2008 | POP-UP
bottle opener
bottle opener
Year: 2008
Design: Giovanni Alessi Anghini
Manufacturer: ALESSI
Status: in production
This project came to life at a friend’s house, Matteo; when I was eighteen years old I found an old wooden object with the shape of a mushroom, featuring an ingenious pressured opening movement.
My friends told me it was a bottle opener, intrigued by that object I tried it right away: the sensation of magic and surprise I felt was incredible, so I immediately asked to take it home with me to analyze it…
I spent much time reasoning and trying to understand why an object (well, an experience) of that type was created with an aesthetic reference to a mushroom, and made of wood…
I came to the conclusion that most probably it was a design tentative based only the aesthetic, without a real comprehension of the magic that this new way of opening bottles had in itself.
It was clear that there was a possibility of starting a more comprehensive reasoning on that project, so I started studying and understanding it, and between a break and another, it took me 8 years (2000-2008: date of the presentation to public).
During this long time the realization of that experience took two very characterized ways, in terms of aestethic and formal translation the first design was really close to a figurative solution, while the second – the one that was then chosen as final solution – was more conceptual and elegant.
Both paths had an element in common: the knowledge of the environment and the topic I was dealing with, and at the end I convinced myself that coherence with that had to become the motive on which to build complexity and surprise.
Everything was brought back to the study of a curve, with the aspiration of proposing an organic shape, fluid, in stainless steal, that would have referred to water (so of easy understanding in terms of memory) but also that shape should have been able to modify itself through reflection – modifying at the same time the perception of its curve, its consistence, becoming a magical object.
This project was the first one, the more complex and the one that required more courage from my side. Somehow though, it succeeded in representing the very complex relationship with the comprehension of content and meaning of objects.
Design: Giovanni Alessi Anghini
Manufacturer: ALESSI
Status: in production
This project came to life at a friend’s house, Matteo; when I was eighteen years old I found an old wooden object with the shape of a mushroom, featuring an ingenious pressured opening movement.
My friends told me it was a bottle opener, intrigued by that object I tried it right away: the sensation of magic and surprise I felt was incredible, so I immediately asked to take it home with me to analyze it…
I spent much time reasoning and trying to understand why an object (well, an experience) of that type was created with an aesthetic reference to a mushroom, and made of wood…
I came to the conclusion that most probably it was a design tentative based only the aesthetic, without a real comprehension of the magic that this new way of opening bottles had in itself.
It was clear that there was a possibility of starting a more comprehensive reasoning on that project, so I started studying and understanding it, and between a break and another, it took me 8 years (2000-2008: date of the presentation to public).
During this long time the realization of that experience took two very characterized ways, in terms of aestethic and formal translation the first design was really close to a figurative solution, while the second – the one that was then chosen as final solution – was more conceptual and elegant.
Both paths had an element in common: the knowledge of the environment and the topic I was dealing with, and at the end I convinced myself that coherence with that had to become the motive on which to build complexity and surprise.
Everything was brought back to the study of a curve, with the aspiration of proposing an organic shape, fluid, in stainless steal, that would have referred to water (so of easy understanding in terms of memory) but also that shape should have been able to modify itself through reflection – modifying at the same time the perception of its curve, its consistence, becoming a magical object.
This project was the first one, the more complex and the one that required more courage from my side. Somehow though, it succeeded in representing the very complex relationship with the comprehension of content and meaning of objects.
