gaetano pesce individually designs 400 chairs dipped in colored resins for bottega veneta

Gaetano Pesce’s set design for Bottega Veneta

During his conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Matthieu Blazy on Bottega Veneta’s set design and SS23 collection for Milan Fashion Week 2022, Gaetano Pesce mentioned the phrase ‘this is the future’ a lot. The Italian architect and designer was pertaining to diversity in a unified world, a single community for everybody where collectivity devises varieties of products, objects, and even creative masterminds for the interwoven fields of art, architecture, design, fashion, and culture. ‘Diversity is the way to live,’ says Gaetano during the talk designboom attended. To materialize what he meant, he and his team manually designed each of the 400 chairs called ‘Come Stai?’ that guests sat on during the talk and the fashion show along with the sculptural resin floor in waves of pastel hues that carpeted the ground. No design is similar – each chair is unique and dipped in colored resins. Such manual labor dictates the belief of Gaetano when, at one point in the talk, he says that repetition in design is trivial.

Creative Director Matthieu commissioned Gaetano to produce a temporary site-specific set design for the fashion show comprising chairs made of cotton canvas based on traditional toile fabric dipped in colored resins. Several resin-based chairs embody swirling colors that either mesh to form a marble-like look or are separated to as if they were water and oil that could not be combined. Other chair designs have hand drawings that depict Bottega Veneta’s accessories. Drawn on a few chairs, a rising sun over mountains appears, reminiscent of Gaetano’s work for Aspen Art Museum. The eyes take in the pleasure of Gaetano’s design language which lies in the importance of working against machinery and solely with hands, an element that is somewhat slowly fading into the background as AI and other advanced technologies make their way into the cultural diaspora.

images courtesy of Bottega Veneta | photos by Matteo Canestraro

Designboom attends Gaetano Pesce’s talk

Gaetano Pesce believes the space design he created for Bottega Veneta pays homage to diversity, the core of displaying individuality. ‘People who say we are all the same – fuck them! We are all different, and this is our defining quality. Otherwise, we are just a copy. We are all originals, and this is one of the themes of my design,’ he shares. He reiterated this statement during the talk when he said that one’s vernacular language when it comes to design should flow and change, not stagnate by commercial reproduction. If a design is made in Milan, the architect shares, it must have the feel and spirit of Milan.

Gaetano seems to oppose the use of machinery in production as it defeats the essence of being original and producing unique designs that should reflect the personality and dedication to the practice of craftsmanship of the wearers. He says that people buy objects not because they want to copy what the others have, but because nobody has the exact objects. The use of machines to produce unique designs is a symbol of disaster since they cannot think like humans. He describes manual labor at the talk as the ideas the mind come up with and channels to one’s hands. Once the hands receive these signals, they proceed to create tangible outcomes and even add details and elements that the mind might have missed at the first thought. ‘As a designer, I make originals, not standardized series,’ he adds.

no design is similar – each chair is unique and dipped in colored resins

Form, function, and thought in design and art

Gaetano also thanks Matthieu and Bottega Veneta for having given the architect his rightful creative space to play around with, all while using the history and materials of the fashion house as his primary references that visually present themselves through the ripples of his resin-colored design. Gaetano asks who makes culture today. He pivots to how fashion companies and houses hire artists these days as a way to revolutionize the artistic rhythm between fashion and art in their own ways. ‘Today, these artists are creating cultures,’ he says.

designboom was at the talk when Gaetano said that form, function, and thought are necessary for design and art. He adds that if we see the same thing each day, we die. The Italian architect and designer walks his talk the moment he revealed the first chair design to Matthieu Blazy and continued making the other 399 chairs, which will go on to be exhibited at Design Miami 2022 to be made available for purchase.

some chairs feature hand-drawings that depict Bottega Veneta’s accessories