Greenhouse meetings / Designers, architects, writers and entrepreneurs meet.

Every afternoon of the festival, from September 15 to 21, the Serra del Grumello hosts a series of meetings where designers, architects, writers and entrepreneurs meet to explore the theme of this sixth edition from different points of view: from contemporary formal research by international designers to the bold experiments of Como rationalism, through a series of reflections on the relationship between matter, light and transparency.

Sunday September 15
5.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

Book presentation ITALY&MODA by Roberta Redaelli. With Roberta Redaelli, Simona Roveda and Paolo Aquilini

Sustainability is the key word to understand the present and build the future. However, in recent years its meaning seems to have been diluted in the difficulties of the historical moment, so much so that the relationship between ethics and economics has evaporated. Especially in the fashion system, one of the most polluting industry of the Planet. The essay starts from the Como textile district, a territory that is founded on the beauty of art and luxury, and focuses on human capital and the concrete commitment of those who "make fashion" on a daily basis. A wide-ranging analysis, it is not meant to be an instruction manual, but an open and critical dialogue with those who do or have started to do sustainability for real.

Monday September 15
5.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

PANEL Contemporary Design Selection. Powered by Parola Progetto, curated by Paolo Ferrarini

Lightness in emerging contemporary design is the theme of a series of panels curated by Paolo Ferrarini. A selection of 15 designers of the Contemporary Design Selection, coming from European and non-European countries, are invited to narrate their vision and their work, through dialogues powered by Parola Progetto and moderated by Paolo Ferrarini.

Parola Progetto is a podcast of ‘dialogues with people who live by projects’, where design in all its expressions and forms is addressed. Since 2019, it has been telling design without objects and images, only through words. It is a free platform without rigid structures, a place for dialogues and stories, hosting designers, graphic designers, entrepreneurs, musicians and artists of national and international fame.

Paolo Ferrarini, creator of Parola Progetto, is a journalist, lecturer and curator. He deals with cultural innovation between design and fashion by writing (for Interni and Vogue Italia), teaching (at the University of Bologna and at the Accademia Costume e Moda) and curating content for companies, institutions and festivals.

Jean-François D’Or (BE), Marino Secco (IT), Millim Studio (IT) speaker: Chiara Pellicano, Studio Gunther Pfeffer (DE), Ye Sul E. Cho (KR/UK/CAN)

Tuesday September 17
10.30 am, Serra del Grumello

PANEL Contemporary Design Selection. Powered by Parola Progetto, curated by Paolo Ferrarini

Panel matinee with Paolo Ferrarini and five designers from the Contemporary Design Selection: Alice Pilastre + Mathilde Tinturier + Andy Farrow (FR/CH/UK/BE) speaker: Alice PIlastre; Dora Stanczel (FR) + pietre trovanti (IT) - speaker Dora Stanczel; Hana Hillerova (CZ); Philippine Aprile Mandillon (FR); Sarah Carestia (BE)

Tuesday September 17
from 4.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

Lorenzo Palmeri (4.00 pm) and Davide Groppi (6.00 pm) in conversation with Paolo Casicci

Paolo Casicci takes the public on a light journey through the words and research of two prominent figures of the Italian design scene.

Lorenzo Palmeri, architect, art director and design lecturer, shares his personal idea of lightness starting from the Symposion bottle designed for Acqua Chiarella in 2020. A sculpture-object that in just a few years has become an icon of contemporary design in which shapes and transparencies merge in a radical aesthetic tension. In the project, glass becomes a story and brings water with its clarity and lightness, back to the center. With Paolo Casicci, Palmieri delves into this and other design challenges in the constant search for balance between shapes, materials, absence, and presence.

Light is the undisputed protagonist of the poetics of Davide Groppi, a designer from Piacenza who has been designing and producing lamps with the eponymous brand since the late 1980s. Davide Groppi’s lamps are born from the need to give shape to a necessity or a meaning, suggesting new solutions and enhancing forgotten details. His inspirations are art, ready-made, magic, the desire to do things by hand or simply the desire to play and joke with light that, impalpable and fleeting, gives life to games of full and empty, light and dark.

