Author: Saniya Walawalkar

This past month in Milan and traveling around Italy has been the best experience yet. Everything we visited for the class and during our weekend tours was a memorable time. The studio visits, museums, landmarks, walking tours, all taught me so much about Italian, design, and art history in general. Especially the fact that the world really has existed a long time. Sure we’ve been taught about centuries of history, but we don’t really get to see that here in Houston. I was able to see actual standing buildings and ruins that dated back to Before Central Era. Italy was evidence, real tangible evidence, that what we learnt in school really did lead up to where we are today, and that is just so mind-boggling.

The connotation of design in Italy versus the United States is also vastly different. This is a topic that was mentioned by Sam Baron, the head of the design department at Fabrica, on our last day in Italy. Design in Italy typically refers to furniture, chairs, lighting, architecture, and interior, whereas design in USA refers to graphic design or fashion.

Of course, Italy also has a huge, well known fashion industry too, but that falls under fashion, not design. Furthermore, Baron also mentioned how design is a highly coveted career in Europe in general, whereas in USA, at times designers are considered quirky and indie, not a mainstream or proper career choice.

Italy puts forth its culture, its art, its history in every possible place. There are streets full of old buildings, turned modern restaurants, that still showcase antiquity. There’s the Triennale, that on every corner would have a little poster talking about another pop-up gallery showing off artwork from some new artist or another.

Some streets that I almost passed of as plain and residential housed the workshops of famous designers and artists known worldwide for their designs. Art and everyday blend together so seamlessly in Italy that even at the end of a month it was hard for me to tell one from the other. Here, there is such a clear demarcation between, commercial, residential, and recreational.

At least in Houston, history doesn’t bleed through the cracks in walls,or the cobbled streets. Every place we visited, Portaluppi, Alessi, Magistretti, Armani, Kartell, so on so forth, had a tale to tell of how the company started, how the designer began his career. There is an intimacy with history in Italy that I could feel with every word our tour guides spoke, almost like they had a personal connection with the people they spoke about.

Italy has taught me to take history along with me, to learn from, to reminisce in, to live with. It’s about improving on the past, correcting errors, not covering them up.

Oh, and chairs. Chairs are the epitome of progress in design.

Our last visit for this study abroad was Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. It is associated with United Colors of Benetton and is a midway between a class-based university and a workplace. We got a walking tour of the building, and a look into the different departments that the place has set up. The one most memorable part of the tour was the library, one of the most beautiful works of modern book cataloguing I have seen. I am a sucker for books, so this place was heaven on earth. It might not have had novels and fiction but that didn’t bother me. The rooms structured in a giant spiral that winded downwards with a staircase. Bookshelves and siting areas were fit into landings along the way. It was maybe three floors, hard to judge when there is no clear distinction, but the bookshelves were tall and extensive. They were lines with hordes and hordes of design research books, a few shelves stuffed with National Geographic books, and so much colour, it was overwhelming.

One thing we got to sit and look at was an edition of the Colors magazine, which is sadly not running anymore, where they mailed blank magazines to people around the world and had them fill it out with anything and everything. People filled the books up with personal photos, spray paint, yarn, their children’s drawings, and one was all about Islamic feminism. That one was my absolute favourite. It talked about how the choice for Islamic women to cover up is a statement of feminism not oppression. The book as filled with writing in Arabic calligraphy and drawings. It was really lovely to see that touch of diversity firsthand.

Hopefully in the future I can get an opportunity to apply and attend Fabrica after I graduate UT and gain some amazing experience from the faculty and resources available there.

Last weekend, I took a day trip to Florence. While everyone else who went stayed the full three day weekend, I knew I decided to keep it short so that I had time to relax. Sadly Florence should not have been the place I skipped out on especially since there is so much to see. I missed out on seeing Michelangelo’s David and the Uffizi due to the time crunch but that gives me an opportunity to come back with a better planned agenda.

Florence is surprisingly easy to navigate. Nothing is more than a 15-minute, brisk walk away, and it’s pretty obvious what the landmarks are. The difference in construction of landmarks versus commercial and residential buildings is very obvious, not to mention the long, serpentine lines winding back and forth in front of museums. The city was really beautiful to walk through and the statues erected everywhere were magnificent to see. My favourite part, unsurprisingly, was the Duomo. In my opinion, it is definitely more breathtaking than the one in Milan. The hints of colour, the high and low relief sculptures, and the towering glory of it all was really lovely to experience firsthand.

I also got to walk through the open courtyard of Basilica of San Lorenzo. The courtyard was a small taste of the the extensive architectural monuments built by people like Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Donatello, and more.

I definitely plan on visiting this city again.

