Carpanelli interviews the winning designers of the Carpanelli Award of IdeasxWood Contest

Carpanelli, an evergreen company that for over a hundred years has been creating unique furniture standing out for refined aesthetics, originality, use of the noblest materials and excellence of ancient workmanship, enriched with the most modern technologies, met and interviewed the Carpanelli Award-winning designers of the IdeasxWood Contest, whose designs have been realized and have become successful products of the company.

AIDA
Design by Giulio Matteo Mansi, Paolo D’Alto. 1st place project in the professional category – IdeasxWood 2022 Contest, Carpanelli Award

Original and refined, the Aida chair is very versatile; the particular structure, proposed in two different essences (Canaletto walnut and Canaletto walnut stained wengè), can be combined with different leather finishes to create customized seats according to the tastes and style of the environment.

Hi, we are Giulio and Paolo and together we designed “Aida”. For the design of “Aida” we did not want to start from a precise source of inspiration, but what we wanted to do was to “tell about ourselves” through this project and especially through its forms. “Aida” is a product that is able to summarize our characteristics, our design. It communicates through essentiality, lightness, but especially through attention to detail, which is a very important element, because in addition to telling who we are, it is above all able to tell the production capacity of the “Carpanelli” company.

As young designers, we can only careful about the responsibility of design in terms of sustainability and the environment. We are convinced that this sector must play a crucial role in this matter, perhaps with a renewed environmental awareness. Materials are fundamental in the development of our projects, especially in the manufacturing phases rather than the end product itself. There are no good or bad materials, just correct and incorrect uses. Following this reasoning, when we start a new project we let ourselves be carried away by experimentation. Carpanelli has offered us the opportunity to collaborate with a company that is perfectly in line with our thinking.

DOLFIN
Design by Geo Carignani e Luca Cotini. 1st place project in the professional category – IdeasxWood 2020 Contest, Carpanelli Award

Dolfin is an elegant armchair in solid ash wood, available with black, natural and Canaletto walnut finishes, inspired by a detail of the Venetian manufacturing tradition – the unmistakable iron, or dolfin, located at the bow of the gondola – turned into a refined piece of furniture. 

Hi, we are Geo Carignani and Luca Cotini and together we designed “Dolfin”. The “Dolfin” armchair designed for Carpanelli is a tribute to the Italian tradition of craftsmanship. The project was born from the reinterpretation of an icon that is the “gondola” typical boat of Venice, famous all over the world. Through the analysis of some fundamental elements of the “gondola” such as the bow, we have created “Dolfin”, a contemporary piece of furniture inspired by a very ancient object. We have no references to precise historical periods because what we like most is the contamination, the transversality between the arts and the disciplines. Furthermore, we ourselves are very different among us and therefore we manage to work together, matching our two worlds together. Mine is more linked to art, while for Luca is more linked to the technical development of furniture.

We have been collaborating since the early years of university and we have tackled various projects together with various characters and various briefs. I believe that there are no references that we can find in each of our projects. Each project is faced in a different way, drawing inspiration also from different backgrounds. Perhaps the only thing that unites our projects is the meaning we give. We always try, in each of our designs, to convey a message, an idea or a concept, as for example for the “Dolfin” the Venetian gondola. Materials play an important role in our projects because they define the limits and possibilities of the project. We prefer wood for its materiality and the warmth that it is able to transmit and the same wood has technological and technical limits that, however, can become opportunities to grow and renew.

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GAE
Design by Benedetta Pintus, Natalia Giribaldi, Ottavia Scarabelli. 1st place project in the student category – IdeasxWood 2020 Contest, Carpanelli Award

Gae modular doublesided bookcase is inspired by the volumes of the modern Piazza Gae Aulenti in Milan: a combination of precious woods, leather and metal, which conveys elegance and lightness thanks to the harmonious alternation of solids and voids. Proposed in two size variants, Gae can be manufactured with customized finishes and modular solutions.

Hi, we are Benedetta, Ottavia and Natalia, designers of the Gae bookcase. For the Gae bookcase project, we were inspired by the city of Milan, which is our city and in particular by the UniCredit tower in Piazza Gae Aulenti, from which it takes its name, because for us in recent years it has become the symbol of the changing city of Milan, of modern, evolving Milan. This was the concept we wanted to bring back to our bookcase  as well. In particular, of the building, what most caught our attention is the spire, because this spire stands out high in the sky and is an element that recalls the antiquity of the architecture of the past, but revisited in a modern key.

To characterize “Gae” was certainly the formal simplicity and in fact we played with simple lines, alternation of full volumes and empty volumes, in order to create a versatile piece of furniture and its modularity of the parts allows it to adapt well to other elements of furniture. Wood is the main protagonist of the “Gae” line and of all the furnishings that compose it. Working with wood was very interesting because it allowed us to experiment with different lines, curves and shapes and certainly, with the color and texture of the wood, which are the elements that distinguish the Gae bookcase and all the other products in the line.

Would you also like to participate in the next edition of the IdeasxWood Contest? Download the contest announcement and theme documents! Visit the official contest page here https://ideasxwood.it/premio-carpanelli/