Inventario 15 | Everything is a Project

Now in its fifteenth issue and tenth year, INVENTARIO continues its discussion on design culture, bringing together art, architecture and design in a free and interdisciplinary exchange. The cover of this new issue is dedicated to the pencil: a common and simple object, within everyone’s reach. For that reason it goes unseen, but it has its own unexpected beauty and it is the bearer of a social and cultural history – a kind of magic wand from which lines, trends and ideas flow.

Between the pages of INVENTARIO we find the usual sections that arrange its contents in a flow of thoughts, objects and images. In “Bounces” Beppe Finessi explores the meanings of the relationship between “full” and “void”, “visible” and “invisible”, while in “Judicious Pairings” Stefania Di Maria collects works that share the theme of “NO”. “Personal Inventory” presents an original design manual through the work of Corrado Levi: eighteen ways of designing, eighteen keys to reading Levi’s work. In turn, Corrado Levi shows Lina Bo Bardi’s “Seduta da bordo strada”, created in 1967, through his own “Why”.  Manolo De Giorgi's section “Hues”, after talking about orange and green in recent issues, this time focuses on works, objects and spaces marked by the colour brown. Paolo Bocchi’s “Normal Wonders”, with drawings by Marco Manini, transforms everyday objects – from the corkscrew to the bell, from the anchor to the mirror ball – into “poetic anonymities”, abstracting them through images and verses. For “Myths of Today” Francesca Picchi chooses James Irvine, retracing the stages of his work as a designer, while Giulio Iacchetti's “Short Notes” are dedicated to the pipe, with a selection of twelve iconic models. In “Lessons”, Alberto Meda talks about his concept of industrial design through some of the projects developed during his career. The protagonist of “Temporalia” by Elisa Testori is tape: a material dear to contemporary artists, tape can become design and an object of attention even by graphic designers and designers if they use it (to modify, to weld, to cover, to create, to play with) and rethink it. Finally, Roberta Valtorta’s “Other Gazes” is dedicated to carousels and their evocative power, combining travel, games and dreams.

INVENTARIO won the ADI Compasso d'Oro Award.