Como. One of the lakes most filled with villas and palaces on the old continent. Its sumptuous residences are festooned, as if that were not enough, by the Italian Alps in a natural setting of exceptional beauty. The existence of this legacy begins in the Renaissance, the result of a period of exaltation of ancient art, combined with a political organization of small states with princes who compete to excel through the patronage of artists. The towns expressed their power and distinction, and extended to neoclassicism.
Although much earlier, in Como lived Pliny the Elder, born there in the 1st century AD. It was another moment of splendor for the city, during the Roman Empire, as a center of prosperous trade where aristocrats and other notable figures settled. The latest edition of the Lake Como Design Festival had as its guiding theme Naturalis Historia, in homage to Pliny the Elder, author of the homonymous work with 37 volumes of encyclopedic knowledge.
The attentive observation of nature that the illustrious Roman advocated - especially in the areas of botany, mineralogy and zoology - has presided over the recent meeting where design and art merge, with installations, unique pieces and limited series. In parallel, the magnificence of the exhibition spaces stands out. Well, the event wants to reveal to the visitor the architectural and artistic heritage of his palaces.
The historic Villa Olmo, immersed in a large garden with splendid views of the lake, hosted the collective Return to Nature. The palace, where Napoleon Bonaparte himself and other members of the European elite stayed, dates back to 1782 and was commissioned by the Marquises Odescalchi to the architect Simone Cantoni. At the end of the 19th century, the Visconti di Madrone dukes made some modifications.
Its façade, in the purest neoclassical style, is recognized by the balcony finish and string of solemn statues. The interior, however, transitions from the neoclassical style to baroque decorations, with pictorial compositions in gold and polychrome and marble floors. Not to be missed is its Parco Storico in the back area of the palace: an English garden populated with 800 trees, with notable specimens such as the horse chestnut or the Lebanon cedar.
In this framework, creators from very diverse backgrounds have celebrated nature through the lens of design with a strong artistic imprint. Like Milli Ink with its delicate sculptural Mumo forest glass composition, inspired by mushrooms and mandrake roots and their intertwining. Beings of nature whose duality the artist highlights: both healing and poisonous. Falling to Earth, with 30,000 flowers, is an installation conceived by Kris Rhus to flow metaphorically in descent. With its scale it relates to space, it leaves way between the flowers and suggests abundance, with a layer of petals in a nebula as a nutrient for the earth.
The Spinzi creative workshop, with the unpublished series of Medusas made with local stones (Arzo marble, Musso marble and Moltrasio stone) establishes a dialogue between the mythical creature and the waters of Lake Como.
Villa Salazar, with the exhibition Selection of Contemporary Design, has brought together independent authors, editors and galleries specialized in the most current creation. It is a neoclassical mansion built at the end of the 18th century, which during the 20th century has been related to the world of fashion and design. The Italian designer Gianni Versace made bow ties and ties here. And later it was the design center of a prestigious car brand. Regarding the pieces on display, the curator of the exhibition, Giovanna Massoni, highlights how through experiments, materials and technologies, they challenge climate change and the scarcity of natural resources, thus updating the research and work of Pliny the Elder.
“Design, which has always been a collaborative act,” says Massoni, “is today more than ever an anti-disciplinary exercise: a dialogue between past and future, between vernacular manufacturing practices and technological dematerialization, between organic materials and new biocomposite materials, between reuse processes and future processes. Scenarios where our waste becomes fossils.” For her, they compose an anthology of narratives about the transition towards a world of change: mutable, imperfect, fragile, where design - which is no longer a discipline of anthropocentric solutions - creates experimentation and tells us how to know, evoke, repair and care. our ecosystem.”
The exhibition The Other Animals, at the Palazzo del Broletto, has brought the theme of zoology to that stage. The title is inspired by a passage by Pliny that closes Book VII dedicated to human beings and anthropology: "Now I will talk about the other animals", underlining the inseparable interconnection of the living beings that inhabit planet Earth.
Massimiliano Mondelli, head of the section, highlights the tribute it pays "to man's innate fascination with 'the variety and play of nature' of which we have all always been admired spectators and infinitesimal protagonists."
Broletto is a palace symbol of the communal institutions of Como, which has its origins in the 13th century. Modified over time to accommodate the cathedral, today it has a square floor plan with magnificent arcades and a sober tower. Its façade has preserved the typically medieval style with Gothic arches and triphoras, and the characteristic alternation of stripes of white, gray and red marble.
Among other historical settings open to visitors during the event is the former Orsoline San Carlo convent, from the 17th century, with Between art and nature. A selection of 80 photographs from the permanent collection of the Sozzani Foundation in Milan. With the emphasis placed on those where nature is an inexhaustible source of illumination, study, reference, veneration, estrangement or consolation.
Pliny the Elder with his great work was linked to that knowledge of Nature that arises from observation and intuition. His work was a model to follow throughout the West until the scientific method and empiricism made their appearance in the 17th century, injecting the human species with an excess of rationality that displaced other modes of knowledge. Who was going to tell Pliny that his illustrious wisdom would emerge 2,000 years later, to bring renewed inspiration to a 21st century human being eager to reunite with nature.
