Campo Base

CAMPO BASE
MILANO DESIGN WEEK 2023
April 6th, 2023

On the occasion of Milano Design Week 2023, Campo Base presents: a
manifesto for interiors, signed by six Italian architecture studios (Massimo Adario, Giuliano dell’Uva, Eligo, Marcante-Testa, Hannes Peer, Studio Pepe) and curated by Federica Sala

Fratelli Marmo, in collaboration with Nalesso ltd, will be partner of this important exhibition with unique and exclusive pieces designed by Hannes Peer.

Campo Base is a utopia of design in which six Italian design studios joined forces in a shared architectural endeavor. In the frenetic context of the Fuorisalone, this designer utopia becomes even more utopic, offering visitors a moment of respite,reflection, and calmness.
Campo Base is a manifesto on contemporary interior design. It is self-produced and self-managed by six Italian-based architecture studios: Massimo Adario (Rome), Giuliano Andrea dell’Uva (Naples), Eligostudio (Milan), Marcante-Testa (Turin), Hannes Peer (Milan) and Studiopepe (Milan).
Much like a contemporary architectonic consortium, Campo Base is a training exercise in collective design, where the studios tackled the difficulties of functioning contemporaneously as both individuals and a society.
Campo Base is a hypothetical non-place in which to explore the concept of domestic intimacy through the considerations of six design studios united by their willingness to grapple with a challenging shared exercise in design.
Campo Base is a village. It is an encampment. Most certainly, it is a micro architectonic community whose sparce shared spaces become the backdrop for a diversity of design in the individual settings, all of which aim to explore the concept of domestic intimacy. By crossing the thresholds of the hidden entrances behind the folds of the common scenery, which act as a watershed between our existence in the outside world and our domestic selves, we enter the individual universes.
On the occasion of Milano Design Week 2023, Campo Base presents: a manifesto on the interior, signed by six Italian architecture studios and curated by Federica Sala.

The collective includes Massimo Adario, who interpreted the concept of intimacy in a room called “Il Collezionista” (The Collector), an abstract yet cosy setting where the weather unfolds among a selection of objects that mirror the  personality of the collector.

To the contrary, Marcante-Testa envisioned a heterotopic space in which the furnishings and spaces have been emptied and given a different context to find a new rituality, becoming devices toprotect our intimacy.

For Hannes Peer, intimacy is both a metaphysical and an utterly physical space, echoing the atmosphere of the ateliers of artists of the past, such as Monet in Giverny or Costantin Brancusi in Paris. “Atelier des Nymphéas” is a temporal journey that highlights the creative, by revealing the personal side of painting to the public, prompted by the designer himself.

Meanwhile, “Omaggio a Renzo Mongiardino” (A Tribute to Renzo Mongiardino), by Eligostudio, focuses on the importance of domestic conviviality as a supreme moment of intimacy. The ephemeral architecture plays upon illusion, along with the featured works by artist Lorenzo Vitturi.

While the project by Studiopepe, “Omphalos”, meaning ‘navel’ in ancient Greek, embraces us like a “psychic skin”, protecting our intimacy and while defending us from the exterior, thanks to a series of archetypal elements.
Lastly, Giuliano Andrea dell’Uva ponders whether it is possible to inhabit emptiness, a functionless space, in his creation, “Ammonite”, a unique space in which architecture and furnishings become a slow initiation journey in honour of intimacy.

These six projects can be discovered by venturing down the pathway through the common scenery, a sort of fabric placenta that houses all of the studios, each with its own distinct differences. This fabric tunnel was made possible thanks to the collaboration with Elitis, and accompanies us through a cocooned universe – a temporary perceptual labyrinth where we can set ourselves free to
explore the studios’ interpretations of the concept of intimacy.
In the background, an olfactive rug reminiscent of a fire becomes an unmanifested symbol of collectively shared intimacy. An acoustic installation curated by artist Norma Jeane features ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) audio technology to arouse a state of spatial and sensorial disorientation. The live sonorization of the central island area reproduces familiar sounds in an abstract, nearly metaphysical context, aligned with the concept of the installation in the exhibition space.
Intimate/exterior, public/private, monumental/domestic, fictional/authentic – these are some of the many anonyms the installation evokes.

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