DESIGN ASSEMBLIES

ABOUT

Design Assemblies is a showcase of design practices, exploring innovation with Italian style, and narrated through experiences of the home furnishing and accessories design cluster of Piedmont, an important industrial region in northern Italy.

Within the exhibition, the contemporary Italian style of home design and its glorious history are reinterpreted to strive in a global perspective. Home design is shown from the whole to the individual, from the general to the specific, from the final assemblage to the single production. Very often, Italian design is represented by a series of well-known brands and designers, which conceive and manufacture unique and high-quality home products, yet this exhibition aims to show home design as an assemblage that adds value to small, artisanal and innovative contemporary productions. As a result, a wholly finished model home is imagined as a playful, elegant space where well balanced composition results from a holistic design approach that expands the potential of the single elements and makes them work together for a unique goal: a sustainable way of living.

Through the exhibition of projects, products and activities carried out within the Piemonte Home Design project, Design Assemblies is a journey through shapes, colors, stories and flavors of Piedmont, whose capital, Turin, is designated UNESCO Creative City for Design and first World Design Capital.

In the exhibition programme, home design is conceived as a decisive element of conjunction, integration and valorization of the different elements composing the domestic environment. Indeed, Design as a radical action takes precedence over the production (and exhibition) of individual objects. Although the quality of individual objects is unquestionable, coordinated design actions to assemble them add value, enhance one another, and provide infinite solutions. In other words, design objects can become better when “designed” into a whole system which is coherent with needs, expectations and resources in the context of ever changing past, present and future challenges that well fit a context of rapid expansion of individual expectations related to domestic comfort, such as the one of Singapore.

In an era of uncertainty, rapid global changes and timeless crises, the theme of housing flexibility and reconfigurability is increasingly present and central in everyday life and also in politics. New strategies on how to foster a more fluid, exchangeable, and connected living environment to face new housing conditions, such as but not limited to the scarcity of resources, an increasing aging population, the explosion of homework, is, and it should be, at the center of the agenda of policy makers and designers in many countries, with Singapore in the lead as an icon of public housing all around the world.

Through the display of fully furnished housing units, carefully composed by a selection of tailor made productions focused on sustainable issues, Design Assemblies explores the idea of “assemblage” as a way of responding to housing complex challenges by means of radical and comprehensive design actions. In this manner, Design Assemblies aims to shift what constitutes the term “assemblage” or “composition” in design. Indeed, if these terms had always been dominated by the logic of a simple visual image, within the exhibition, “assemblage” is intended through the Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “assemblage” to highlight how human actions can be directed towards more sustainable practices by means of complex socio-material interdependencies. Thus a design strategy of integration, where material and social relationships can take place, becomes fundamental and is able to affect the well-being of the individual by generating a positive impact.

Exploring in depth how design can have an impact both on people’s daily life and on long term sustainable goals, Design Assemblies presents virtuous processes and products resulting from the design of domestic spaces and able to tell the Piedmontese territorial cluster of the home system.

By systematizing the missions of the partners involved, Design Assemblies promotes and diffuses in Singapore the excellence of Italian design, with the aim of disseminating the culture of design through the transnational exchanges of ideas and practices. Furthermore, the project develops opportunities for international collaborations and market expansions by connecting Italian designers and producers with Asian real estate developers and suppliers, the result of such connection being the development of integrated and innovative design solutions.

CURATOR

Francesco Carota

Francesco Carota, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Kansas and Affiliate Researcher at the China Room research group, Polytechnic University of Turin. He also works as a licensed architect, and he is the co-founder of the architecture and design firm Calibro Zero Srl.

Francesca Frassoldati

Francesca Frassoldati is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture of Politecnico di Torino and a member of the China Room research group. Previously, she worked for 8 years at the South China University of Technology. Since 2016 she has been a member of the Future Urban Legacy Lab and serves as editor-in-chief of the Ardeth-Architectural Design Theory journal.

ORGANISER

Politecnico di Torino

Founded in 1859, Politecnico di Torino is today rated among  the top European technical Universities for education and research.

China Room

China Room is an interdisciplinary research group, based at Politecnico di Torino, made up of scholars in the fields of architecture, urbanism, and geography, who study the impact of Global China and Chinese urbanization processes.

Turin Chamber of Commerce

The Turin Chamber of Commerce works at the service of the territory’s economy, supporting businesses, bringing important strategic initiatives to success.

Calibro Zero

Calibro Zero is a Turin based multidisciplinary design firm.

ID Integrated

CONTACT

Name: Francesco Carota
Email Address: f.carota@calibrozero.it