The highlight of last week were the Floating Piers by Christo in Iseo. It was also incidentally the most taxing day thus far. Our day began early, and right off the bat we were thrown into absurdly long lines…more like amorphous blobs consisting of people shoving and crowding to get to the front. Lines don’t exist here apparently, especially if the event is free and for a limited time period. Not too different from life in India. There were innumerable times where I wanted to turn back: the second I saw the line after getting off the first train, while waiting for the second train, while waiting in line to get to the pier. I think this is the one day I complained the most about nearly everything.
Needless to say that day was a dream trapped in a nightmare. The lines were a horror but the experience of walking on water, on these golden bridges reflecting light from the sun while the cool breeze blew past, was an ethereal experience. Hot, sweaty, exhausting, but definitely transposing.
The lines made it seem like the piers would be packed to the brim. There were moments where I wondered if it would start to sink due to the weight. But I really can’t question Christo’s judgement since he’s had multiple large scale installations that were just as popular.

Over the period of this study abroad, my favourite trips were the ones where we visited designers’ workshops like Castiglioni, Magistretti, Studio MF, and a couple more. It’s a more intimate and in depth than a factory tour (although Alessi was just the very best), and it’s quite fascinating to see how the studio is maintained. In cases like Magistretti and Castiglioni who have passed, the maintenance of the studio is a little different. Castiglioni’s studio, by the looks of it, hasn’t changed much since the last time he used it. The organized clutter, reams of used paper, photographs, books, all looked mostly intact, except for those left out for visitors to look through. Magistretti’s studio on the other hand, was also made into a studio. Our guide, who also pleasantly turned out to be his granddaughter, mentioned that she and a few other helpers sorted through all of Vico Magistretti’s sketches and writings and catalogued them so that they could be put on display in the studio turned mini museum. The change in purpose of the space didn’t really ruin the vibe though. I think the energy and genuine love that our guide had in talking about Vico Magistretti allowed for the mini museum to have a more warm atmosphere than a more formal museum would. Also Magistretti’s little office in the back was pretty much left the same.

On another note, one thing I realized with all these studio visits is that chairs are honestly the pinnacle of new design. It seems like every designer in his or her early days managed to find a new way of letting people sit, and each designer had a real, genuine idea on how to make the simple chair a better sitting experience. Magistrate added an s-curve to the legs so that they were sturdy but not bulky, Kartell created chairs that were easy to play with and durable in harsh weather, Castiglioni created an uncomfortable bicycle seat chair that kept phone conversations short, so on so forth.

Last Tuesday, the entire class presented the group mapping projects. It was really interesting to see the different ways that the groups decided to prioritize the mapping. The group that mapped their route with artifacts they found along the way was a really nice display of using recent inspirations. The custom definitions and descriptions for the terms they used to label the objects was a nice way to contextualize the objects since the rest of the class wasn’t able to walk with them along the route. I also really liked the mapping of shoes. Shoes nicely tied in architecture to the life that fills up the streets.

For my group’s project, we decided to map the mood change along our path. We created a map on which we used circles of varying sizes and colours to describe different aspects of our walking experience that contributed to the moods we felt. The colours indicated the moods, moving from happy and energetic to gloomy and oppressive and the size indicated the amount of activity. We supplemented the little animation with images i took along the way to help with visualizing the path during our presentation.

In retrospect, this project was a nice way to get us to explore the city on foot. We’ve become familiar with public transportation, and following Jessica around, but this let us roam free for a while and see the city on our own time.

Last weekend, several of us took a trip to Rome. The city was overwhelmingly full of tourists, smelly streets, and very old but gorgeous buildings. We managed to get around the city using the subway quite easily, thanks to all the subway riding we’ve done here in Milan, and we managed to cram quite a lot into two days of travel.

A couple of my sketchbook entries included several windows, doors, and arches that i saw in Rome. My badly thought out presumption of Rome was that everything would be Roman style, but I keep forgetting that although historical events might not take place simultaneously, they do tend to layer upon each other. Seeing all this history overlap really set that misconception straight, and the jarring reality that so much has already transpired in this world hit me. Here was the evidence right in front of me. The early Roman period, the rule of the Tetrarch, the introduction of Christianity, the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo, the Vatican, all that happened, and there it stood right infant of my eyes. Wow.

I couldn’t scribble my sketches down fast enough, nor pick out a few favorites to draw. I did pen down a few that captured some of the different events that transpired in Rome:

This first sketchbook spread has the arch of Titus and an arch inside the St. Peter’s Basilica side by side.

This second spread was a church facade we stumbled upon while walking the back roads to the Pantheon.

And finally, some of the crowning commercial brands of today, Prada and Dior.

Monica Castiglioni’s little jewelry boutique near Piazza Garibaldi was one of the most memorable trips from last week. The store is hidden in a residential-looking area, wedged between buildings: quite hard to find unless you’re really looking for it.
The jewelry in the store were all custom designs by Monica Castiglioni whose main medium of work is bronze and wax. There were two main types of jewelry on showcase in the store: her bronze coral-like collection, and the 3D printed jewelry.
The consultant at the store explained that Monica was inspired by fractals for the coral-like design. Incidentally I was quite infatuated with fractals for two whole years of my life, so I genuinely peed a little when I heard Monica Castiglioni understood the appeal. She uses the lost wax technique to create the bronze models. The permanent mold is made out of silicone, so the designs can be replicated, but considering the soft quality of silicone, no copy is really ever the same. All unique.

