In Milan the house of designer Paolo Deganello
« I don’t have an idea of living, I live. It is a very different thing ». Paolo Deganello85 years old next September, transforms the demand into a manifesto. «Living is a daily practice, mature with spaces, with environments, with needs and other people. The rest is literature ».
The legendary founder of Archizoom It is dry, without frills. Radical, as always. After the gate, in the residential neighborhood of via Tiepolo, taking the first path on the left, the architect waits wrapped in the purple scarf in front of the colorful glass door of the entrance, among the liberty assonances of the facade. « I live by building the myriad of things that I like to do every day and with whom I like to do them, » he explains going up the stairs, slowly.
The Milanese neighborhood, not far from Città Studiis residential. The complex of terraced houses, 120 square meters each arranged on three levels, were built in the 1920s. «The popular economic building project was part of the Giolitti plan. It has always been underestimated, the villas cost very little. At the time, each house had its own vegetable garden, during the war there were even those who cultivated wheat, because the problem had survived. Then the spaces converted into gardens, our wife takes care of it ».
From the window, near the fireplace and the sofa designed in ’67 in a limited edition Superonda Spotsyou can see a rose that sprouts at the end of winter. «The generation of my children, who is now between 40 and 50 years old, has played in these places. Here, in the streets of that time, there were many children who fought to have the ball fell in the courtyard of the tenant next to them. Why this It is a neighborhood that liveshas some particularities that define a method of living. It is not a vertical, but horizontal condominium. Relationships are built, consolidate, they also discover in these green areas. There is even a competition, every year there is a party to reward the most beautiful garden. Depending on the story that a family has had, and what is willing to build, you live differently ».
Next to the home, The study with an infinite library of books up to the ceiling, covered with photographs, drawings and childhood portraits with beard and glasses, dedications and birthday wishes. There Aurora lamp designed for Venini illuminate the room. He stands a toy gorilla, a reference to the famous cover that Alessandro Mendini chose to dedicate to the utopias and visions of the Radical design In 1972.
«In those years we wanted to change the world. Once we decided to carry around Rome, with a pickup truck, the armchair Aeo that I designed for Cassina. We scored her in squares, roads, we wanted people to try it, experiment with them and gave us their opinions. We brought it to the zoo, and through a friend, we placed it in the cage of a gorilla who, however, did not turn a second. Now I keep several copies throughout the house ».
Deganello, who today He teaches Eco Design at the ISIA in Florenceshows a photograph of the time in black and white, while the voice is intoned at the creal of the chair. «These noises are errors of designing, the myth of perfection is an act of violence due to productive rationality. Why do you plan? »Asking rhetoric. «Because you want to build a message, you want to communicate a proposal for living. So it is essential that there is one political motivation in their work».
In the study, hanging on the ceiling, a cage given by a young Hungarian militant kept hidden forty years ago, for three months, in the attic of the house in Florence. «When the situation unlocked this empty cage he gave me, I put a cat of Venini in which I am very tied. In this study, bought later than the house next to it, I carry many personal stories behind me ».
On the one hand, the environments to live in Full of prototypes, lamps and seats, furniture finished in production and others never made, together with ancient family furniture and pieces signed by the son Carmine. On the other, in the house alongside, the space where you can design. «I am giving all my drawings, I will end up in May, but this place only strips it on the day I will be crackled. Until I resist, this room of thought remains ».
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