MINOTTI CUCINE TERRA DESIGN BY CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN

MINOTTI CUCINE TERRA KITCHEN DESIGN BY CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN

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MINOTTI CUCINE TERRA KITCHEN DESIGN BY CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN

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The kitchen project terra design by Claudio Silvestrin. The earth, its waters, its forests and its mountains is extraordinarily beautiful in itself, in its simple and bare presence. Differently from everyday artefacts, in which their use and function are predominant, earth is what it is, independently from what we are, what we do and what use we give to it. Conceiving the terra kitchen i imagined an object, which, useful and functional, presents itself with the same strength as nature: Solid, timeless and abstract. I expressed the immense value of the earth with a rigorous geometrical shape and natural materials - porphiry and cedar. Cooking on a porphiry worktop, which is twenty-eight million years old, makes me feel reverent and fortunate at the same time.

The 45° edge union between the worktop and fronts, as well as the narrow vertical and horizontal profiles, shape regular and cadenced volumes. Tall units also have a similar module. Terra was originally designed in stone, but it is now available in wood, high gloss or matt lacquer.

Terra in fossil noir stone, brushed waterjet finish.
Lati stained wood carcass.

http://www.minotticucine.it/kitchens/terra

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MINOTTI CUCINE

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Minotti cucine has always been in ponton di Sant’ambrogio di Valpolicella, in the province of Verona. The church of San Giorgio in a closeby little borough of early christian origin has been source of inspiration for Minotti Cucine. Its peculiar aspect evokes three main concepts: A majestic, mono- chrome and –material ethos.

The walls and floors of this sacred building are made up of large stone slabs coming from this area: The lessinia white stone. Its pure volumes are emphasized by the natural light filtering from the few, long and narrow openings. At first the inside is apparently dark, but once the visitor’s eyes get used to this half-light, it’s unavoidable to perceive “the visual silence and spiritual peace”.

The majesty of San Giorgio church, whose main expression is the massive and vertical presence of the bell tower, has inspired Minotti Cucine to design thick volumes. It also influenced the architecture of Minotti Cucine seat: the perfect proportions can be observed in the long and narrow walkway made up of large white lessinia stone slabs.

Moreover, the surrounding areas of Minotti Cucine have always been recognized as those where stone is treated and cut. The local culture traditionally relied on the wisdom and high quality of crafty masters.

Since the 60s and 70s Minotti Cucine has designed kitchens with stone worktops and then with stone sinks following an antique tradition. A further evolution has been designing stone fronts, thus reaching a horizontal and vertical material uniqueness. The kitchen that has been exposed for 10 years in the company’s garden is timeless evidence of this history.

A further valuable aspect of minotti cucine is its custom-made approach: each project is unique, designed and manufactured to satisfy every single and exclusive need.

