Author: Alexandra Kate Catterall

http://www.triennale.org/en/mostra/tdm10-giro-giro-tondo-design-for-children/

My study abroad experience in Milan has truly been life changing. Not in a million years would I have imagined that I would be able to learn so much in five short weeks about people, cultures, the arts and myself. Although there were many exhausting days were we walked over ten miles, I would not change a single thing.

When I first signed up for this class I honestly imagined that we would be mostly learning about fashion design. People always say that Milan is one of the fashion capitals of the world so I only associated the word design with fashion. However, living in Italy for the past five weeks has completely changed my definition of what design is. Today, I define design as something that is more then just fashion, design is everywhere, it is in buildings, kitchens, lighting, chairs etc. While visiting Fabrica one of the graphic designers explained his take on the definition of design. He explained to us that in the United States design is mostly seen as fashion or graphic design, while in Europe design is mostly seen as product design.

Although I have learned so much about amazing designers, architects and artists while living in Milan, more than anything, I have learned the most about myself. I have learned that even though I am done with my bachelor’s degree I still have a great amount to learn and many places to explore. As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, one of the biggest lessons that I have learned while on this trip is that, although I have gotten these specific majors in school, I do not have to work in just one limited field. I can use my knowledge to add to many different fields. After visiting Studio FM and realizing my love for design thanks to these past five week, I have started to research different jobs that will allow me in incorporate my love for research, design and the Middle East.

Other lessons that I have learned while on this trip are that I can be incredibly patient and calm. I’ve learned that a missed or late train does not faze me. Before this trip, I never realized that I was the type of person that looked at the glass half full. I can do so much within a week and still have the energy and the thirst to want to learn more! I find it so amazing that this trip was able to put me outside of my comfort zone and help me realize little things about myself.

This week was our last week together and it was so bitter sweet! I can’t believe that I have to say goodbye to everyone, but I am also very excited to get home and share all of my stories about my adventures in Italy with my family. My last trip with my design family was to Treviso a four-hour bus ride from Milan. We visited the Tipoteca Italiana, a hands on museum that showed us about letter pressing and the process it took to print a book or a newspaper for many centuries before the invention of computers and modern printers. I have been doing calligraphy for about five years, so I was just like a kid in a candy store at the museum seeing all of the different fonts that they had. At the museum, we got to make a family poster. We decided to highlight the name of our program, the date of our program, and the names of our favorite designers on our family poster. I was so shocked that it took us an hour and a half to produce the final poster. We first had to come up with an idea that everyone agreed with then, we had to choose the ink colors making sure that the ink colors went well with the color of the paper we used. The most time consuming part of the entire process was lining up the individual letters, which had different fonts, so that all the designer names fit correctly on our poster. I learned that the art of letterpress technique has rapidly been decreasing in recent decades because of new and faster technology. This makes me very upset because letter press books and newspapers last much longer then books today, because of the ink and paper used. This museum visit was truly amazing I was so thankful for the staff for being so patient us sixteen girls and our million different opinions!

Although my last morning in Italy started off very stressful, once I stepped into Fabrica, a research center in Treviso, Italy, that offers young people (Under the age of 25) the opportunity to grow and explore their talents, I immediately forgot about all of my stress! I was able to enjoy the works of talented students from all around the word. The young students of Fabrica have all been given a one year scholarships to come stay in Treviso to work on projects that will help them perfect their crafts. Unlike many design/art schools around the world, Fabrica does not teach its students in a classroom. The students learn through the different projects that they developed throughout the year. One of the projects that really stood out to me at Fabrica the book “Iranian Living Room”. This book is a “collective visual tale of fifteen young Iranian photographers” who welcomed the world into their living rooms (Fabrica.it). I was so excited about this book because even in a little town in Italy, I saw a piece of my culture and background being represented. As we took a tour around Fabrica, it was so interesting to see how all sixteen of us were able to connect with at least one piece of art that a student had created.

