A site-specific installation by Alfonso Femia / AF*Design, Spazio Milano, Via Brera, 5

For Milano Design Week 2024, iGuzzini has staged – through the site-specific installation LIGHT THAT MOVES TIME by Alfonso Femia/ AF*Design – the in fieri project, in which the powerful narrative capacity of light coordinates and superimposes different temporalities. A journey in which visitors get lost between worlds in which the past, science fiction, the dream dimension and design pragmatism combine and communicate to create new hybrids.

Cristiano Venturini, CEO iGuzzini: ‘iGuzzini has returned with enthusiasm to Milan Design Week to present, through the new collections and an exhibition itinerary, an evolved corporate vision that sees the present as a continuous tension between past and future. A journey that retraces the history and evolution of the company, with iGuzzini Echoes, the re-editions of the historical archive, and the collections for all living spaces, which summarize the great innovative and technological development that has made the company a reference in the world. Through the universal language of design, people and beauty are at the center of the project.’

Alfonso Femia, the founder of AF* Design: ‘What does a temporary installation leave behind? At a distance in time, what does it evoke in our memory? What remains, sometimes, are the people around it, the events, the smells … the emotions. LIGHT THAT MOVES TIME is a project that contains an infinite number of other projects, featuring objects and components. In an arbitrary but plausible juxtaposition to the multiverse, parallel dimensions coexist in the LIGHT THAT MOVES TIME installation. Every item has a story worth telling, made of paths that unravel and scenarios that unfold. A thread that enters and exits, stitching together structures with different materials and changing perceptions and relationships. The heart of the project is future time, observed from the past. It is retro-futurism, a genre celebrated in literature and film that here becomes a caressing emotional journey.’

In the courtyard of the iGuzzini space in Milan, housed in an early 19th-century building designed by Piermarini, stands ‘The Primitive Hut’. This archaic truncated cone structure that recalls the archetypal shape of early human shelters is emphasised by a central opening, the óculo, which captures light and diffuses its effects. Made of wooden slats covered with a woven texture, the hut is a kind of atypical structure, as cited by Marc-Antoine Laugier, an 18th-century architectural historian and critic. Reflective strips made from thermal blankets bridge the gap between its primitive and post-modern dimensions.

Inside the installation, Filorail, the thinnest track in the world, and the Newfo spotlight, a formal tribute to iGuzzini’s first architectural spotlight created in 1977, provide a counterpoint to the ancestral universe. These latest generation product lines blend into a scenario that simulates bygone time, revealing the universal convergence of past and future. This imaginative journey continues inside the showroom. The ‘In between’ hall, a space for sharing and participating, hosts BeTwo designed by Alfonso Femia / AF* Design, Libera designed by Artec Studio and again Filorail with Newfo – the new iGuzzini families – which are here suspended from reflective discs in a metaphorical reference to the reverse journey from future to past. In the basement, a room with mirror-clad walls welcomes the visitor to ‘Time before time’. This retro-futurist set design recounts the company’s roots through iGuzzini Echoes, a collection of re-editions from the historical iGuzzini archive that express the meeting of past present and future, in a context projected forward in time. In 2024, iGuzzini Echoes has been extended to include Cespuglio, a re-issue of a light work designed by Ennio Lucini in 1969. This joins design icons by Gio Ponti, Rodolfo Bonetto and Luigi Massoni that returned to the production line in 2022.

iGuzzini