http://www.minotticucine.it/company/context

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SILENZIO VISIVO

The surrounding noise and chaos of contemporary times has led us to a constant research of silence – visual silence that can release our mind, enhance our spirituality and place the human being at the centre of the “house project”.
In our vocabulary the void loses its negative connotation: it is not perceived as absence or lack, but rather it represents a pause, a moment of reflection in which the prevailing materialism is transcended in favour of inner space.
This philosophy manifests itself in a rigorous work of subtraction that is applied to the domestic environment. This approach does not entail any compromise and suggests a primordial concept of the living space without any unnecessary addition and whatever might distract the eye and ruin the view.
The elemental and pure, almost primitive, shapes of our kitchens result from this process and prove our integrity and spiritual force.
Every element is reduced to its minimum as to deny any human intervention on the project. Thus, handles, plinths, taps and all the redundant details of traditional design disappear, while the use of colours and materials becomes rigorous and strict.
Monolithic, monochromatic and monomaterial volumes, which are abstract and sculptural, are nonetheless objects of daily use, but they hide from view all functional elements, thus contributing to the idea of space purification at the base of our philosophy.
Our ambition is to create poetry in accordance with the principles of rationality and functionality – the bases of design and industrial culture.
Stone, wood, metal, water, fire are the depositary of our will to freeze time. The extreme minimalism combined with the use of natural materials represents a challenge to the swirling succession of ephemeral fashions and trends. Using the primordial materials and elements that nature has provided us, as well as carving time in archaic shapes, minotticucine makes its products timeless.
Differently from artificial materials, which are made by human beings and their arrogance, natural materials have the ability to “grow old” and absorb the patina of time, thus increasing their fascination and aesthetic significance. The use of this “living matter”, so far from the market consumer trends and the contemporary concept of design, represents a precise choice that doesn’t imply a limit to, or rejection of innovation. On the contrary, the effort to make these archaic materials trusted guardians of the most innovative technologies of living urges us to be always ahead of time anticipating future. This is our idea of perfection, luxury and exclusivity.
Minotticucine microcosm is free from the excess of furniture and objects, the redundancy of materials and colours, and unveils the spiritual value of the void, the endless poetry of light, the power of matter and the strength of natural elements.
It is not an aseptic and depersonalized space, but a place where the human soul is amplified, where the objectivity of design is replaced by matter and by the subjectivity of those who inhabit this place. Design leaves space to life because the human being has to become the real protagonist of domestic space, which has been invaded and suffocated by a multitude of useless objects – the end results of consumer culture.
Our design mission addresses those spirits that try to get a direction for their quest for inner order. Going back to the incipit, those who chose our product do not only buy some objects, but embrace, more or less consciously, a way of living, looking at things and approaching the world. This is why those who decide to cross the border and choose to follow our philosophy will find it difficult to go back. 

http://www.minotticucine.it/philosophy/Silenzio%20Visivo

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ARVO PART - MAGNIFICAT, STABAT MATER 

