Interview with Luigi Napolitano

In order to stimulate design in a virtuous and eco-sustainable key with RAYTENT LIVING fabrics Giovanardi has launched the Textile Experience call. As from better expectations, many important and high quality projects made by avant-garde architects and designers have been submitted.

The winner of SPRECH AGORÀ DESIGN 2018 - Textile Experience competition, is Luigi Napolitano, who in this interview talks about Guancione, the project he realized with RAYTENT LIVING yarns.

Guancione is the design of an armchair / pouf that I imagined perfect for the Textile Experience competition of SPRECH AGORÀ DESIGN 2018, as the project focuses on green economy, versatility and efficiency.

It transmits the values ​​of recycling and environmental protection thanks to the use of its material combining beauty and refinement, in indoor / outdoor settings.

I tried to create a smart object, both comfortable and innovative but flexible in its use and formal compositions, in some ways stimulating and flexible, capable of combining functionality and creative stimulus, in a game of possible modular compositions that push the customer to interpret and compose the product and the space, in the most varied ways. Thus optimizing the product, and making it more efficient, thanks to its ability to adapt to different contexts and uses, internal and external, depending on the customer's needs.

What is the character of the project in relation to RAYTENT?

Guancione is a smart product, where the simplicity of the shapes is designed to minimize the processing waste of the fabric that embraces it, thus respecting the values ​​that RAYTENT embodies: helping to create a flexible and efficient product, both functionally, than on that of adaptability to different usage scenarios. These elements all contribute to create a character that embodies in the best way the concept of green economy, giving you the characteristics of versatility and efficiency, essential for a new and more conscious sustainable design.

From RAYTENT fabric to the Product: the idea of ​​the flexible and smart object Guancione is a modular pouf / armchair, with simple, dry and well-defined lines, which knows how to make that freshness typical of a smart, iconic and captivating design, its strong point, capable, with its face, of capturing the caution.

At the same time, its nature is also multifunctional and hybrid, being able to be transformed at first into a pouf and the into low armchair in a few gestures.

These characteristics of freshness and multi-functionality, its being iconic in its ability to attract attention and to be recognizable, in addition to being able to extend the composition in a modular way (with the use of two or more Cheeks), composing spatial configurations varied and fun, these values ​​are all inspired by RAYTENT fabric, a new recycled acrylic fabric born to give an answer to the need to recover the cuttings generated by the awning industry.

How it's done

It consists of two simple parallelepiped structures, of roughly identical shape but mirrored, on the horizontal axis. The two structures are completely free and independent, simply resting on one another, but they differ in the fact that one, the one resting on the floor and acting as a base, contains inside a sliding metal tubular element, which can slide and come out of the base up to an established block, and become the support element for the second structure, when you decide to use the pouf as an armchair.

In fact the seat of the pouf is simply raised, rotated and recessed in the space that the tubular structure forms with the base. With this simple gesture we transform the cubic pouf unit into an armchair. Furthermore, removing any structural constraint between the two parts (backrest base), allows us to be able to use the backrest structure also as a seat cushion or low pouf, and this easily lets us understand how it is possible to compose different compositional and spatial configurations, having more than one Guancia available.

About me

My name is Luigi Napolitano, born in 1979. I achieved artistic maturity in the Applied Arts section. Mobile at the I.S. of Art F. Juvara of San Cataldo in 98, then in 2011 I gained in Palermo a degree in Architecture. I started amy professional career focusing above all on the aspects inherent to representation and interior design, and from there it was easy to feel completely fascinated.

I love design that expresses and evokes ideas and contents to live concretely. A meeting point between research, interpretation and a lot of passion, able to involve people in a continuous creative and evocative stimulus.

The designer must understand the needs, as well as confer and unveil new meanings and ways of use, making complex things simple and stimulating boring actions: as a designer, I believe we should make objects that are not only beautiful and useful, but rather try to think and do things with different eyes. The goal is to involve people, in a continuous creative and evocative stimulus, making them participate in some way, to the creative dimension: evoking, with each product, new meanings and emotions, telling and suggesting a new experience of doing.

For more info about the designer: www.luiginapolitano.it