My friend Angelo Jelmini, event & exhibition designer is an empathic, creative character as well as a founding partner of the AAAHHHAAA – Urbani & Vigili studio in Milan.

Dear Marta & Luca, 

when you asked me to tell Syncropedia about a project that is special to me, I immediately thought of HOME SWEET HOME, an installation created together with Alessandra Roveda with the direction and blessing of Angela Missoni. This was a project for the Fuori Salone a few years ago, before the pandemic, but it was a unique experience that in my opinion deserves to be told.

Premise. 

For those in our field , collaborate with artists and work side by side with them, it’s always a memorable experience. 
As a student at the Polytechnic of Milan I had participated "hyper-actively" in two workshops and performances with Claes Oldenburg and with Lucius Burckhardt, two artists. What can I say ... Art had literally opened my head and from these experiences. I understood that it would always be a cardinal point on my "mobile" horizon. When I started working I didn't have anything specific in mind, so much so that on my first business card I wrote: 

ANGELO JELMINI 

winds & rewinds
surfs & turfs
pouffs & roofs
homes & domes
here & there & everywheresss

The easily decodable message was, and has remained intact today: tell me where you are and what you need and I will try to satisfy you !!.
… Hurray!
But ... let's get to the facts and the story of HOME SWEET HOME.
Alessandra Roveda is an artist who dresses / interprets / transforms everything with her 'feminine' crochet / tool that she uses like a magic wand.
Where does she go ... the world became “knitted ". 

Before this experience I had already worked with her a couple of years before for the realization of a shop window in the center of Milan. It was on that occasion that I discovered she was a very special and funny one.
It’s been years that Angela Missoni had fallen in love with her art made of daily “bread”, knit, color, love & fantasy and she had begun to collect some of her pieces.
The affinities with the world and the history of Angela and the Missoni family were evident and for this reason she had  the idea of proposing to Alessandra to create an exhibition in the Missoni Showroom in via Solferino 9 in Milan. 

When Angela  involve us in this project, it was late January, less than three months before the Fuorisalone kermesse and the preview scheduled for MiArt. I immediately called Alessandra and within a few days we met in her very nice little sweet country house, in Trucazzano just outside Milano.
It was my first time there and as soon as I walked in, it was a flash! 

Portrait black and white - photo Carlo Magnoli Portrait black and white - photo Carlo Magnoli


Horses, rabbits, snakes, cacti, flowers, bicycles, tricycles, beds, tables, coffee tables, chairs, stools, hangers, lamps, chandeliers, irons, pots, clocks, televisions, telescopes, telephones, radios, computers, globes, surfboards, skis, boots, balls and balls, tennis rackets, ashtrays, cigarettes, sushi plates, tricks “and” treats and many many many other things were there in front of me, all made or lined with knit. 

Before that moment ... I had never seen so much knit in a glance !!
I was still at the entrance and I was ... already speechless (!!!) 
Alessandra… not !  She was a swollen river, thrilled and worried at the same time. 

Accompanying me on a visit to her home, from room to room, I felt how determined and motivated she was and ready to play this opportunity in the best possible way. 
She told me pieces of her life, showing me her creations, and between a story and a detail , a thousand ideas kept coming to her mind, meanwhile I kept taking pictures over and over again.

It was a "journey"! ! or rather it was the extraordinary prologue of a nice trip !
It was only necessary to start, to get going ... but ... to go where and how ... exactly it was not yet very clear.
We needed a few days and nights to metabolize everything and get to the point.
The challenge we accepted was to literally "build a house" together within a few weeks.
Home sweet home! We are coming !!! … Ready, Set, Go ! 

Alessandra, tireless, had already begin!  
A "war machine", or rather a knitting machine, 24/7. 

Before then she had never pushed herself to create complete environments but whatever we asked her to do, she never said no. From morning to evening she practically never gave up on crochet! 
Angela Missoni, as soon as she had a few free minutes, went to flea markets and vintage shops, looking for furnishings and objects of various shapes and nature to be interpreted by Alessandra.

My and AAAHHHAAA's mission was not just only to work side by side with Alessandra, we had the burden and the honor of grounding the concept, coordinating the project, giving it a shape, to make it functional, practicable, sustainable, making sure that it was actually achievable in time.
Our “HOME" had to be empathetic, open and hospitable but also functional. 
A case, designed in detail to safely accommodate and exhibit all Alessandra's works. 

Another important issue was the flow of the guests. Missoni showroom in Via Solferino, in the last years, during the Fuori Salone, had welcomed 40 / 50,000 visitors in a week.

The house - installation  began to take shape first in our imagination and then materially in the drawings, finding its place in the center of the location. The space wasn't much but in the end, we managed to fit everything: an entrance with a small fenced garden, a mini kitchen with dining room, a living room, a bedroom and a small terrace.
In Alessandra's house / installation, new ideas, corners of her “real” home and memories of when she was a child , merged.
Now in the absence of resources, with time that passed inexorably, it was necessary to be creative and enterprising finding the right formula to reach our goal.

Angela's expectations were high and it was also thanks to the will and availability of 2 Italian excellences, like Giorgio Graesan ( painting ) and Ceramica Sant’Agostino ( flooring ), partnerships gained along the way, that this project has been able to take off.

One of the prerogatives of our work is to always try to give a soul to the projects in which we are involved.  And so it was for the Home Sweet Home installation. The project didn’t allow  access inside the house set up, the house had to be “alive and active”, as if it were actually inhabited.
We therefore created a soundtrack made up of sounds, animals and environment noises of various kinds combined with a direction of programmed switching on of lights and TV, conceived for time slots with different activities distributed in all the main rooms inside and outside the house.
And ... In the end we did it! 

Hurray!

p.s. note by Marta Meda: the photos of the set-up speak for themselves  !

 

Showroom Missoni Via Solferino, Home Sweet Home with Alessandra Roveda MDW 2019
Showroom Missoni Via Solferino, Home Sweet Home with Alessandra Roveda MDW 2019
Showroom Via Solferino, MDW 2019
Showroom Via Solferino, MDW 2019
Showroom Via Solferino, MDW 2019
Showroom Via Solferino, MDW 2019
Stand by Missoni Home - Salone del Mobile 2017
Stand by Missoni Home - Salone del Mobile 2017
MINI DNA, Mini car exhibition at the Milan Triennale 2018 
MINI DNA, Mini car exhibition at the Milan Triennale 2018 
Trend Mosaici - Head quarter project by Light Design, Vicenza 2009
Trend Mosaici - Head quarter project by Light Design, Vicenza 2009
Stand by Paul & Shark, Pitti Uomo Firenze 2019
Stand by Paul & Shark, Pitti Uomo Firenze 2019