Adecco Prize at the Festival delle Città Impresa in Asolo, awarded to Lago S.p.A. “for having developed an innovative use of Design”.

The first Appartamento was opened two years ago on via Tortona, 21 in Milan. It was exclusively furnished with Lago products and the staff – 13 people – lived there throughout the entire duration of the Salone. The days were lived out with the doors wide open and the first visitors began to climb the stairs and enter (sometimes asking “may I?”, confused by the unusual combination of public and private). From there the flow has continued without interruption…Tortona, Brera followed. Then Venice, Riccione, Bologna, Turin, Bergamo…in short, thousands of visitors, events of every kind, countless words and numerous photos, videos and articles even though few, at the beginning, really understood the complexity of the project.

It was for this reason that the decision was made to publish, with Corraini Editore, the book, “Lago Appartamento”. To explain in 180 pages the ideas and reasoning behind the concept, to create a text that could also be a manifesto for a project with the ambition of activating a change in the meaning of creativity and design. In this matured the strong desire to bet on a vision: to create a network of apartments in which people can meet, get to know and converse with one another. A network of homes where one breathes culture, where one creates energies capable of giving life to creative social change.

Commentary of Diego Paccagnella, Creative Director of Lago S.p.A.: “The awarding of a prize like the Adecco becomes a truly important occasion for reflection on what has already been achieved and what can still be explored with the Appartamento. It is my hope that this prize can offer a moment of satisfaction to all those who contributed and continue to contribute to its fulfillment (and there are many, among Lago staff, professionals, creatives and tenants). Above all I hope that this can be an occasion for reinforcing the conviction that we are all taking part in a project that does not die out but that continues to flourish though the creativity of every single participant. I believe that the Appartamento is a choral project, that it manifests its uniqueness through the plurality of voices involved each and every day!“.

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Il Adecco prize 2011

Adecco Prize 2011 – The prize for 2011 is dedicated to Education. The dynamism of ideas is by now a state of necessity and not a fancy dress for openings that count. Education is its motor force, since this orients man, leaving him versatile, leading him to seek the perfect move while accepting limits and balances he might not have wanted. Education is the flexible receptor in each one of us. The forbidden fruit that it represents is therefore a fluid body, ready to to redefine itself in service of the stimuli it receives.

Our Art Waiting Room is currently in the able hands of Anna Scalfi Eghenter, an artist from Trent who, through her art, seeks to trigger participatory dynamics beyond the strictly artistic sphere and in relation to such themes as the economy, the environment, daily life and living.

Her new project, “Time is the place”, for fondazione march, invites reflection on the critical points of mobility in the industrial zone of Villa del Conte (PD), offering creative strategies to users that can become new habits and that stimulate relations between businesses.

Through research on transportation (train and bus routes and schedules, parking, metropolitan surface projects) and on the ways, habits, schedules and motivations of those who work, live or arrive in Villa del Conte, Anna in generating a series of targeted artistic interventions such as Workstation (the artist’s studio), Time Ticket (a ticket which has a time as its destination, not a place), Usucapio (train station seating dedicated to commuters), Born to Be Stolen (fluorescent bicycles with instructions for how they can be stolen), Fairway (industrial golf course with the course holes located at participating businesses) and Mapcase (bookstore-archive in the shape of a map of Villa del Conte).

The goal is to transform the industrial zone of Villa del Conte into an evolved industrial district – not in the literal meaning of the term that signifies a socio-economic entity constituted by a group of businesses of a productive sector located in a circumscribed area, among which there is collaboration but also competition, but rather in the sense of a place constituted by a group of businesses from diverse productive sectors that share services, visions and points of aggregation.

We are getting the ball rolling on Thursday, 28 April with a tour through the industrial zone that departs at 6pm from the Villa del Conte train station.
The industrial zone will be transformed into an enormous gold course in which the businesses constitute the eleven holes. Cement and soil, a few pieces of turf near the gates. Soft, environmentally-friendly balls. Outside of each business, its respective logo is made into a flag signaling a point to be scored. Derived from Urban Golf, Industrial Golf is a new way of relating to public space in the city.

At 7pm we will shift to the LAGO waiting room for the exhibition opening. Later, at 8pm, we will host a concert by Mario Brunello in the LagoFabbrica, which we will tell you about soon.

For information on rounds of Industrial Golf in the Industrial Zone of Villa del Conte contact fondazione march – info@fondazionemarch.org

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Anna Scalfi Eghenter, born in Trent in 1965, conceives art as a subversive frame that alters the boundaries of action. The entire organizational process of her projects takes an analytic perspective of mechanisms of negotiation between art and civil society. An independent artist, she intervenes with site-specific projects that trigger participatory dynamics that extend beyond the strictly artistic sphere on themes such as the economy, the environment, daily life and living.
She currently works in London where she is advancing her project “From inside (I like the system)”, through a PhD program at the Essex Business School. Her work reflects an interdisciplinary background, having studied at the School of Fine Arts, Brera (Milan), the Academy of Theatrical Arts S. D’Amico (Rome) and in the Sociology department at Trent. The artworks of Scalfi Eghenter have been displayed
at the Pistoletto Foundation in Biella (2010), the Foundation of the Civic Gallery of Trent (2009), the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin (2008), the MART-Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rovereto (2007), and at  Manifesta7-Parallel Events (2008).

We don’t like design in itself. We like the design that stimulates reflections, exchanges, ideas. We like the design of relationships.

The Apartment in Via Brera, which we opened during the Milano Design Week, was specifically built up to create a movement of people and creativity. Now companies must go beyond just selling products and creating, instead, sociability, knowledge and culture.

A sample of what happens when a company becomes a container and let other players taking the scene is the evening of the theatrical performance “La rivoluzione è questione di stile” (The revolution is a matter of style) that took place right in our Appartamento during the Milano Design Week.

Protagonist of the play the ultimate female accessory: the bag. Not a simple bag. It’s the bag invented by Ilariamai, a young fashion designers of the Domus Academy.

The capsule collection “Comme l’oiseau” is based on a concept which is very close to our brand as well: the ability of a product to be constantly transformed. Each bag handle structure indeed can fit in several sacks, thus giving the chance to have always different styles, simply changing one of the parts. The main idea of the collection is creating a bag which could be also many bags, in order to offer a dynamic and convenient product.

Such a innovative project was obviously supposed to be launched in a non-conventional way, thanks to a great performance, staged in our Appartamento. Eugenio Vaccaro, the actor, makes a parody of freaky young people trying to get in touch with the sparkling world of fashion and design, a world out of reach. The bag becomes a pretext for a more serious reflection: do our ideals clash with the bets of the modern world, what would we do to succeed?

So, put together an exceptional stage (Appartamento LAGO), a fashion designer and a young actor. What comes out it’s something better than a telesales. It’s design, creativity, culture, relationship, fun, energy…it’s founding yourselfs on the Air sofas looking at this crazy guy with blonde wig and toy-gun screaming against Plastic (one of Milan’s coolest locals) and Alexander McQueen!