I can’t believe that this week was our last full week in Milan. I feel like I have lived here for a year now and learned so much but at the same time, time truly did fly L. Although I have had an amazing time exploring Italy, this week was hands-down one of my favorite weeks. We visited Studio FM, a graphic design company located in Milan’s Chinatown. Before coming to Milan and learning about design, I did not know much about graphic design. I thought that graphic design took many years to master and could only be done with a team of artists that knew how to paint, draw and were very technologically savvy. Although this is true, visiting studio FM this week opened my eyes up to the different talents and backgrounds it takes to successfully run a graphic design company. This summer I graduated from UT with an International Relations degree and a Middle Eastern degree focusing on culture, media and the arts within the Middle East. I would have never thought that my studies in the field of Middle Eastern studies would ever make me have such a connection to a project done by a graphic design studio in Milan. The owner of the studio showed us FM studios branding project for the New Doha International Airport that has taken them more then eight years to complete and it is still on going. He explained that most of their time was spent on researching the Arab culture to make sure that everything that they designed was appropriate. For example, in the Muslim culture it is considered inappropriate to have human and animal figures drawn, so when it comes to adding decorative touches to things such as walls, Arab/Muslim cultures replace actual images of people and animals with calligraphy. Before visiting Studio FM, I felt a little bit boxed in while trying to find a job that related to what I studied at UT. I felt that the only jobs that I could do with my degrees were to work for a non-profit or become a translator. I had no idea that with my knowledge, I could possibly help create the designs for an entire airport, from their logo to the different lounges found inside the airport. After visiting FM studios I feel truly inspired to look for job opportunities outside of the box that our society sometimes creates for us.

 

This week we also got to visit Christo’s Floating Piers. Although it took us about eight hours to finally arrive to the piers it was so worth it! During the long train ride, I got to get to know some of the girls even more, which was very nice. I regret that I did not walk the piers(It was way too hot), but I am so happy that I made the journey to the Island and at least got to see them up close. I was so surprised at myself for being able to withstand such a long day but at the end of it all I would not change a thing. Although it took a group of us more then three hours to get off the Island, I got the opportunity to explore the Island and people watch. I was so pleasantly surprised that thousands of people from cities all over Italy came out in the middle of the weekday in the sweltering heat to visit Christo’s work. I don’t think that back in the United States people would go this much out of their way to visit an artist’s work.

This weekend was my last weekend in Italy and it turned out to be one of my favorite weekends. I had an amazing opportunity to visit my CA Anna’s family in Arona on Saturday. The train ride from Milan to Arona was beautiful and once we got off the train, so was the weather! This past week Milan was extremely hot with temperatures rising to more then ninety degrees. In Arona however, the weather was absolutely perfect with temperatures around seventy-five degrees. From the time that I set foot in Arona to the time that I left, Anna’s parents fed me, I truly had the authentic Italian experience this weekend! First we started our meal with a glass of spiced white wine, for the first course we had homemade pasta with shrimp(to die for <3), then we had a stuffed cheese and eggplant pie, after that we had a simple salad. For dessert we had homemade melon and vanilla gelato topped with freshly picked blackberries from Anna’s grandfather’s garden. We topped off everything with amazing Italian coffee. I had heard that Italians take their digestion seriously but I experienced how serious they took it first hand at Anna’s house. After dinner, Anna’s parents made us take a very small sip of a type of extra fermented wine made of grape skin to help digest the food. We were also instructed to sit down at the table for at least twenty minutes to let the food go down before doing any activity.

