Investigations into Decor and Decus

A course curls into the different rooms of a house, from the entrance to the tearoom, from the kitchen to the garden. A sequence of domestic fragments and everyday scenes, in which designers measure themselves against decoration: they were invited to design domestic textures for the laminated boards by Abet Laminati.

Each texture is the result of a designing idea and experience, which is summed up in a short text (basis and goal at the same time of making design). Browsing through the pages, one enters in a guided tour through meditative / provocative / light / excessive rooms, designed by some of the protagonists of Italian design such as Alessandro Mendini, Italo Lupi, Corrado Levi, Lisa Ponti, Marcello Morandini, Ugo La Pietra, Denis Santachiara, Getulio Alviani...

The tale I investigate by Maurizio Matrone accompanies this discovery: a wandering of a domestic investigator who ecstatically / aesthetically lurks around among spaces and surfaces of a design-house.

The exhibition Investigations into Decor and Decus (13th December 2007 - 29th June 2008), of which this book is the catalogue, was hosted at the Fondazione Museo Arti e Industria in Omegna and curated and planned by Studio Ghigos.