Walter Musacchi

A flower vase made of transparent and colored PVC garden hosepipe bound with hose clamps. Produced and distributed worldwide by SUNDAY Hamburg  (Photo: © Paolo Risser)

A bulky 1970s structure transformed—by virtue of its glazed balconies on the seaside and at the rear, its perforated, sculptural facade, new furniture, lights and fixtures—into a design hotel!

Country house and barn in Brandenburg. Restored and remodeled according the needs of contemporary living and working in the countryside

The temporary press lounge at the Berlin International Film Festival featured recycled plastic bottles stuffed into PVC bags for seating and parts of plastic bottles stapled together to create a curtain. Cables at each seating unit permitted weary journalists to simultaneously recharge cell phones and selves. (After the festival, the whole lounge was recycled by the company that had provided the bottles!)

Lounge Orange is a place where people can meet while waiting for the next screening and can discuss and exchange views not necessarily with the person sitting next to them. A large projection screen displays text messages (SMS) from visitors about what they think about the films being shown, as well as their more personal messages. This space thus becomes a reflection and synthesis of people’s inner behavior and contradictions nowadays. What could be more contemporary than sitting on a pile of trash and picking up one’s cell phone?  –  walter musacchi, text from the project presentation

Seating units made of fabric-covered sculpted polyurethane foam can be linked together. Created for PLAY, a gallery for still and motion pictures.

Material research, display and furniture design for Prada stores in the United States. Of particular interest is the display niche nested in a sponge-like element.

12 thick meters of stuffed fabric can be configured in multiple variations as a sofa —depending on how it is knotted.

“Sentimentally Linked”, colored strips of foam are bound together by industrial belts to form seating units with back support.

A 1950s apartment refurbished and remodeled for contemporary living. (Photo: © Paolo Risser)

Pieces of expanded foam and an expanded-foam shell create a traditional—but significantly lighter—armchair.

Council of Fashion Designers of America Apparel and accessories exhibit for the spring collection at the “Seven on Sixth” fashion week. Dramatic trumpet forms of white lycra surrounded by green mounted above display tables became part of a light show by night

Garden furniture for the  “Haus am Waldsee” contemporary art gallery makes use of basic building blocks and industrial components to create robust outdoor tables and stools. (Photo: © Paolo Risser)

Blend’s presence at the “Bread and Butter” trade show was conceived as an installation to present and stage the fashion label “Blend” (at the time with its sub-label Psycho Cowboy). Design also included: display fixtures, customized furniture and mannequins, brand communications and campaign concepts. (Photo: Sebastian Stottele)

The image of a long shawl inspires the elegant display and packaging system for a fashion jewelry trade fair stand.

Council of Fashion Designers of America – Apparel and accessories exhibit for the winter collection at the “Seven on Sixth” fashion week. Mesh cylinder display plinths and tables were arranged on risers that filled the exhibit space.

Plastic duct-pipe joints are configured to create an adjustable lamp.

Cardboard furniture boxes from a well-known manufacturer combine with expanded foam to become a design piece not lacking in irony.

A plywood walkway winding through a former post office building (for which there was no budget to repaint rooms or create signs) defined the space and set the limits—and also led down the steps and up to the entrances of two other venues. “In a city that’s full of construction sites surrounded by the same material, and likely to remain so for at least a decade, it is an obvious and somewhat awkward metaphor that is nevertheless effective.”

–David Allen and Dominic Eichler, ARTNET Magazine

Renovation and extension concept for an agricultural facility, reusing a shed to a residential house and new storage hall for organic farming activities

Rendering: zoa3d.com

Chairs of hard foam panels create a spatial element when stacked, a new form of considerable volume that presents many possibilities for interior design.

Ideas Competition Museum of the 20th Century at Kulturforum  (Das Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts)

Ideenwettbewerb Standorteinbindung Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg

Red lines suggestive of shoelaces literally run through the air and along the walls, and wind through the floor of the Puma sports-articles shop, creating display surfaces and suspension systems. Prototype for a new generation of stores in London.

A bench made by gluing together the thick layers of posters that are found peeling off the walls all over the lively metropolis.

The Bouquet flower vase is sold by studio@waltermusacchi.com

Walter Musacchi, originally from Ferrara, Italy, studied architecture at the IUAV in Venice. He completed his studies with a project on the subject of „Empty spaces in the dissolving city“ with Bernardo Secchi. After graduation, he worked in various architects’ offices worldwide (Paris, Berlin, New York, Rotterdam and Los Angeles), including with Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas and Michael Gabellini.

In New York he designed various interiors and items of furniture, mostly for fashion houses as Jil Sander and Prada.

In 1998 he was invited to be the lead designer for the first Berlin Biennale.

At present he lives and works in Berlin, where he endeavours to match his own provocative and reductive approach, with the expectations of his corporate and private clients.

