IED and Battilossi

THE CULTURE OF CARPET AT THE CENTER OF THE DESIGNS OF IED STUDENTS

Virtual development meets the manual dimension in the installations of the Course in Interior Design

Turin, 26 October 2022 – A Persian proverb recalls: "My carpet is my home." More than a tent or house, both for the nomad and for the villager or city dweller, the carpet represents the roots, belonging to a community. Delimit spaces and highlight their use; insulates from the cold; it is a place of meeting and meditation and above all it is the depository of the art that tells the origins, beliefs and traditions of its creator. With these suggestions, the thirteen male and female students of the IED Turin Interior Design Course were welcomed inside the Battilossi Gallery, and thesis partners a.y. 2021to receive their project brief.
The project, presented by Maurizio Battilossi, Founder and CEO of the historic Turin Gallery which has handed down the millenary tradition of the carpet, required the creation of a temporary installation, easily dismantled and assembled, designed to enhance the carpet collections of the Gallery through a new sustainable approach and aware, linked to the quality of the spaces and the well-being of individuals. In parallel with the installation project, the students were asked to design virtual spaces, within which to set the carpets of the collection, in such a way as to bring out the furnishing value of these precious artefacts within them.

Guided by the course coordinator and thesis supervisor Adelaide Testa, co-founder of the Macante-Testa architecture studio and by the professor and thesis supervisor Giorgia Scioratto, the students started from a phase of historical research on the ancient, Berber and Tibetan carpets of the Battilossi collection and weaving techniques. The latter allowed an analysis of the layering levels of the carpet, from warp to weft, which the students reported virtually in a digital weaving project performed with Microsoft Excel: with this unusual use of the software, the cells of the spreadsheet they have been transformed into figurative units similar to pixels: the design and the pile of the carpet have been described through the filling colors and typographic signs.

In addition to having virtually designed the installations, the students have created, through teamwork, a 1:20 scale model of the underground part and the first floor of the Battilossi Gallery. A return to the manual dimension and live reproduction, which allowed them to represent the space in which to place the seven exhibition structures.

The projects in collaboration with Battilossi were created by: Bosio Camilla, Buratto Giorgia, Correnti Valentina, Ferrero Annika, Frua Alberto, Giordano Alice, Mancuso Letizia, Polstenicu Cristina, Scagnetto Giulia, Starace Asja, Stravicino Lucrezia, Testa Luna Giovanna, Urro Virginia, graduates of the three-year course in Interior Design a.y. 2021/22 IED Turin, under the guidance of the course coordinator Adelaide Testa.