DESIGN GARDEN Contemporary interiors inspired by nature - Nature is a place to live. It's our home –

The #designgarden project springs from the collaboration between #thestylistswardrobe and the curators #martamassara and #elisabettascantamburlo.
An elegant showroom in Cadorna hosts, as part of the ‘5 VIE’ circuit and on the occasion of the Milan #design Week 2019, a collective of #design and art inspired by nature and its kingdoms - mineral, vegetable, animal - and in its interaction with man. In #design too, everything starts from and goes back to nature, from materials to inspiration in shapes and colours. During the week when Milan becomes a destination for creatives from all over the world and is filled with suggestions, we want to honour nature, remembering that we are her guests and celebrating her as the first designer from which all get inspired sooner or later.

BAM - Bottega Artigiana Metalli is a designers’ collective who get their hands in the dirt and artisans who think with their hands. It is an innovative project of contemporary craftsmanship that escapes standard definitions typically referring to the arts, crafts and #design, constantly looking for contamination and interactions. An encounter between the harmony of shapes and conceptual decision, BAM objects are voices coming from the past to shake the observer’s soul. Every object has to be touched, looked at and felt: it tells a story. Production, traditionally linked to metals, encounters other materials, opening up a dialogue with the skills of artisans, designers and local creatives.

BAM - the sound of the hammer on the anvil - was founded by Tonino Bruno, a third-generation artisan, and his sons Vittorio and Andrea. The fortunate set of skills, abilities and family experiences are constant elements of the artisan path started in 1890, which today becomes dynamic and innovative in the vision of a new Sardinian handicraft.

Federica Bracchetti is an artist from Pesaro, whose inspiration is nature, in her manifold facets and forms. Her artistic career Federica goes from figurative to abstract portrait, leading her to recognize herself more in the free interpretation of things. She has chosen to have a vision free from the constraints of reality, abandoning the partiality of detail in abstraction.

CREATIVE EL VISION studio, founded by Elona Izrailova, a Russian designer based in Milan, offers a wide range of services in the field of #design, such as visual communication, custom fashion accessories, hand-painted fabrics and furniture decoration. In the creative process, CREATIVE EL VISION puts together a combination of graphic tradition with materials such as mirrors, woods and fabrics, mixing digital #design and hand-painted designs. Her motto is: looking to the future, maintaining the beauty of the past, developing and enjoying the present.

Daniela Evangelisti, originally from Aosta, has always nurtured a great passion for fabrics, in particular for hand-woven raw hemp canvases, lace, embroidery and linen. These are her creative tools, materials from which she gives life to deep and delicate concepts. At the beginning, she used fabrics as canvases, where she would "write" with ancient embroideries, cotton threads and lace. With time, she has broken the barrier of two-dimensionality, to create installations and sculptures of wider breadth inhabiting the spaces. Daniela addresses women, their incredible strength transmitted from generation to generation. Their passage on this earth is a delicate but impetuous gait, moving among opposing forces. Ancient sheets, white and rough, woven by unknown female hands, delicate organza and ethereal lace, are interwoven with steel, iron, wire mesh. White and red, lace and steel. They tell us of unspoken desires still echoing, of deep knots melting to breathe fresh air, of the more or less visible cages to get rid of.

Born in Biella, Margherita Fanti moved to Milan where she graduated in interior #design at IDIAC-AC Interior #design Institute. Since 2009, she has been collaborating with the Alessandro La Spada studio, developing also parallel projects as interior designer and working with various companies. Attracted and inspired by different stylistic influences and the contamination between art and #design,she is always taking care of detail, be it a small daily use object or a space #design On the occasion of the Milan #design Week 2019, she presents the ‘Domestic Architectures’ collection: vases, object holders and incense holders drawing inspiration from the metaphysical landscapes and atmospheres of Giorgio De Chirico.

English photographer Richard Heeps’ seductive, highly saturated colours and sophisticated pictorial structures demonstrate a true love for his subject matter – be it portraits, cool descriptive interiors, still life or landscape. His distinctive style pushes the limits of lens-based photography without the need for digital manipulation. in 2009, when photographing the vintage #event Goodwood Revival,he decided to create these detail artworks of the clothing of participants. In these works, the scale allows us to appreciate the importance of every detail and style, and a love for nature springing from the chosen patterns.

