April 16th – 22nd, 2018
Fonderia Artistica Battaglia
Milano

The double display of work by Umberto Riva and Giacomo Moor in the spaces of Fonderia Artistica Battaglia on the occasion of the 2018 Salone del Mobile is motivated by a desire to emphasise the theme of interdisciplinary cross-contamination between architecture and design, evidencing the construction characteristics of the two new projects designed and conceived exclusively for the gallery. This exhibition therefore evolves around two distinct collections that both use wood as their primary material, with the aim of juxtaposing two authors that are very different but find common ground in their profound knowledge of, and pleasure in, the deployment of the instruments, methods and materials of traditional workmanship.
The collection designed by Umberto Riva, which consists of two tables, a sideboard or console table, and a lamp, is entirely consistent with his highly personal research metier, focused on the development of singular solutions, characterised by an open and dynamic design method.
The architecture and design of Umberto Riva are the result of a careful meditation on the many ways of living in, and the diverse functions and uses of, domestic space. Articulated through the use of colour, of light and of pure form, space, according to Umberto Riva, must advance multiple perspective viewpoints, with the objective of stimulating, from a wide array of potential angles of vision, as many different, subjective experiences of perception in the viewer.
This collection, presented in the spaces of Fonderia Artistica Battaglia for the first time, is certainly charged with that same sculptural energy that has always distinguished Riva’s work: paired-down, clean-lined objects that appear fragmentary, are never static, never symmetrical and consequently are never immediately interpretable. As with his construction of spaces, Riva also seems to model objects with a desire that they should reveal their details gradually, until finally they assert a dominant theme, so that – for example – even the support of a table top achieves a sense of formal autonomy.
The scale translation of the forms and languages typical of architecture is a point of departure and a notional source of energy for the new collection of furniture designed by Giacomo Moor, who, inspired by a range of bridge designs, aims to explore the formal and structural relation between the arch and its centring. The protagonists of this corpus of new work, consisting of a table, a desk and a shelving system, are the first and last stages of the Roman bridge building process: the wooden centring, a temporary structure that is crucial to the construction of every bridge, and the peperino stone paving. The result of this multifaceted exploration is a union between the fragmentary lines that characterise the centring and the typical aesthetic of the arch, achieved by the layering of stone facing slabs called conci. This union has the final objective of creating an architectural micro-universe for interiors, which as well as answering to exacting functional requirements, celebrates the supreme structural form: the arch, which more than any other, is an archetypal architectural figure, which everyone can recognise.