Art Direction for a Limited Edition Furniture Collection and an Exhibition in Palazzo Biscari, Catania, Sicily

Moncada Rangel has curated a limited edition furniture collection for the Sicilian company DiSè: DOMESTIC MONUMENTS

By revisiting ancestral activities that are repeated every day, each designer contributed with his own critical vision, celebrating an intimate moment of daily life. This collection offers an archipelago of singular approaches that create a collective memory of our present day.

Moncada Rangel selected eight daily moments, that were assigned to eight different creatives that worked on the project with different approaches. The aim was to create a heterogeneous collection, not coherent in terms of materiality neither in their design. A collection of monuments on a domestic scale. Ideally all together the eight pieces can shape a single house with each single piece being part of a fundamental element of his program:

•1. REST: “Delos Bed” by Arquitectura G (ES)

•2. STORE: “Cabinet” by Point Supreme (GR)

•3. SHARE: “Numen” by Michael Schoner (DE)

•4. HEARTH: “Il Cielo” by Francesco Librizzi (IT)

•5. GROOM: “Groom” by OS Δ OOS (NL)

•6. SEAT: “Tasmania” by Leopold Bianchini (CH)

•7. DRESS: “Monument number One” by Guillermo Santoma (ES)

•8. ILLUMINATE: “A slant of Light” by Germans Ermics (LV)

Images by Alessandro Saletta and Mattia Caprara for DSL Studio

Graphics by (ab)normal Story

Tasmania is a set of shapes freely arranged on a circular base. It is a domestic insular landscape: the contained map of an ever-evolving intimate territory. Inspired by local Sicilian myths and crafts, each object is open to scaleless interpretation. As stones and logs placed around a campfire, expectations of a soft modern comfort are left behind to redefine a temporary gathering space.

(Sicilian chestnut, Etna lava stone, pietra pece stone, glazed clay, chromed steel, oxidised brass).

The Delos bed looks for the essence of what a bed is: a flat surface that defines a space, on which to place a comfortable material to rest on it. This base or pedestal defines a space within another space. The Delos bed does not want to be limited to being in a room, but wants to alter the perception of the space that surrounds it, creating a new set design. An abstract and transparent plane is held by pieces of clean geometry that evoke ruins of Greco-Roman architecture. These pieces are spread throughout the room and can work as accessories such as bedside tables, valet stands or chests of drawers.

Il Cielo is a filter supported on columns. It frames a portion of sky and casts its shadow on the ground. Thus tracing a bridge between a specific place and a wider dimension of space and time. It defines a threshold around an area without physical borders, only circumscribed by the presence of a roof. The space between the multiform columns has the sacred features of a byzantine temple and at the same time the reduced scale and centrality of mediterranean domestic interiors. The roof then turns itself into a private sky whose absolute cartesian nature is able to connect any reality below it.

A sculptural polished metal spiral that reflects the space while dividing it with a slant of light when lit.

The further it stands from the wall the softer the contrasting division becomes.

The Cabinet is a small piece of architecture in four parts: base, torso, penthouse, veranda. The exterior is white, luxurious, with reliefs and shiny tiles. The interior reveals textures: clouds below, wood, marble, aluminium and a colourful ribbon at the top. Hanging leaves, a curtain and a bust appear in the shadows, in print, like ghosts. When objects populate the Cabinet, they will merge with its building components; it will be impossible to tell what is built and what are the things that live inside it.

If the utility does not exist the possibilities of any object are multiplied to the infinite. This monument is the prototype of a sofa that we had in the studio standing vertically and finished in a way that can be seen from all four sides. The ornament has always been the alibi for a monument and it is not a sculpture but a statue, a statue that has everything to which an object can aspire to.

Groom is an exercise in monumentality, where a seemingly simple façade of the cabinet can be altered through the manual rotation of the individual louvers to reveal or hide its contents as a means of discovering maximum effect.

Whenever a big decision has to be discussed, the parties gather around a table. This is where politic is carried out - at round table discussions. Whenever there is a block party or you go to a local restaurant you sit on a bench and if someone wants to join they squeeze in. You might be placed next to someone you don’t know, but the bench is an equaliser.