“Today we are witnessing the re-emergence of some behaviors that the project struggles to keep up with…” Andrea Branzi

Architect and radical designer, Branzi started with the Archizoom group and then settled in Milan in '73. Lecturer and author of many books, his most seminal meta-projects are kept at the Center Pompidou. Designing means giving shape to the idea of ​​the "weak and widespread", from the word to the drawing to the maquette, as well as from the vase to the landscape. Among other awards, in '94 he received the Compasso d'Oro.

Grandi Legni and Etchings is an exhibition dedicated to the Italian Maestro across his past, present and future:

These majestic pieces are designed by Branzi and co-produced by Nilufar and Design Gallery Milano. Branzi defines the Grandi Legni as “safeguards, altruistic presences, such as the Lares and Penates, that protect our already extinguished household fire. They take part in life’s theatre and have a role in the comedy; they are in part tools and in part stage props, in part instruments and in part tales”.

Halfway between architecture installations and everyday appliances

they are unlike pieces of contemporary design whose form is rigorously dictated by a desired formal perfection. It is their primal material, wood, that informs the function of the Grandi Legni: they are meant to support and carry the owner’s struggles upon themselves.

" These wooden, catatonic and mysterious installations are not elements of forniture because they presuppose around them an empty, indifferent space, available to any activity. Instead of organising the environment, they empty it."