HBA: Matter in Dialogue

What happens when different design cultures meet around the same respect for craftsmanship? In this episode of Giorgetti Voices, Chris Godfrey, Katie Earl and Kevin Shek from HBA (Hirsch Bedner Associates), together with Giovanni Del Vecchio, Managing Director of Giorgetti, explore the story behind Kumiki, a collection inspired by ancient Japanese joining techniques and brought to life through Italian craftsmanship. A conversation about collaboration, material, and the dialogue between different traditions that can turn a shared idea into something made to last.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it take to give a design icon a new life without losing what made it iconic in the first place? In this episode of Giorgetti Voices, Carlo Colombo, architect and co-founder of A++, and Giancarlo Bosio, Creative Director of Giorgetti, explore the story behind Progetti Silky, a reinterpretation of one of Giorgetti’s most recognisable armchairs and the first chapter of Tribute to Icons, a project dedicated to reinterpreting its design icons. A conversation about design, heritage, and the balance between preserving an identity and allowing it to evolve.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can a material preserve a memory? In this episode of Giorgetti Voices, designer Chen Wang reflects on how materials can carry rituals, emotions and cultural heritage into contemporary design. Through the story of the Yuan Collection, created with Giorgetti, Italian craftsmanship and Chinese tea culture come together in a project where matter becomes a way to tell stories and keep traditions alive.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we'll be talking to Dante Bini, architect, inventor and pioneer who has spent a lifetime thinking and building outside the box. Born in 1932 in Castelfranco Emilia, Bini developed a revolutionary construction system in the 1960s: concrete cast flat on the ground, then lifted into its final form as air flows into a pneumatic form. No scaffolding. No waste. A fifty-tonne dome rising from the earth in sixty minutes. Over a hundred patents and more than 1,600 domes built across 23 countries—scattered across Emilia, Sardinia, Mount Etna, Australian forests and Texas deserts. Among them, a futuristic residence built in 1970 for Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti on the Sardinian coast. Like Brunelleschi before him, Bini invented the tools to realize his vision, shaping matter with a breath of air. At 94, his enthusiasm for the future shows no sign of slowing down.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Exploring movement in architecture may seem like an oxymoron, an irreconcilable conflict and a source of disorientation around all that we know and perceive of the fixed, heavy, slow, anchored-to-the-ground built environment. Through a selection of fascinating projects from the 1930s to today, divided into four categories, the New York-based design studio Diller Scofidio+Renfro curated ‘Restless Architecture’ for the MAXXI in Rome. Down to the exhibition design itself, this show reaffirmed the desire to free architecture from stasis while in dialogue with the dynamic spaces designed by Zaha Hadid, an architect who turned the quest for movement into the hallmark of her work. If we live in a constantly moving world, why should architecture stand still? Elizabeth Diller, co-founder of DS+R, talked to us about how they were able to answer this question.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In an Italian garden surrounded by reinforced concrete, wheels, railways, cypresses, cherry trees and grapevines, Villa Il Girasole appears. In Marcellise, near Verona, Italy, this experimental rotating house was envisioned by Angelo Invernizzi in the 1930s to follow the Sun, just like the sunflowers which inspired it.  Here, opposites coexist: stillness and movement, a Rationalist approach and a Futurist sensibility. Reinforced concrete is rendered weightless, that which is fixed to the ground moves, and the building is ‘smart’, just like those of today, almost a century later.  This courageous project would later be described as ‘a prototype to reproduce and export’ by Invernizzi’s daughter Lidia, grateful to her father for having made the most immobile of materials move and for having given her rooms with a view in constant yet gentle movement. Here to tell us the story of this extraordinary project is Mariagrazia Bertaroli. She’s the spokesperson of Il Girasole, the private foundation which is overseeing the complex restoration of the building and the creation of a permanent centre for research and culture.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we’ll talk to French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon. Rochon studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and he lives in Paris. He loves Italy, and is inspired by Luchino Visconti and the evocative power of light. Rochon has designed the interiors of some of the most exclusive hotels in the world, from the Four Seasons to the Ritz-Carlton, in addition to residences, boutiques and Michelin-star restaurants around the globe. He’s renewed legendary places from the Dorchester in London to the George V in Paris, and he’s transformed the Maison Boucheron and Chopard boutiques on Place Vendôme into modern spaces. He brings his childhood dream of working in film to his scenographic interiors. Speaking about his work, he once said, ‘I write the screenplay, I prepare the storyboard and I handle the lighting. Architecture is necessary to enter the place where the scene will take place.’ Today he’ll be talking to us about Villa Héritage, the project entrusted to him by the Salone del Mobile for its 2025 event. Through this installation, he recounts the importance of time and experience. Then we’ll discuss his first project for Giorgetti: the Floria table collection, an ode to nature and its harmony.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A shared vision and path have resulted in furniture, the Giorgetti Maserati Edition collection, and a ‘one-off’ car, the Maserati Grecale Giorgetti Edition. A partnership makes sense only if working together gives rise to something that wouldn’t have been possible alone. Thanks to this collaboration, Maserati has given the Giorgetti collection an aerodynamic sense of movement. Likewise, Giorgetti has brought its stylistic signature to a one-off car: the highest quality materials, unparalleled craftsmanship and the use of cutting-edge manufacturing technology. These collaborations are the fruit of mutual respect and the unwavering faith which the two companies have in Italian craftsmanship, their shared heritage.  Today we’ll be taking about going beyond one’s areas of expertise, beyond the confines of one’s industry and world to seek out new collaborations and projects, with Klaus Busse, Head of Design at Maserati, and Giancarlo Bosio, Creative Director at Giorgetti. In the words of Busse: ‘There’s always something stimulating, something fresh, that happens when you work with someone outside of your industry.’See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GIORGETTI VOICES is a new podcast about design in all its forms: from the initial idea to technical drawings, from research to creation. It’s a journey through objects, places and spaces which become worlds, stories, visions...and perhaps even dreams. Each episode of GIORGETTI VOICES is united by a common thread: movement. Dynamism and evolution in science, space and design, but also in lifestyles and fashion.Stories without images, because words are powerful.  GIORGETTI VOICES started out as a video broadcast, and since 2021 has continued on as a special project within the GM – Giorgetti Magazine, the annual printed and digital publication which captures the collective imagination as it takes shape through objects in the world.  The concept and editorial supervision are by Muse Factory of Projects.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.