Fantini Mosaici at Milan Design Week 2023 presented an ‘Electronic Terrace’ as part of the new ‘Submerged Aesthetics - Unveiling hidden beauty’ installation.
From 18 to 23 April 2023, during Milan Design Week, Fantini Mosaici participated in the installation ‘Estetiche Sommerse - Unveiling hidden beauty’, which featured two experimental projects by the multidisciplinary design studio CARA \ DAVIDE, who was invited by Park Associati to design and supervise the project.
For this event, Milan-based Fantini Mosaici was asked to create a Venetian-style terrazzo flooring, the type usually used often used for terraces – but made using scraps of circuit boards, electronic microchips and cards rather than the traditional chips of glass and marble.
To create the so called ‘Electronic Terrace’, Fantini Mosaici replaced the shards and broken vases used in the ancient technique since Magna Graecia with the pieces of discarded electronic materials that are more common in today's society. These discarded scraps, usually considered flawed and unusable by society, were salvaged by the CARA \ DAVIDE design studio and reinterpreted by the master craftsmen of Fantini Mosaici, using traditional Venetian terrazzo techniques in a new manner.
The three-dimensionality of the tiles, stacked and set up like ancient columns, generated three sculptural structures, created with different forms and techniques of terrazzo flooring: in Palladian style, à la Scarpa and freely interpreted by the two designers. Some processing and testing occurred within the Park Associati studio, which oversaw the project.
In the exhibition space, the flooring provided the base on which the composition of three sculptural elements made from aluminium riser scraps used in foundry processes are placed, as part of The Materozza Collection. These recycled funnel-shaped metal elements were used to create aesthetically pleasing yet practical legs for the side tables and stools, as part of the second experiment conducted by the design duo for this innovative installation.
Salvaged by CARA \ DAVIDE, these 'contemporary archaeological finds' tell the story of craftsmanship, as reinterpreted in the 'Estetiche Sommerse - Unveiling hidden beauty' installation, to present new perspectives and a sustainable contemporary aesthetic.