 

This week Bri, Hailey and I worked super hard on our mapping project. We have our presentations on Tuesday and I am a little bit nervous but excited about presenting our two buildings and our walk. We did the walk two times starting from The Pirelli Tower and finishing at the Casa Galimberti building. The Pirelli Skyscraper was constructed from 1956-1960 and Gio Ponti was the architect. The Architectural style is modernism and was originally built in the area where the Pirelli Companies first factory was located in the nineteenth century. This week we actually got to visit the Pirelli building with the entire class and go inside of it. One interesting fact about the Pirelli Skyscraper is that in 2002 a small airplane crashed into it, causing the building to close down until 2003. Our second building was Casa Galimberti constructed from 1903-1905, we also saw this building as a class during our first week in Milan. The architect of this building is Giovanni Battista Bossi and the constructors of the building were the Galimberti brothers. The Architectural type of this building is Art Nouveau or liberty style. Before I did the first walk between our buildings I was pretty sure that since our first building was a modern building and our second building was liberty style, the walk between would follow the same trend. I thought that the neighborhood around the Pirelli building would be very modern and as we moved further and further away from it and closer to the liberty style Casa Galimberti the neighborhoods were going to get older and have more of a traditional post World War II feel. I was very wrong to think that the walk from my two assigned buildings was going to have such a smooth transition in neighborhoods from modern to liberty style. Although the initial area where the Pirelli building is located at is very modern, a two minute walk in the direction of the Casa Galimberti building leaves us in a old post war neighborhood that is anything but modern. This area has many small local owned businesses such as, Asian markets and restaurants, massage places, two small churches and hole in the wall restaurants. About fifteen minutes into our walk, and five minutes away from the Casa Galimberti building we were once again surprised when we hit a main street. This street was extremely modern featuring many stores such as Nike and Zara. As we turned the corner away from the main street we were once again confronted by small shops, and a minute later we were standing by Casa Galimberti. Our walk had many different flavors to it, it was not one smooth transition from the new to the old. From this walk I learned how beautifully Milan is able to incorporate the old and the new, different cultures and different backgrounds in such a small space.

 

Although I had many ideas about the theme for my sketchbook, for the past two weeks I narrowed down my interests and decided to focus on graffiti. This week I was able to organize the pictures of graffiti I have been taking and realized that most of the very intricate graffiti pieces that I’ve captured have been along the walls of train stations. These graffiti tags are usually playful and full of color, often featuring animals. While looking at my pictures, I noticed that I had taken a lot of random pictures of words tagged on sides of buildings both in Milan and in Venice. I wanted to dismiss these tags as a form of useless graffiti, but the more I looked at the pictures, the more I realized a common trend. In Milan, words tagged on the walls of buildings were usually written in Italian. I looked up some of them and they seemed to just be random words that might be a symbol for a certain gang. However, in Venice most of the graffiti words tagged on walls of buildings were written in English. These tags contained powerful words such as “no more visitors” and “wake up Italy”. To me these tags are not just useless graffiti done by untalented kids wanting to vandalize, but they are done by youth, using powerful words, to show their discontent with a range of issues such as government and tourism.

 

For my third weekend I decided to stay in Milan and explore the city. Not only did I get most of my shopping done for my family, I also discovered my favorite stores in Milan. The two stores that I will be dreaming about once I get back to the United States would have to be the Design Supermarket by the Dumo and Tiger. This weekend I have gone to the Design Supermarket twice and I still don’t feel like I have spent enough time in there, especially after my newfound love for Alessi. So far I have bought an Alessi teakettle, some espresso cup sets for my friends and family and the famous Castiglioni spoons with the square handle. It has been so fun to study all these designers and actually be able to see their work in stores around Milan. I found it so amazing that the store employees talked about each piece that they had in their store with so much care. I asked one of the sales ladies if she could help me find the Castiglioni spoons for coffee, not only did she know exactly where they were, she proceeded to tell me how Castiglioni came up with the playful design. It seems like everyone I talk to know so much about Italian design.