FRANCO BERTONI

When the American minimalist artists of the fifties and sixties asserted that a cube is a cube, they opened a way, not only in art, whose consequences cannot yet be said to be completely exhausted. Others before them had pushed to abstraction and to an extreme simplification of the expression means, without, though, that radicalism that, in the last fifty years, has widespread also in architecture, in design, in graphics, in fashion, in music and in theatre. In this simple, small, apparently harmless sentence a universe is concentrated of aesthetic and ethic thoughts that, in time and history, have sprouted in culturally and geographically very different areas, as a testimony of an enduring and insistent longing of the human course. The reference and comparison term was a progressively, omnivorously dilatating consumeristic society. To the visual noise and the physical oppression of the supermarket, the symbol of a human condition subject right to those excesses that had enchanted it with deceitful promises of liberatory progress, those artists opposed empty spaces and silent products void of any representative claim. works only meant to assert themselves. On the floors of unadorned galleries Robert Morris' parallelepipeds, Donald Judd's copper or steel cubes and Carl Andrès geometric plates were lined. Abstraction and suprematism appeared immediately as some of the components of a proposal that was certainly not easy for the public in its presentation of naked materials, often of industrial origin, but assembled, treated or coloured with a knowledge and a refinement that related them, incredibly, to ancient, classical ideals of composed and serene shape. Nor the most conscious critics missed the suggestion of a shift of attention from the work to the public: The new privileged subject and main actor of these unheard-of scenes. By reducing to the minimum the features of the spatial shell and of the works themselves, the small crowd of attenders came to be exalted to the maximum, implying that without it and without the magic time suspension provoked by a featureless space the works themselves would lose their lawfulness. Simple shapes questioned the contemporary life, which flowed again and again through so different environments from the usual ones as to get, in any case, the sense of a particular and mysterious experience. The cube was simply a cube, but also people were, finally, people and not anymore a public, observers or, even worse, fruitioners. At least for a moment the spiral motion of functions, which still today chains objects and, after all, mankind, was arrested. Proposing elementary shapes without any intellectualistic or aesthetising purpose implied a total reconsideration not only of the work of art, but also of design, of architecture and of life itself; it implied a close criticism of the functionalist ideology, that was vaguely perceived as the driving belt of an aimless and endless movement. Taps, doors, shower-boxes, handles, frames, ergonomic seats and american-style kitchens have disappeared, as much as possible, in favour of a new concept of space and of essential – almost architectural – furniture items that do not exhaust their task in the carrying out of a particular function, but open to the contemplation of the wonder contained in the materials themselves (stones, woods or marbles) and in geometric simplicities which converse with the magics of light and shadow. By the act of removing, attention was brought to something more important and by then forgotten: The value of space, of light, of air, of earth, of materials, of fire and of water, which functionalism had reduced to parts of an aseptic mechanic device, castrating them of their metaphysical potentials. By removing, an accent was placed on what is really fundamental and essential not only for the material life, but also for the spiritual one. The new, bare and essential geometries of the minimalist buildings contribute to exalt the generous vitality of the surrounding nature or the beauty of an urban landscape; liberated from the excess of furniture or of objects, interior spaces discover the acting value of emptiness; in bathrooms water does not flow anymore in rivulets, but finds exaltation in basins of atavic memory or descends freely from above like from a waterfall; kitchens lose their working connotation to turn into apparently dumb monoliths, but which, with the aid of new technologies, surprise for both their ability to meet the functional needs and the priming of new relations with water, fire and foods themselves. In this direction the company minotticucine has moved, challenging a general design conformism and collecting, for some years, the fruits of a pioneer research that now is even imitated. Alberto Minotti knows well that the idea of simplicity has a long past and that, even for that one reason, it has a great future. His kitchens are a contribution to an idea that, as ag Fronzoni said, was born in the classic greece and found further affirmation in the pure cistercian architecture that saint bernard wanted in the name of a “ silence of the eyes ” finalised to the neat perception of the colour-changing of the divine light on clear, perfect walls, in the zen-style eastern architecture, in the tuscan renaissance and in its bare, linear furnishings reported in Paolo Uccello's, Beato Angelico's and Antonello da messina's paintings, in the classicistic inheritance of the end of the 18th century, in the simplicity of the mediterranean architecture, which is masterly reinterpreted by the Malaparte house in Capri, in Adolf Loos, who wrote memorable pages against decoration and excess. And, then, Kasimir Malevic, Josef Albers, Mark Rothko and Luis Barragan, who designed “useless” walls to reproduce in black and white, like on a screen, the waving of foliage and a horse drinking-trough which is also a mysterious water parallelepiped. From ag Fronzoni, who right from the early sixties was the solitary pioneer of a simple and new design, Minotti requested the trademark of his own company and toClaudio Silvestrin, one of the international protagonists of the eighties' minimalist architecture, he entrusted the design of the terra kitchen.The disordered tesserae of a mosaic in constant formation have found in Minotti a modern interpreter and a part-taking exegete. Minotti's kitchens are certainly indebted to the linear stone sinks and wash-troughs of the cistercian monasteries, to the simplest wood furnishings of the eastern or of the popular tradition, to Judd's cubes and parallelepipeds as well as to the syntheses performed by barragan or by ag Fronzoni, but they must be rewarded for the undoubted merit of having collected such an extensive source of information and having led it towards an industrial project that can insert in the present needs the memory of original, lost relations with the abstract purity of the natural elements. of strict minimalist observance for the progressive removal of what is superfluous and maximalist for the luxury contained in such materials as the louis blue granite, the white labradorite, the purple porphyry, oak and cedar, minotti's kitchens use avant-guarde technologies to make water flow by simply touching the stone, to move doors according to precise mathematic games or to allow cooking on surfaces that have nothing to do with the traditional hobs. Simplicity is difficult and the research is in progress. Being able to translate so many functional needs and technical constraints into a perfect stone parallele piped or being able to give back to water its lost presence and value may seem a little thing, but perhaps it is all. If a cube is a cube, on these kitchens an apple is an apple and an artichoke is an artichoke and not the negligible preliminary of a juice, of a shake or of a soup. it is up to us, in an enlightening moment, to acknowledge the difference. Franco Bertoni

http://minotticucine.it/mobile/filosofia/index/4

MINOTTI CUCINE

CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN

Born in 1954, Claudio Silvestrin studied under A. G. Fronzoni in Milan and at the Architectural Association in London. His integrity, clarity of mind, inventiveness and concern for details is reflected in his architecture: austere but not extreme, contemporary yet timeless, calming but not ascetic, strong but not intimidating, elegant but not ostentatious, simple but not soulless.

