Ponte da tavolo
Franco Raggi, Ponte da tavolo
Franco Raggi, Ponte da tavolo
The Ponte da tavolo by Franco Raggi was prototyped in Albisola (Italy) in 2006 during the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporary Art.
Architettura divisa
Franco Raggi, Architettura divisa
Bridges and little houses
There are no particular reasons why a centrepiece or a bookend has to have certain shapes. The former only remains in the centre of the table and, if it's lucky, will hold flowers that are more elegant than it is; the bookend continues to support as long as it's needed. When the shelf is complete, the bookend has long to go higher or lower and sometimes inside, doing nothing. That's why I wanted to consider these objects also when they're at rest. In this way, even without flowers or books they express a formal dignity that perhaps can save them from being relegated to the interior of closts.
I conceivedof them in ceramic or terracotta and I have designed them as small pieces of architecture for a domestic landscape. They were created by skilled hands of ceramists from Albisola.
Franco Raggi
Franco Raggi, Architettura divisa. “Undisciplined”, Spazio Parfiri, Vado Ligure, 2006
Franco Raggi, Architettura divisa. “Autoproduzione”, Cattedrale della Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan Design Week 2012
Franco Raggi, Architettura divisa. “Intorno al libro”, Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Milan Design Week 2013
Architettura divisa by Franco Raggi was prototyped in Albisola (Italy) in 2006 during the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporary Art and was also presented at the following exhibitions: “Autoproduzione”, Cattedrale della Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan Design Week, 2012; “Intorno al libro”, Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Milan Design Week, 2013.
The Global Tools Joined Shoes
Philological reconstruction of an idea from 1975
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. (prototype)
Two feet in one shoe
Joined shoes in ceramic. Philological reconstruction of an idea from 1975.
In June ‘75, some architects, designers and artists decided to create improbable objects in the courtyard of an old house in Milan. The first “Seminar of Global Tools” was held, the school of Radical Design without a specific location. The theme: “The body and constraints”. The intention was to compare the consolidated and accepted practice of technological, comfortable and functional design with a nomadic method for an archaic and dysfunctional design. The logical and procedural short-circuit generated useless objects, which were also provoking and reflexive, about the certainties of the project and about the need to keep alive the dialogue between art and design, and between the body as a primary tool and objects as preparatory prostheses to creatively re-–establish the idea of the form/function relationship. Seminar products included: tube eyeglasses to look yourself in the eyes, constricting bracelets, clogs to walk uphill, elastic clothes for persons joined together, and these shoes for a compulsory frontal comparison. Made experimentally in clay, they propose the frontal fusion of two different shoes, preventing any possibility of walking, and force the two persons wearing them into an inevitable but controlled promiscuousness of bodies and looks. The Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art gave me the opportunity to reconstruct in ceramic the object that at first glance seemed to be useless. I like to bring back to life the spirit and the intention, as well as the subtle charm of an undoubtedly functional product of the project made thirty years ago with Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi and Nazareno Noia.
Franco Raggi
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. "Handmade in Albisola”, Collezione Permanente del Design Italiano, La Triennale, Milan Design Week, 2007
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. “Quali cose siamo”, Triennale Design Museum, Milan, 2010
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools.. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore
Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools.. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore. From left to right: Francois Burkhardt and Roberto Costantino
Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi, Nazareno Noia, Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti (from left to right: Franco Raggi, Ettore Sottsass), 1975
Project made during the workshop “Global Tools, the body and constrains”. By Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi, Nazareno Noia and Franco Raggi, 1975