Committed to sustainable human development, Walter Musacchi is forever investigating the contradictions of contemporary living in today’s continuous stream of rapid global changes.

The ethical design of Walter Musacchi      by Stefano Gualdi

Walter Musacchi lives and works in Berlin, a city known to be receptive to all kinds of changes and innovations in society, particularly in the field of culture, nature, contemporary architecture where historical buildings from the most varied of epochs and styles stand – not without ambiguity – side by side. They are “signs” that, when interwoven, form a “complex”, heterogeneous and multi-coloured fabric, which has the power to evoke various realities, without discriminating in favour of any particular one.

For Walter Musacchi, born in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, ethics and professionalism are indivisible. As a result, his work rejects pure formalism as well as aesthetic complacency. Rather, he strives to follow a third path that will lead to the creation of both functional and ironic objects, which, as far as possible, connect to the space for which they are intended. In so doing they avoid increasing both industrial production, which today has reached a massive scale, and avoid burdening the environment with new materials.

In this sense Musacchi investigates possible new modes of expression and meaning taking existing fragments and shapes as a starting point– like the DJ does in the field of music. It was in this way that in 2002 the unusual series of furnishing elements and “liveable”soft upholstered furniture emerged. The hybrid, imaginative and totally communicative shapes, as well as the use of recycled material are the hallmarks of the series. This thoroughly provocative stance brings forth not the status, but the actual morphological quality of material, indicating that it is possible to escape the logic of categorical division into “high” and “low”. This is achieved by consideration of the seemingly infinite variety of commodities produced and consumed daily by our society.

This technique of “borrowing patterns” from the real world produces works such as „Snock“ – a giant stuffed fabric snake which can be knotted at will and changed into various seating elements, for use both in private and public areas – perhaps in a lounge or hall. Another example is „Bouquet“, where commercial garden hose is transformed into flower vases, and „PLUG“ stackable chairs, made from ordinary industrial foam commonly used in the building trade.

Magazines

• Wohnidee: “Elegante Erscheinung”,  # 1 Januar 2011 p. 42
• Collezioni Trends & Interiors: „L’objet retrouvé by Walter Musacchi” Barbara Basile, # 87, 2009,  pp. 218-219
• Wohnen – das Österreichische Wohnmagazin: „Schaumschläger“, # 27, 2007, p. 56
• Monopol – Magazin für Kunst und Leben: „Berliner Inventur“  Silke Homann, # 05, 2007, p. 80
• Tip – Berlin: „Dante connection“ Susanne Semrau, # 19, 2004, p. 38
• View on Colour # 04/24, 2004, p. 137
• H.O.M.E.:  „Softer sitzen”, Oct. 2003, pp. 20-21
• Arredo: „Spazio ai giovani” Carlotta Landon, Sept. 2003, p. 136
• Bon: „Snälla Saker i Milano”  Imke Janoschek, # 13, 2003, pp. 100-101
• Casa & Giardino: „Bellezza e funzionalità nel design più giovane” Beppa Mariani, # 319, 2003, p. 79
• H.O.M.E.:  “Wasserstand”, Sept. 2003, pp. 20-21
• MARU: „Walter Musacchi and the search of the hidden identity of things”, # 16, CAPress Korea, 2003, pp. 170-177
• Taburet: „Earthly paradise” # 5, 2003, p. 63
• FlashArt: „Berlin Biennale 1998”  Boris Moshkovits, # 203, 1998, pp. 90-91
• Spiegel Kultur: „Kunst oder was?“  Ingeborg Wienswoski,  October 1998, p. 14
• Versus: „Una certa idea” Walter Musacchi, ed. THD Darmstadt, # 5, 1996, p. 62

Newspapers

• Morgenpost: „Heute wohnt man anders“ Gabriela Walde, 24.05.2007
• Tagesspiegel: „Falten, klappen, rollen“ Kolja Reichert, 12.05.2007
• Berliner Zeitung: „Ein Malewitsch für die Küche“  Kirstin Strunz, 26.11.2003
• Il Sole 24 Ore: „Per un attimo o per l’eternità” Walter Rauhe, 04.10.1998
• La Repubblica: „Berlino uccide la pittura” Paolo Vagheggi, 29.09.1998

Publications

• Young european designers, daab publisher, Cologne 2005, p. 276
• Artist Guide – Berlin Biennale 1998: „Walter Musacchi“  Ulf Meyer, Berlin Biennale e.V. Berlin 1998, p. 84
• Berlin/Berlin (cat. Berlin Biennale 1998): „Ich bin der glücklichste Mensch der Welt“  Susanne Hayn, Cantz Verlag, Berlin 1998, pp. 206-207

Walter Musacchi – Architecture and Design

Mittenwalder Str. 26
D-10961 Berlin

+ 49 (0)30 695 044 22

studio[at]waltermusacchi.com

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