This week I read:
Furnitecture. Furniture That Transforms Space
Anna Yudina
L'Ippocampo, 2015 / 272 pp. / Hardcover
EAN: 9788867220915
There are some titles that reveal too much, and then there are high-impact titles, written by a publisher seeking easy sales. Furnitecture runs the risk of being the latter, but the truth is that reading it is anything but a waste of time: the content of the brief articles accompanying the sections is not limited to the subheading - Furniture That Transforms Space - it actually goes much further.
It may be excessive to say that Anna Yudina flirts with deconstructing the hierarchy that sees architecture dominant over furniture, but it’s not incorrect to claim that she’s at least attempting to bring things back into balance by exploring the borderline between the two types of design: interior and exterior. And she does it very well, with plenty of examples, section after section - from simple modular design to rooms within rooms, from disturbing foldable offices to captivating architectural shelving.
The story told by Yudina begins in the glorious early decades of the twentieth century, the Corbusier years, when the borderline between the two was becoming lighter and less visible by the day. And Yudina is perhaps right when she suggests that the theorization of this period reduced the border to a line, drawn ad hoc by individual artists.
And perhaps, we might add, in this age of ultra-specialisation it was interior design, in search of identity and emancipation, which traced a deeper line. But this is not written down.
In any case, it is a given fact that furnitectural thinking, as the writer underlines, can bring together many innovators who have come up with ideas that sweep liberally down the years. Worth a read.
Furnitecture. Furniture That Transforms Space
Anna Yudina
L'Ippocampo, 2015 / 272 pp. / Hardcover
EAN: 9788867220915
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