PRACTICE PROFILE

Claudio Silvestrin Architects was established in 1989 with offices in London, and since 2006 Milan also. The work of the practice encompasses real estate developments, newly built houses and resort for private residence, art galleries and museums, domestic and retail interiors and furniture design. Clients include Giorgio Armani, Illy Caffe, Anish Kapoor, Calvin Klein, Poltrona Frau, Victorio Miro, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo for whom he has designed the museum in Turin and the internationally acclaimed hip hop artist and producer Kanye West.

Claudio Silvestrin Architects have completed the Victoria Miro Private Collection Space in London and a 5.000 m2 wellness centre in South Korea. They are currently building a new 40.000 m2 construction resort in Ceara, Brazil, including a hotel, spa and villas. They are also building two new 20.000 m2 developments of 31 villas in Singapore as well as 25.000 m2 fashion mall in Turin, Italy. The practice is currently working on apartments and villas in USA and Europe.

AWARDS

2011   South East Asia property Awards, Best Architectural design Sandy Island Housing Development, Sentosa, Singapore

2011   South East Asia property Awards, Best Housing Development Sandy Island Housing Development, Sentosa, Singapore

2009   Chicago Athenaeum ınternational Architectural Award Victoria Miro Private Collection Space, Londra

2009   CNBC Asia – Pacific Property Awards, Best Development Sandy Island Housing Development, Sentosa, Singapore

2008   Archip – Domus, Russia

2008   Archip – Domus, Russia Magazine award

P Penthouse, Montecarlo

2008   Best Communicator Award

            La Cava, a stone installation for II Casone at Marmomacc, verona

2005   Wallpaper Magazine Design Awards

            Terra Kitchen for Minotti Cucine

2005   Travel + Leisure Magazine Design Awards

            Princi Bakery XXV Aprile, Milan

2005   International Award Architecture in Stone

Giorgio armani Worldwide Image

2003   Gold Medal Award for Italian Architecture at the Triennale in Milan

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin

2003   Contract World Award and Atrib Award

            Giorgio Armani Worldwide Image

www.claudiosilvestrin.com

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CLAUDIO SILVESTRIN

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I have been educated to believe that being an architect is a vocation, just as it is a vocation to be a priest. I have been educated to believe that architecture is the most complete form of art, bridging man and nature, earth and sky, god and mortals. I have believed, and still do, that architecture is composing poetry on earth in partnership with the earth; that architecture has the role of transmitting the emotion of matter, space, light and water. . I think the most popular contemporary construction nowadays is the exaltation of perverse and simplistic forms, reflecting a union that is neurotic and narcissistic, ignoring five thousand years or more of history. Modern man feels that he is the centre of the universe; his arrogance and vanity demand constructions that are in fact mirrors. The powerful man and the neurotic man subconsciously recognize themselves in the high-tech style, in sensationalist and deconstructive architecture. One must be blind or asleep not to notice: We are a materialistic civilisation of institutionalised, perverse forms. It is a real disaster: The forms of contemporary construction have separated from the stars. The clearest paradox, represented by religious buildings, is the most saddening. these edifices are sensationalistic, self - gratifications in reinforced concrete; they have ceased to be spaces for god and have become places for man. It is not a matter of right or wrong but of acknowledging and being aware of this, in order to make decisions that embody firm principles. The contemporary architect is fortunate that he or she has the freedom of choice, a responsible choice. One should ask: Is architecture the expression of a deepening thought or is it a non-critical conformity? Questioning does not mean going against evolution and progress; on the contrary, serious questioning can bring a contribution to awaken the sensitivity of man towards an evolution that is not only technological and materialistic but a total evolution that is simultaneously material and spiritual, modern and archaic, anthropological and ecological. Religious attitude living the profession of contemporary architect in a religious manner requires a psychological trauma that is almost permanent. To clarify, i'm not speaking of recognised and institutionalized religion, but of a religious attitude, serious, profound, rigorous, healthy and full. A rock against rampant corruption, with unshaken faith in onès mission and in the gift of talent one wants to offer in order to ensure the survival of sensibility in the world. Proposing the poetry of space with novelty and individuality leads to uncertainty and incomprehension, and the interlocutor is caught off guard. If for materials you propose water rather than plastic, stone rather than glass, a void rather than unconditional exploitation of space, elegance rather than sensationalism, the symbol rather than the captivating effect, the magic of light rather than light as a lux quantity, a primitive sense