“LUXURY IS NOT A WASTE”
new site-specific project in Rome.
“Luxury is not a Waste”
The quality of work in the new Italian contemporary Design
A site-specific project curated by Vincenzo Basile
BASILE ARTECO
May/ November 2013
REGINA HOTEL BAGLIONI
Top Suite “ROMAN PENTHOUSE”
Via Veneto 72, Roma (ITALY)
Italian contemporary Design’s
new protagonists, up-and-coming Authors and Masters
PAOLO ULIAN
DONATA PARUCCINI
LORENZO DAMIANI
GIORGIO BONAGURO
VALENTINA CARRETTA
ALBERTO NASON
MICHELE DE LUCCHI
ETTORE SOTTSASS
ENZO MARI
…
project in progress
The idea for the “LUXURY IS NOT A WASTE” site-specific project came about following a meeting between Guido Polito, CEO of Baglioni Hotels, and Vincenzo Basile, Design consultant Manager and Editor of research projects in Contemporary Design
The aim is to host Contemporary Design projects – all of them connected with the “fare italiano”, do it in Italy – strictly “made in Italy”, and developed by the new generations of architects and Designers, and by the Masters of Contemporary Design and of the ‘900 as well.
The project follows the event “PAST/FUTURE” – Enzo Mari and the Italian contemporary Design, realized in Milan at the Carlton Hotel Baglioni and inside Amaranto, during the Salone del Mobile in April 2013; it was one of a number of events of milanese Design Week’s Fuorisalone.
The outcome of the meeting between Mr. Polito and Mr. Basile has become a challenge: presenting innovative or unpublished projects by Italian up-and-coming Designers, especially the youngest generations, in a context that is different from the usual venues where objects of design research are placed and communicated. This, in order to find a contact with different kinds of public, and to create new forms of communication and synergy in a high-quality context.
The location that has been chosen is the exclusive “Roman Penthouse” Top Suite of the Regina Hotel Baglioni in Rome. The Suite occupies the entire top floor of the palace – once the residence of Queen Margherita di Savoia. The space has been completely renovated, and it is now a prestigious window from which you can admire the Eternal City, and enjoy the spectacular and exclusive view as well.
A spacious apartment, very luxurious, but reserved at the same time, is inhabited by a number of objects that are not only part of the furniture, but symbols of memory and affection, to be used, and looked at, and admired. Precious and stimulating presences, sometimes also critical of the contemporary consumer patterns.
The Italian high-quality Design has always told a story, always stimulated reflections, always stirred emotions.
It intertwines the “intellectual work” and the communication of the quality and of the work, it transmits the knowledge and the skill, the ability to realize objects that are useful, as well as beautiful: the “work of making” – il “lavoro del fare”. The objects are witnesses of a projectual research: sophisticated, stimulating, often critical and connected to a reality which is continually evolving in taste and fashions. Also, and most interesting, these objects are designed to meet the demands of cultural changes and new experiences.
If one looks at the Italian Design as a union/alliance between intellectual project and handicraft realization, luxury may well be interpreted not only as a waste, or a mere display of wealth and ephemeral consumption, but as the imprint of the intellectual and material work of the very many people who take part in the projects: artisans, professionals, intellectuals, enterprises, common workers who, often behind the scene, realize the Quality.
These objects represent the Excellence of the italian making “il fare italiano”, they communicate to the world our authenticity. Our history.
Rome, 19/Maggio/2013
Info: Vincenzo Basile / BASILE ARTECO