Category: News

The Algal Mass is a performance that took place during the Milano Design Week 2022.
Every day, for two hours, three performers acted as Algal Priests in a space organised as an informal temple making ritualistic actions with an algal mud.

See clip here: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/760343494

Credits
A short clip by Cesare Griffa
Performing by Michele Noce, Luca Sansoe and Camilla Cicciotti (CIFRA Danzateatro)
Shooting by Davide Marcone (Filmika torino)
Editing by Maria Teresa Soldani
Sound by Alessandro Taricco (Riverside Torino)

‘The Algal Mass’ is a brand new project that will be presented at the Certosa Initiative during the Milano Design Week 2022. Staged as an informal temple where some Algal Priests perform a daily ritual, this installation features custom wooden furniture coated in a special dye made from micro-algae, the photosynthetic organisms that make up the very origin of life on the planet. Don’t miss the Algal Priests in action!

Designboom published a beautiful article about the special leather jacket died with micro-algal developed by Italian fashion brand Brutus together with Cesare Griffa.

A SPECIAL DYE MADE FROM ALGAE

italian brand brutus is revolutionizing the fashion world by using algae to dye their leather jacket designs. the company is set to commence an ambitious project born from a simple intuition of the founding team: dyeing vegetable tanned leather with pigments more extreme than ever — a concept that will help brutus save energy, resources, and money as well. this concept has resulted in the creation of a special coloring and treatment called algalizing SP, obtained from algae powder.

this algalizing SP idea best represents the creative and business reality that brutus lives every day. in fact, it is precisely within the architecture and design studio of cesare griffa, where brutus is based, that the experimental work takes place. ‘algalizing is a path that cesare has been exploring for years, expressing it in multiple forms, so it was a spontaneous decision to unite our two paths, experiencing a new life … on a new canvas … in a new color …,’ the fashion brand shares.

Full article here

Cesare will present an installation of Ops! chairs at the exhibition of the finalists of Arte
Laguna Proce 2020 curated by Igor Zanti and Matteo Galbiati with the collaboration of
fiftheen international jurors.

“There are more chairs than asses” said Bruno Munari.
“We need to design new asses rather than other chairs” replied Ettore Sottsass.
We didn’t plan to design a chair. And yet it happened. Perhaps it is one of those things that
happens sooner or later in the life of a designer.

The OPS! series is part of the “Wooden Things” series. Works in this cycle are functional
and dysfunctional objects made in wood. Sourcing and working wood to make things is one
of the most ancestral human capacities that will accompany humanity until the end. The
magic is that this activity has been made for thousands of years, and there is always room
for new objects with unprecedented functions and forms. Functional objects have simple and
settled uses and engage a passive reaction in people. Dysfunctional objects have
unexpected uses that ask for an active approach to understand what they are made for.
Sometimes objects are made to physically interact with people, other times they interact on
an abstract level.

OPS! furnitures can be installed as single elements, or, better, as a full installation with a
number of them occupying a 6/10 sqm surface.

Cesare’s work “Dr Oparin and Mr Haldane”, a piece unique composed of two specially coated Ops! Chairs, participate at CTMP Dersign Auction curated by Mr Lawrence.

The Ops! series (chairs and tables) are minimal furnitures made of different kinds of wood with different kinds of coating designed in 2019, and developed during the pandemics as limited series and unique pieces. This particular piece is manufactured in birch plywood and coated using a thick Cyanobacteria hue. Cyanobacteria are the first living organism that appeared on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Oparin and Haldane were the scientists that in the early 1920s postulated the theory of the Primordial Soup. A celebration of Life on Earth, from the very beginning.