Piero Mollica's photographic research moves into the world of architecture, starting from a conscious giving up of the image’s description. The operation is anything but simple because, as architectural photography was historically born as a realistic representation, it is necessary to bring the observer to overcome the psychological barrier of immediate recognizability. In front of these images, in fact, we must not ask ourselves what it is that we are looking at, but let ourselves be guided into the photographer’s own visual journey, which does not alter anything, but simply knows how to observe reality from all possible points of view. This ability to go beyond - typical of the philosophy of the Historical Avant-gardes - does not imply the creation of a new world from nothing, but the realization of a visual project where what is new is the way of analysing the existing. In these works, there is not the manipulation deception, but the classical reference to the masters of Constructivism and Futurism revisited with the immediacy of those who know how to use the photographic medium to fascinate the observer and lead him where he would not have expected.

Silvia Musetti, originally from Sanremo, came to Milan thanks to her passion for #design and art. In her self-produced works, she encompasses what attracts and fascinates her from the art world and from the sensations coming from her surroundings. The pieces on display recall metals and minerals, referring to hard and strong materials, but interpreted in soft and welcoming shapes. ‘The Guardian’ coffee table is an unbreakable armour protecting the inside, and ‘The Odd Couple’ plays on the concept of the affinity of opposites, of being equal and different. The coffee table is in fact composed of two elements: solid wood frame and marble top, with a golden metal band joining them.

Naturally attracted by the aesthetics in its different forms, by clean lines, #design, material texture and by various art forms, Maurizio Pracella, a Milanese photographer, has always had a confident and very personal approach in everything related to his images. His curiosity has led him to explore different ways of expression with this media, and the images he creates are always connected to his very personal way of interpreting colours and making them alive, in a discreet and natural way. Through his aesthetic vision, Pracella seeks to convey positive emotions as well as an aesthetic experience, using the purest forms found in nature. Flowers, beyond their natural beauty and mystery, for Maurizio represent a perfect metaphor for life and the impermanence of things and events.

Alessandra Rossignoli, always been interested in artistic dexterity, approached ceramics by attending the ceramic sculptor Fausta Bonfiglio’s workshop for more than twenty-five years, a figure that was decisive for Rossignoli’s approach to modelling and glazing.
Nature is her main source of inspiration: trees, the flow of water from a river, the signs wind and sea leave on the sand, the colours and the shapes of the rocks. It is a nature evoking memories of places of her life and travels, from whose primordial and uncontaminated places she often draws inspiration. For her ceramic works, she often uses the technique of signs, using objects such as shells, stones and wood to leave marks on plastic surfaces; the colour casting technique is used for glazing. The clay is shaped according to the logic of random equilibrium, characteristics of a soul sensitive to natural events in progress, free and powerful. The cuts and breaks in some works highlight the contrast between the rational and the instinctive: opening and listening to contrasting emotions.

Gala Rotelli is a designer based in Milan. The brand bearing her name was born in 2016 from the desire to create a world of objects and accessories inspired by the poetry of small things. Natural symbols, images of childhood and reminiscences of modern art, are combined and transformed in collections decorating spaces like miniature sculptures, always following the imperative of excellence and maintaining a production closely linked to the Italian artisan tradition. Gala also borrows details from great art masterpieces and make them into jewels: Monet's Water Lilies and Warhol's flowers become earrings, the starry vault of Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel is turned into a ring, flowers from Botticelli's La Primavera create a necklace. Details are protagonists: the nuances of a petal or the branches of a leaf become silver thoughts to wear, a symbol for those women who are different from each other – just like works of art – each one characterized by her own light. Gala calls her work Poetic #design, because she hopes to bring the beauty of poetry into everyday life. Women who wear her works are "poetic girls": they wear flowers to keep them from fading, they daydream, they still believe in silences, they love what they do, reinforcing themselves in a process of empowerment, just what happened to Gala when she gave life to her project.