Wednesday September 18
5.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

PANEL Contemporary Design Selection. Powered by Parola Progetto, curated by Paolo Ferrarini

Last appointment with the panels started on 16 September by Paolo Ferrarini. This time the designers selected are: curaa studio (IT) speaker: Paolo Failla; ENEI (CH/AR/ES) speaker: Nicolas Boscoboinik; JOYH (AT) speaker: Jade Bailey; Paulina Herrera Letelier (CL/IT); RAAD Studio (ES).

Thursday September 19
5.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

INTERWEAVING RESOURCES. Jan Boelen in dialogue with Giovanna Massoni

Starting from the assumption that ‘materials are heavy and should remain local, while people and ideas are light and travel globally’, Jan Boelen, a well-known curator and scholar of bioregional design practices, in dialogue with Giovanna Massoni, will reflect on the wealth of resources and savoir-faire in the Lake Como region, where he has been residing for some years now. With respect and caution, Boelen intends to generate a slow process and a long-term project, backed by an undoubtedly successful experience: the Atelier LUMA in Arles (FR). The aim is to build productive and resilient networks that facilitate the exchange of knowledge and skills between communities, craftsmen, industries, scientists, students and institutions. A very first debut of this new project is ‘Intrecciare risorse’, an exhibition presented until 13 October 2024, in Palanzo, Faggeto Lario: the fruit of a meeting between the canestrai Cesare Andreani and Francesco Torri and the young fashion designer Sara Citella.

Jan Boelen (1967, Belgium) is a curator of design, architecture and contemporary art. He is the artistic director of Atelier LUMA in Arles, France. Founder and former artistic director of Z33 - House for contemporary art in Hasselt, Belgium, he was the initiator of the Master Social design at the Design Academy Eindhoven until 2020 and Rektor of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design from 2019 to 2023.

Giovanna Massoni (born in Milan, lives and works in Brussels) is an independent curator and consultant working in the field of design and visual arts. Since 2005 she has collaborated regularly with institutions for the promotion of Belgian and international design. Constantly searching for collaborative methodologies and innovative forms that can valorize and communicate the cultural and social value of design, she strongly supports this practice for its ability to facilitate openness, interconnections, and interdisciplinary collaboration, today indispensable for the construction of a new ecosystem of values and objects.

Friday September 20
5.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

DANTEUM. Curated by Paolo Brambilla and Filippo Galli

Paolo Brambilla and Filippo Galli unveil the DANTEUM, an unrealized project by Giuseppe Terragni and Pietro Lingeri. From the idea of the Milanese lawyer Rino Valdameri who in 1938 had proposed to the Italian government to create a building in Rome that would celebrate the “greatest poet of the Italians”, the Danteum was to be finished in time for the 1942 Universal Exhibition. Inspired by the golden rectangle, the maximum expression of purity and formal perfection, the two architects wanted to create a mammoth architectural work that would embody Dante’s vision of the afterlife, composed of hell, purgatory and paradise. The project was definitively shelved in 1939.

Paolo Brambilla: Born in Como in 1966, he graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1992. He collaborated with: Barbieri-Marianelli – Milan, Campi and Pessina – Lugano and then opened an associated studio with Elisabetta Orsoni in 1994. He is a member of the board of the Archivio Cattaneo in Cernobbio.

Filippo Galli: Galli was born in Como in 1967, graduated in Philosophy, Classics and specialized in Art History. He currently teaches Aesthetics and Theory of Perception at the Aldo Galli Academy of Fine Arts in Como and is a lecturer in Aesthetics at the Catholic University of Milan.

Saturday September 21
5.00 pm, Serra del Grumello

Book presentation Greenhouse Stories by d-o-t-s. Olivier Lacrouts (d-o-t-s) in conversation with Laura Maggi

Olievier Lacrouts (d-o-t-s) talks with Laura Maggi about the controversial social, scientific and architectural role of the greenhouse presented in the book Greenhouse Stories by d-o-t-s, published by Onomatopee in 2023. With contributions from scholars, essayists and designers, the book invites us to look critically at these tools of agricultural and cultural production that over the centuries have allowed us to improve our scientific knowledge, spread botanical teachings in a popular way and develop horticultural innovations, not to mention their crucial role in the processes of women's emancipation and in the promotion of social and eco-conscious projects. In parallel with the benefits they have brought, greenhouses have also had – and still have – harmful consequences on the environment and on the way we relate to other living beings. Greenhouse Stories invite us to re-establish more humble and meaningful connections with the Earth and its living communities.