Studio Alchimia
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Studio Alchimia is an Italian design studio founded by Alessandro Guerriero in 1976. It was a gallery for experimental work, not constrained creatively by industrial production. They mocked the scientific rational behind Modernism. Developed influential design studio by Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi, Paola Navone, Michel De Lucchi. Mendini became a leading exponent appropriated classic furniture of Marcel Breuer (Wassily chair).
Studio Alchimia was a design collective, founded in 1976 in Milan, Italy by Italian Architect Alessandro Guerriero. Studio Alchimia's aim was to recalibrate notions of craft to alignment with modern industrial civilization. "Alchemia was part of a larger movement of Italian designers intent on coming up with strategies to dismantle the rigid ideology of modernism—they called their alternative “Nuovo Design.” Much of their design work consisted of experimental prototypes employing technological innovation. Studio Alchimia presented their first collection of furniture, "Bau.Haus uno" in 1978, followed by the collection, "Bau.Haus due" in 1979. In 1981 Studio Alchimia was awarded the Golden Compass for design research. "The "new handicrafts", which were first put on show by Alessandro Guerriero at huis Alchymia, possess certain very precise characteristics: the craftsmanship employed, given that production is made uo of small runs or unique pieces, does not depend on the us of particular techniques, but rather on the speed with which the models - whose design makes no concessions to the possibility of future mass-production - are constructed by craftsmen using the most advanced techniques in modern joinery."
Studio Alchimia collaborators included Donatella Buffi, Pier Carlo Bontempi, Carla Ceccariglia, Stefano Casciani, Rina Corti, Walter Garro, Bruno Gregori, Georgio Gregori, Adriana Guerriero, Rainer Hegele, Jeremy King, Yumiko Kobajashi, Ewa Kulakowska, Allesandro Mendini, Mauro Panzeri, and Patrizia Scarzella.
Studio Alchemia produced objects by Ettore Sottsass Jr., Andrea Branzi, Allesandro Mending, Michelle De Lucchi, Franco Raggi, Daniela Puppa, Andrea Belloni, Paola Navone, Lapo Binazzi, Riccardo Dalisi, and Trix and Robert Haussmann, among others.
Italian architect, designer and author Andrea Branzi wrote extensively about Studio Alchimia in his 1984 publication "The Hot House; Italian New Wave Design", contextualizing the significance of Studio Alchemia's activity in relation to earlier experimental design collectives such as Ziggurat, UFO Group, 9999, Superstudio and Archizoom, and the subsequent significance of the Memphis Group. In particular, Studio Alchimia played an central role in fostering and establishing the formal and theoretical framework for the practices of influential designers such as Ettore Sottsass, Jr., Allesandro Mendini, and Andrea Branzi.
See also
See Italian Radical Design and Anti-Design.
