La Cameretta
A piece of furniture that is half a shelf, half a dolls' house. Its design is inspired by the sophisticated section of Gino Valle's housing on the Giudecca island (1984). This object symbolizes for us “the last possible kids' room”, the bedroom where we spent our childhood during the 80s but that we are not likely to design as architects nor to enjoy as parents. This playful installation aims to loudly states that our generation (as architects as well as citizens) should not give up trying to provide quality houses for everyone.
The kids' room
Between the end of WWII and the 80s, Italian architects faced the need for new housing blocks to accommodate a population that was growing fast. This long period saw the construction of largely ugly suburbs, with only few examples of good architecture. Gino Valle’s social housing on the Giudecca island is one of the best and most poetic of such exceptions. This was the expression of a State that tried to give a home to all its citizens, especially to those who were going to start a family. Today, this vision is completely out of time: firstly, because Italy doesn't invest in real estate anymore, and secondly because, as demographic data suggest, Italian households are nowadays mostly composed of a single person.
This is why the kids' room in Valle's three-storey apartment symbolizes for us “the last possible kids' room”, the bedroom where we spent our childhood during the 80s but that we are not likely to design as architects nor to enjoy as parents.
We produced a piece of furniture that is half a shelf, half a dolls' house. Its design is inspired by the sophisticated section of Gino Valle's project. This object defines the room as “the kids' room” and it is set up with toys and other memorable items from our Millennial childhood. This playful installation aims to loudly states that our generation (as architects as well as citizens) should not give up trying to provide quality houses for everyone.
Originally conceived for the Unfolding Pavilion call for installations, the piece of furniture that we displayed during the Biennale is a sort of prototype of an autonomous design object that could be produced serially. Gino, as we named it as a tribute to Gino Valle, is a piece of furniture made of colored medium density fiberboard. It has two sides, with different features: one side is a proper shelf, that can host objects of different size and type (books, dvd, kitchen stuffs), the other side is a dolls house. It is composed by vertical and horizontal elements, some of which can be moved in different positions, changing the appearance of the piece of furniture.Gino's original version has three colours: ocher, grey and violet. The partitions of the shelf are grey, the dolls' house structure is violet while the vertical panel dividing the two parts is ocher.
Thanks to its manifold concept, Gino can be placed in each room of the house: it can be a bookshelf in the living room, a cupboard in the dining room or a dolls' house to play or to place toys. It can be a free standing furniture, useful to separate different areas in a unique space. It is a playful object that interacts with its context.
