Place Merano
Year 2019
CLIENT Merano Arte/Kunst Meran
Born in Trento in 1959, Maurizio Martinelli* completed his architectural studied at Venice’s IUAV University in 1987, then worked for several years as a lecturer and researcher for MediAterraneo laboratory coordinated by Gaddo Morpurgo. In the 1990s he moved closer to design, especially to the new minimalism that emerged in those years in respomse to the post– modernism of the previous decade. The many young designers who took part in this turnaround wanted to replace the whimsical anarchy of the style of the 1980s with a method that, following on from the twentieth-century rationalism, was based upon the exploration of lean, essential forms. In 1994, together with Gabriella Dorligo and Giovanni Panizon, Martinelli presented a series of prototypes at the “Intermezzo” exhibition in Trieste, some of which were subsequently produced by the furniture Company Cappellini.
The series, which included various types of furniture, offered new combinations for furnishings, with unexpected new pairings to undermine the usual distinctions: wastepaper basket– chair, picture-chair, shelf-chair. According to the critic Cristina Morozzi, their inclusion in the exhibition catalog emphasized that these were not “multifunctional complex” but rather “simple object whose simplicity has internalized complexity”. The exhibition also represented a sort of test run for a methodology of design that Martineli continued to apply, although he thereafter worked almost exclusively as an architect. His umbrella stand, “Umbrella”, designed together with Panizon in 2000, received the Good Design Award and was included in the permanent exhibition at the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design. The “Boa” chair, made of narrow beech veneer strips and produced by the Emmemobili furniture company in Cantù near Como in 1996, best reflects the explorative work of Martinelli, Dorligo, and Panizon in the 1990s.
Project
arch. Maurizio Martinelli con Gabriella Dorligo e Giovanni Andrea Panizon
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