La Tavola degli Elementi/ Piero Lissoni for ALPI

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La Tavola degli Elementi
Piero Lissoni x ALPI
Showroom ALPI
Via Solferino 7, Milano
From Monday to Friday
10 am−1 pm / 2.30 pm− 5 pm

Five pieces of furniture designed by Piero Lissoni especially for ALPI will be shown at the exhibition "La Tavola degli Elementi" organised by ALPI and hosted at its showroom at Via Solferino 7, Milan, on display from 31 October 2019. The exhibit aims to show the beauty and versatile potential of the ALPI wood veneers as seen through the eyes of architect Lissoni. The exhibition is the result of close collaboration and creative understanding between Vittorio Alpi and Piero Lissoni, the company's art director. The furniture takes inspiration from the periodic table of elements as conceived by Mendeleev, whose brilliant discovery was the reciprocal relationship between all chemical elements. The design project shows two different viewpoints, both connoted by a strong attraction to what is a pillar of human knowledge.

Piero Lissoni's fascination with the existence of a precise combinatory system of primary elements behind all shapes and matter has given life to an abstract representation of this perfect mathematical language, by which a mysterious superior organisation determines with precision the world's beauty and complexity. The result is a powerful play of finishes, volumes and related solids and voids, all taking up the diversity found in Mendeleev's periodic table. Vittorio Alpi imagines the shapes designed by Lissoni as being a figuration of a three-dimensional explosion of the periodic table, an expression of the very same arcane and enigmatic aura evoked by the organised elements.

The collection of objects conceived by Lissoni, all veneered with ALPI wood: Xeno, Palladio, Idrogeno, Cripto and Zirconio are small pieces of architecture. These five volumes with different sizes and shapes seem to be ordered according to a compositional formula of elemental chemical modules. By means of his craft as an architect, Lissoni is able to exalt the marvellous absoluteness of the periodic table of the elements, revealing the cosmic fairy tale it inspires in him.