Channelbeta - projects - Illy

Relax!

We assume that if you are reading this line, you went through the previous chapter.

If you did not, here a summary of the process previously described:

- In design, make sure that the client ALWAYS pays you.

- In design, sometimes we say things that later we understand were not completely true. If the idea of making an installation for free is bothersome, don't forget you will never get any kind of retirement fund.

- Always think on the long term. If the job is well done, surely other things will sprout out of it. The spiral - obviously - has a positive sign.

- If you are doubtful about Hegelian concepts applied to architecture don't worry. Keep working, don't ask. Let's finish this in a vaguely dignified way. Tomorrow is another day. Although is quite clear that life is not a line, but rather a cyclical system where terrifying and stressful event repeats very often, pretend that everything is ok.

- Never forget that even in the case they give you a ten years notice, something will happen in between. Most of the work will happen in the last week. Most of the work of the last week will happen in the last day (it works like a fractal).

- The curator, he calls us to fix some problems, not to add new ones. If ten days before the opening we have to trash the project and start it over, there isn't much to say. If they could have found a different solution, they would have gone for it. If everything is shit, to complain doesn't improve much. No matter how deep (in shit), the only possible thing to do is to make your brain working at full speed. Find the appropriate solution to get out of it.

- To get upsed with the curator, with the director, with the secretary, the contractor, the worker, doesn't help as well. Again, to get out of it, the only way is to keep cool, keep working, try to be cooperative.

- When everything is finished, always remember to say thank. To all of them. It looks like a detail, but it is a very essential element of the overall process. Like when you go to a meeting and they offer you a cup of coffee. It is a detail. But it suggests an universe of hope (especially if compared to the meeting where you don't even get a glass of water). Details are the whole.

Ok.

Once we went through the process, half way of the design work, we received a second proposal to make the relax areas of the Biennale. The client/sponsor was Illy coffee.

Three areas. The places where people can rest after an exhausting day spent exploring all kind of different art productions. You are on the way to collapse, you see a chair, you sit and you get a free espresso coffee.

It makes sense.

Three spaces, same concept. Same people who are working on the auditorium project, they start to brainstorm on this second one.

The task seems reasonable, it makes sense.

Three spaces made out of the same principle. The budget is ok, we even get all the expenses covered (a little step for the hopeful designer, a giant leap…)

Good. Back to work.

The first idea we propose, it seems to us perfect.

A folded wall that works like a blackboard. A stripe. Upon budget you can make it simple or complex. With a lot of twirls or just circular.
The interaction should be quite nice: you arrive and in order to get a coffee for free, you have to draw something on the blackboard.

Simple & effective.

The Illy people, they don't like it all.

What about if someone comes and draw a huge prick on the wall? What about dirty words?

We find the eventuality quite jolly and amusing. They do not.

It doesn't matter. Back to step one.

Second idea. This time working on foamy elements. Simple forms, impossible to write on it. To make it cute, we take the Illy logo (a red square) and we transform it into a three dimensional volume. The side is two meters long, 60 cm depth.

Out of this volume we carve out an inner square. In this way we get an external frame with a void. The void is actually a second piece. Actually full.

If we place the frame vertical and the inner square horizontal, we can sit in the frame and we can use the horizontal element as a table.

If we have twenty elements like this, apart from sitting, you can also lay, roll, sleep, play. It looks like a playground.

We prepare three different versions. With the portals, a ziggurat one, a traditional bar looking one. In the process they change other ten times.

No problem.

Again, we finish one second before the opening.

The space, it works fine. People like, have fun. We are satisfied.

The client not so much.

Andrea Illy congratulates.

The great tension of the previous days fades away.

Fights, discussions, radically different sights and approaches were there; working together was hard to us, but it was to them too.

And in the end, all of us are happy.

Ready for the next time.

We don't know why. There must be something they didn't like. It shouldn't be the final product. Probably was our attitude.

The day after the opening we meet their responsible. Generally this is the moment when you relax, all the problems have been solved, you chat drinking a glass of wine.

In our case is the moment of the bad argument (for silly reasons).

Sometimes, it happens.

You find people who have a different view, a different attitude.

Next time, it will be different.

(Stefano Mirti, Cliostraat)

The Illy relax areas for Venice Biennale 2003 is a project by Cliostraat (Cristina Casula, Alessandra Esposito, Stefano Mirti, Matteo Pastore, Alessandra Raso, Matteo Raso, Francesca Sassaroli, Stefano Testa) with Eyal Fried, Marguerite Kahrl, Daniele Mancini,

www.cliostraat.com

goes to Venice (part 1)