rather than a contemporary one. They respond: -architect, enough with poetry, nobody wants it anymore, people don't understand it anyway! Architect, you're so old fashioned! Architect, very nice! But the space needs to be exploited, at the price i paid for it! Architect, you're too sophisticated! Architect, but there isn't enough light! -architect, what are archetypes? Paradoxically the more you encounter ignorance, lack of sensibility, arrogance, mediocrity and corruption, the stronger the desire not to succumb to this poisoning of the spirit. It's true, if you play the game, you can build big, have multimedia success, fame, money and power. And there is freedom to choose, which, fortunately, every architect or designer has today. Sure, the powerful make you pay for it, they don't allow you to win a competition because you didn't dine with a member of the jury, they don't give you a building permit because you don't propose what is in vogue at the moment, they don't choose you because you're not part of their club. I remember once at a presentation for a residential project competition in Switzerland, the presiding professor of the jury said that my project had a palladium flavour. I blushed from the embarrassment, from the surprise and from the compliment. Thanks! I responded innocently. I was eliminated, because for that swiss scholar, palladium meant italian and, therefore, not modern. At a presentation at the landmark of New York, they told me that rather than presenting a project with an individual and unique configuration, as the one i proposed, i had to take inspiration from recently constructed buildings designed by the usual big names. At a competition in which i participated in Italy, the first seven prizes where given to seven university professors of the same city, not one architect of national fame of international fame – absolutely outrageous. To defend their territory, the bosses of the various clans (including those of architects) put obstacles in your way and when you manage to build something, they prevent communication of your achievements or render them insignificant in the context of contemporary culture. My fortune is, on one hand, my faith in the meaning of my work and, on the other, my spontaneity in forgetting about the disappointments, betrayals and eliminations and looking forward, pushing ahead like an elephant, with the enthusiasm of doing and creating, albeit with the knowledge that human ingratitude knows no limits. The supreme ambition great architects and great architecture are my source of inspiration when it comes to my ethics and designs. But that is not all: essays, philosophy, poetry, even reading the newspaper can stimulate my creative thought process and my design choices. On 20th december 2004 i read an excellent article by Francesco Alberoni in Corriere Della Sera, entitled ‘a world that moves very fast but knows not how to dream'. the writer accurately observes the results that cultural relativism, Its frenzy and superficiality, have had on modern society. We might ask ourselves what this has to do with the occupation of architect. Well nothing, if we believe in tidy categorisation and we view the profession as specialist and compartmentalised. I believe however that being an architect does not mean being removed from cultural relativism, the kafkaesque machine. Indeed i believe it expresses the concept just as well as a fashion magazine or a cd that is used up and quickly forgotten. The majority of critics within the sector believe that the architect should express the culture of his time. The dogmatic architect views this media truth as absolute. Luckily for me this ‘fact' is not written in any sacred texts or in plato, and so doubting its authenticity is legitimate. Indeed i would go even further and suggest that the very task of the architect is not to express the values of cultural relativism or even his own contemporary culture. In 1927, the German Pavilion designed by Mies Van der Rohe in barcelona was a masterpiece that broke completely from the conventions of the time. A masterpiece that is still visible today, its innovative spirit certainly didn't reflect the predominant culture of its day. Alberoni talks about decadence in his article but at the same time also of hope, dreams and spirituality. The spirituality of the layman is pointless, a waste, redundant. Alberoni's conclusion should perhaps be food for thought for the designer who says ‘not me!' or for the planner who refuses to construct ‘self-expressing' perverse forms of today's sensationalism. The article concludes thus: ‘[because there is] a place where every now and then we can take shelter, purify ourselves, find some peace and come out again stronger. Without this we would slide into an intolerable abyss.' the more superficial reader may think of an exotic holiday destination, but when Alberoni talks of purification he is not talking of our bodies in terms of tired flesh and bones, or a nervous system fraught with stress, but rather the purification of the mind. Is this the supreme ambition of architecture? And why supreme? Because a purified mind puts the driving force of our inner animal desire to sleep and awakens our consciousness of the divine that exists in nature. The man-animal makes room for the man-spiritual.

http://www.minotticucine.it/philosophy/Claudio%20Silvestrin