Supercolla: the Superleggera chair by Ponti according to 31 designers

It was 1955 when one of the most important industrial design products of the 20^th century was born, and 1957 when Cassina started its large-scale production. It was the Superleggera, designed by Gio Ponti starting from the straw chair of Chiavari, symbol of Ligurian craftsmanship of the late 19^th century. What remains of this timeless icon 64 years later? The curators Guido Musante and Maria Chiara Valacchi have entrusted to 31 artists and designers the task of repairing 30 collapsed Superleggera chairs from Potafiori, the "florist-singer" Rosalba Piccinni’s Milanese cafè. These 30 special reinterpretations will be revived in the exhibition "Supercolla. A reinforced new formula for every type of modernity” that will be opened for the entire Design Week until April 19th at the Martina Simeti gallery in Tortona district.

These are the most interesting projects: "One shot, one life" by Joe Velluto, who literally shot the chair’s legs with a shotgun to make holes in which wormholes were subsequently inserted to put the Superleggera into the biological life-death-life chain; the "Superufficio" chair by the AMeBE duo, an ironic and carefree interpretation of the conventional office chair; the mummification in cellophane by Giulio Iacchetti and the sanding by Lorenzo Damiani on the corners in order to highlight the graphic design and to reveal, by ruining. At the same time, Ramazzotti’s “Supercolla Cocktail” interpretation represents the horizon of service design: less tied to objects and more to sensations.

There is even a "global" and more complex project, at least from a logistical point of view: the Italian-Korean group Chi Chi No Design focuses on chair’s weight - 1.7 kg - reducing it to pieces, transporting it in a luggage to Seoul and incinerating it with a zero oxygen process to then restore the initial weight by adding the plastic material to the ash. The result are four transparent cushions that can be stacked like a pouf, placed side by side to make a tatami or used as padding on another four Superleggera chairs.