The consultant also told us about the properties of the bronze used. The casts are 100% bronze so the material reacts quite easily to different bodies, atmospheres, and maintenance techniques. The oxidization of the bronze also adds to the uniqueness of each piece. Since the bronze also reacts to body oils and pH, there is a very personal and contact based relationship between the wearer and the jewelry. I though this was a rather ingenious was of strengthening the relationship between consumer and material possession, and making her creations a little more valuable and personal to her customers.
This also changed my perspective on how i view oxidized jewelry. Typically it indicates impure quality of the material used in the creation of the piece. Monica Castiglioni flipped the tables here and actually used what degrades the value of most jewelry as valuable. If nothing, the prices clearly indicate just how much they’re worth.
Her other set was the newer collection of 3D printed jewelry. Monica Castiglioni apparently prefers to work hands on, so with her 3D creations, she didn’t actually create digital renditions, but used her bronze and silver models as prototype designs, and left the rest to the digital experts. The pieces we looked at, a variety of bracelets and one long chainlink necklace, seemed very brittle and delicate, but the material is surprisingly pliable and allowed for the hand to slip in and out easily.

Beautiful jewelry, and fascinating methods of creation.

The path between Torre Velasca and University Luigi Bocconi, which my group (Kendall, Angelica, and Anissa) and I have been assigned for the mapping project, is a rather interesting experience. There is a very tangible change in mood as one walks the streets from one spot to the other. Now this could very well be due to the fact that we were hyper aware of everything we passed, but I would like to believe in the contribution of the subconscious registering a change in atmosphere.

We started out walking in a rather bright and dandy looking spot, lots of hip looking college kids, green green park space across the street, a smattering of food spots, the likes. We also ventured into the university building, and although the security guard said they were closing, he allowed us five minutes to take in the front lobby at least. I’d say they were quite inviting.

The mood changed as we walked towards the tower. The college aged crowd started to morph into suited older men and women, shops became more formal. The quaint old buildings became a little more daunting. The last point of comfort was a little church like building on the street just perpendicular to the tower.  The mood of the place took a drastic turn to the gloomy side.

Torre Velasca was built in the form of a medieval watch tower and it really does accomplish that goal. The street was quieter, the buildings surrounding were more somber. I also felt uncomfortable goofing for the camera which is really not something I have a hard time with.

This helped us settle on our theme for the mapping project. This was a personal brief on the experience of walking the path. Specifics will be talked about in our presentation on Tuesday!

I want to preface this post with the fact that I’m not someone who can consistently keep up with a journal or a sketchbook, especially if it is assigned. There is this inherent dislike of regimented cataloguing and documentation that I refuse to do when it is an assignment. So the fact that I have kept up with this assignment, and with enthusiasm that has surprised me, is really an exciting and encouraging prospect. Maybe I am growing out of my childish rebellion, who knows.

Milan has to much to document and draw that at first, I couldn’t settle. I spent the first two days so overwhelmed with what ti draw on the very first page of my sketchbook that I ended up doing nothing for that time period. Finally, I had to just scold myself into sitting and doing SOMETHING. Ironically, I opened up my sketchbook the wrong way, so the scribbled drawings of the arches seen at the roof of the Duomo are at the back of the book. The actual first page is a sparse outline of a display window I drew while waiting for some classmates to finish up shopping one free evening the first week. So much for a good start…

But those two drawings gave me a good starting point for what I wanted to fill up my sketchbook with.Over the course of this study abroad, I decided to catalogue the different types of moulding and decor that adorns doors, windows, and arches. Milan, and Italy in general, has some really beautiful windows and doors, with elaborately carved detailing added to what is essentially a hole in a wall. There certainly isn’t a lack of simple glass windows around the city, but the abundance of old structures drowns out the simpler buildings.

The first spread I chose for this post was the sketch of two windows that I noticed from the window during one of our lectures in basic Italian. The two windows are from the same building, seen one on top of the other, and they’re so very different. The former used more circular motifs, coifs, and has a beautiful little balcony rail. The latter seems to reference the triangular pediment of the Parthenon in Athens. The common motif is the leafy bands that run down the sides of the windows. They are set into the flat facade of the building.

This past weekend in Edinburgh, the window and door vibe was drastically different. Both Milan and Edinburgh are intertwined with their respective old heritages but Scotland hails from a very different time. The history in Edinburgh really begins in the Middle Ages, and that is quite apparent, even through the little windows and doors of places. The windows (as seen in the sketches in the spread below) are simply decorated with linear patterns, and maybe the occasional moulding for decoration.

The windows at Doune Castle, where certain scenes from Outlander and Monty Python were filmed, had arched windows with a keystone to hold the arch together. But again, these windows were very very simple, set into the corbeled stone walls and not protruding like the windows in Milan.

With this bit of comparison and background in mind, I’m looking forward to finding more patterns and history through doors and windows.