 

This week I was not feeling very well and was very upset that I missed the Umberto Boccioni exhibition at Palazzo Reale and the Museo del Novecento. I decided that since I missed these two museums, I was going to independently research them on my own. I have never taken an art history class so I was not familiar with the artists from the museum visits. I researched Umberto Boccioni and found out that he was one of the firsts artists to help shape the futurism movement in Italy. Futurism was a movement in Italy during the twentieth century that emphasized technology and industrial cities. The futurists glorified the modernization of Italy and wanted Italy to change from its ways of the past. Many futurist artists worked in many mediums such as ceramics, graphic design, urban and interior design and even fashion. After researching Umberto Boccioni I have to go to the museum independently and see his incredible work such as Forme uniche della continuita nello spazio in wax, Three women and States of Mind II; The Farewells. (update: I still have not been able to go visit the Umberto Boccioni exhibition L)

 

Today we got to visit the Alessi factory and I must say that I have fallen in love. While most teens were spending countless hours at the mall roaming around shopping for “trendy” clothes, I was spending my free time roaming around the home goods sections of Macy’s and Dillard’s obsessing over plate settings, dinning and entertaining sets, teapots… (I can go on forever J). Although I had heard of Alessi before, I had no idea that after my visit to the Alessi factory/”museum” I would become so obsessed with their products. I think that the reason I had such a strong connection and fell in love with Alessi products was because of our amazing tour guide that managed to bring history to life. Not only did our tour guide tell us personal stories about Giovanni Alessi and his family, she showed us many different stages of prototypes that the designers developed to reach the finished products. Our tour guide explained to us that the Alessi factory was founded in the early twentieth century as household and kitchen supply company. During the 1920’s Alessi was not known as a design company, but after a couple of decades, under Alberto Alessi the company became known as an “Italian Design factory” collaborating with outside designers. Finally, in the 1990’s to the present Alessi became a “designer houseware” expanding its market outside of Italy and working with companies such as Target and J. C. Penney. Although a lot of Alessi peaces are on the pricy side, I appreciate that they have some products that are more affordable. One thing that surprised me about Alessi as a designer brand was that by adding plastic to their collection they did not de-value the brand, they just made it available for all markets. Another thing that surprised me about Alessi was how much they are willing to give young and unknown designers a chance to develop a product for them. Our tour guide told us that sometimes Alessi company will review a design sent to them by an unknown designer and they will actually back and produce the product. Although I was in love with all of the Alessi products, my two favorites that I hope to have in my home one day would have to be the Graces Kettle with the bird accent and the Starch juicer that is seen as more of a work of art then an actual juicer.

 

This weekend I took my second weekend trip and I went to Edinburgh Scotland! It is starting to get a little bit hot in Milan so it was such a pleasant change to be in cold weather for a weekend. It was around forty to fifty degrees and mostly rainy this weekend. Apparently just before the weekend, Scotland had warm sunny weather for a week or so which is rare. When I first arrived in Scotland I was so excited to finally be able to communicate with people in English again, and not feel horrible about not being able to speak Italian. However, I realized that communicating with people in Scotland was just as difficult as communicating with people in Italy. Most times, I was too distracted by peoples accents, anything the Scottish people said with their accents sounded a hundred times better so I would forget to pay attention to what people were telling me, other times I genuinely could not understand what people were telling me because they spoke too fast! Anissa and I booked an Airbnb in the Old Town and decided to skip the tours and just explore Edinburgh by ourselves. We walked by the ocean, explored Old Town, people watched at the park and got to experience the Scottish nightlife (amazing J).

