The Varese Design Week

Today, at City Hall, an important initiative was presented, and it will animate Varese in the spring.
The second edition of the Varese Design Week will be held from 7 to 13 April 2017 and it will be organised by the Wareseable association, together with City Hall and many important partners.

The dates were chosen in conjunction with some days of “Salone del Mobile” and “Fuorisalone” in Milano, and it is a choice motivated by the intention of connecting the city of Varese to national and international realities.
The Mayor Davide Galimberti, the assessor of Culture Roberto Cecchi, the assessor of Commerce Ivana Perusin, were present, along with the delegates of Wareseable association: the journalist Nicoletta Romano, the designer Giorgio Caporaso, the architect Silvana Barbato, the journalist Silvia Giacometti and the architect Laura Sangiorgi.

THE LOCATIONS

The cornerstone of the event will be the city centre, “Piazza Repubblica” included, with the active engagement of the city’s commercial activities, but the event will be extended also to other places of the Varese area, including its decentralised areas and districts, searching for an approach of global systemic belonging of the city.

Some initiatives will be held in Comerio, in “Parco di Villa Tatti Talacchini”, and in Besozzo, in the former “Copertificio Sonnino”. A guided tour of  “la lunga linea morbida dal 1935” in “Spazio Museo Aziendale” of Rossi, in Albizzate, which is a pride of Varese, and it is also one of the greatest Italian design brand all around the world.

The architect, designer and sculptor Marcello Morandini will be the Honorary President of the event, and among the people involved, there will be Mauro Porcini Chief Design Officer of PepsiCo, one of the most famous Italian managers and respected designers.

As Varese has an historical vocation of green city of Italy, there will be also a section dedicated to Green Design. The architect from Varese Giorgio Caporaso, honoured with important rewards, for years has dealt with the themes of sustainable architecture with an awareness to the environment and to the presence of green city through an independent path of research in the fields of design and sustainable design.

THE COMPETITION FOR THE BENCH

Designers and companies will be called to participate in a competition of ideas for the creation of a bench, with the aim of renewing some outdoor areas of the city.
The competition is inspired from the book “Sulla Panchina. Percorsi dello sguardo nei giardini e nell’arte” by Michael Jakob (Einaudi).
The sponsor of the competition will be Openjobmetis that for years has supported remarkable activities in the area, and Faberlab – Confartigianato.

PARTNERS

“Innovation, creativity, the will to get in the game: all of this rhymes with Openjobmetis, that is why we decided to support this excellent initiative,” explains Rosario Rasizza, Chief Executive Officer of the first and only Employment Agency listed in the Italian Stock Market. “Openjobmetis specialises in nurturing the talent of the thousands of people who, every day, come to us in search of a job, and the Varese Design Week represents the ideal framework into which our social identity flows. We believe that an event of such importance will manage to engage and move the city and the province where we were born, as we like to remember, and which deserve to have the chance not to be second to anyone when it comes to resourcefulness and culture.”

Faberlab – Confartigianato, in addition to contributing actively to communication thanks to its means and fields, as technical sponsor, will print in 3D ten projects sent by just as many designers and it will handle the production and the realisation of the bench which has won the contest.

As in the first edition, the purpose of this event is to engage architects, designers, scholars, writers, musicians, artists, companies, but also the young students of Liceo Artistico Frattini.

The idea is that everyone in town, thanks to their competence and professionalism, will have the opportunity to dialogue and to present the topic through stories and direct testimonies, with the aim of putting these disciplines in contact with people who are not in the sector, with interested citizens, curious and sensitive people, business owners, restaurant owners and hotel managers of this area, engaging them with meetings, discussions, but also with friendly moments, therefore incentivizing through this project the touristic vocation of this city.

THE ARTISTIC INSTALLATIONS

Artistic installations are prepared, and they are real projects which will involve the citizens: Fuorilingua with the creation of a series of “artistic languages” to be freely interpreted and Dreaming Jeans, a collective artist performance, by now itinerant, almost a social experiment.

FILMS

Even cinema will marry the design, in collaboration with the magazine Living is Life and Giulio Rossini, promoter of Filmstudio and Cinema Nuovo, during the closing night of the Varese Design Week, 13th April at 9 pm, at Cinema Teatro Nuovo, where the famous film “Mon oncle” by Jacques Tati and the documentary “Pierluigi Ghianda, l’uomo che firma il legno” presented by his daughter Marialuisa will be played. Marialuisa is the direct spokeswoman of the ebony carpenter, the international designers’ favourite, who, in 2016, was the protagonist of a big exhibit at Villa Reale, Monza, in collaboration with Milano Triennale, and of a prestigious exposition in Tokyo.

According to the promoters, the strength of this initiative is the ability to create a network.

Connections with other local activities and with other design weeks, both at a national and at an international level, such as the Catanzaro Design Week (www.catanzarodesignweek.com), the Venice Design Week (www.venicedesignweek.com), the Czech Design Week in Czech Republic (www.czechdesignweek.cz) are expected, and all of this will result in a great exchange of visibility, but mostly in important cultural exchanges.