I can’t believe that my first week in Milan has already come to an end! I arrived in Milan at 11:45 Pm on May 30^th and took a cab to my new apartment. I was so shocked that the streets of Milan were so empty. I always pictured Milan to be just like New York, a city that never sleeps. However, the forty minute cab ride to my new apartment seemed so quite, the only people out on the streets were street cleaners and one or two cars. When I got into central Milan I was pleasantly confronted by beautiful architecture everywhere I looked. As I later found out in the morning, Milan can get very crowded during the days and sometimes it is very hard to stop and appreciate all the beautiful architecture that Milan has to offer. It was so nice to be able to get the feel of the city that late at night; it was peaceful and eerie all at the same time. The next morning I met all of the girls and they were so welcoming, I was not able to make it to any of the study abroad orientations back in Texas so it was so nice to meet all of them. We are sixteen girls that are design and non-design majors, but hopefully by the end of this month we will all consider ourselves designers ;). During our welcome orientation in Milan I finally understood why the streets of Milan were so empty when I arrived the night before. We learned that Italian people love their rest and they go to bed much earlier then what we are used to, especially in areas such as downtown Austin and New York City. During orientation we also learned about different ways to order coffee, which seemed strange at the time, but as I found out this week Italians take their coffee very seriously! (It has only been a week and I think I might be addicted to Italian coffee. Ps. Never order a sprits at a coffee shop before 6pm, Anissa and I learned the hard way). During orientation we also learned to never dip bread in oil and vinegar like we usually do back in the states, we also learned to never wear white socks. I still don’t understand why white socks are a no no but I will get to the bottom of it before this month is over!

 

During this month we have a project in which we choose a topic and we fill our sketchbook with observations about that topic. We have to be able to compare and contrast the topic found in Italy to a similar topic in the United States. Originally, walking around in Milan I had a million ideas to fill up my sketchbook with, but towards the end of this week I was able to narrow down my sketchbook topics to three. I hope by the end of this weekend I will be able to pick one topic and stick with it. My first topic is balconies around Milan and any other places in Europe I plan to visit during these five weeks. Balconies were the first things I noticed walking around Milan, every building has such beautiful and unique balconies with different types of flowers. The second topic that I am looking into for my sketchbook is different types of cars that I see in Milan. In general cars here are much smaller, but what is most shocking to me is that car brands such as Toyota look so different here then they do in the states. I expected to see much more Ferraris here but I haven’t seen a single one yet L I also noticed many different car brands that I have never seen before that I would like to do more research on. The third topic that I am considering for my sketchbook is graffiti in Milan. This is the topic that I am leaning towards for my sketchbook. I have noticed that World War II had a huge impact in Italy, and although graffiti is considered to be one of the first forms of art to ever exist, I am interested in looking at graffiti that emerged after World War II in Italy. I want to look at the relationship between graffiti and the building that it occupies. Does it matter what part of town the graffiti is displayed in? Do nicer neighborhoods in Milan have less graffiti? What are the consequences of getting caught tagging a building? While going a bit of research on graffiti in Milan, I found out that graffiti here is kind of a big deal, there is a tour dedicated to showing people around famous graffiti tags in Milan. I hope that while I am here I get to go on the tour, or at least find some of the well-known ones on my own!

 

It is 6/6/2016 and I just got back from my first weekend trip. A group of us girls decided to go visit Venice for the weekend and it turned out to be an adventure that I will never forget. Not knowing that Venice has 117 small Islands we booked an Airbnb Friday night and headed to what we thought was the “famous Venice” with gondolas and houses on top of water. Where we ended up however was completely different. After a train ride to Venice, two boat rides, a two mile walk and a forty-five minute bus ride we arrived to our Airbnb in the middle of what I consider a countryside, far far away from any gondolas or houses on top of the water. Long story short we failed to book our Airbnb in central Venice were most tourists go, but we did manage to book an Airbnb on a small island that was extremely beautiful. We decided to take a stroll through the small town and found a local restaurant by the lake to eat at. The chef and owner of the restaurant came to out table and personally took our order because he was so carious as to see how five American girls ended up on this Island and in his restaurant. After a lovely authentic Italian dinner we continued to explore the beautiful town that ill forever be in love with!

 

http://www.thefloatingpiers.com/#introduction

We went on a walk through of the factory where catwalk collections (prototypes) are made for Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney and others. We saw where the designers sketches are developed toile and the departments where patterns are digitized, cut, fabricated and finished – fascinating!

http://www.kering.com/