Piero Lissoni, pure and simple

Over the years, the Elle Decor installation at Palazzo Bovara has explored how we inhabit the home. How is this theme reflected in this year’s installation?


I simply wanted to bring back my own own idea of a journey, a story of clarity, purity, and visual rationality. And I tried, in the world of perception, to cool everything down, to strip away decoration as much as possible. I tried to approach it through what is my world — a world made sometimes of silences, sometimes of emptiness, sometimes of absence.

What is the concept behind your installation at Palazzo Bovara?


The project is called Sensory Landscape and stems from a twofold tension: the idea that the senses, which can be more than five, are instruments of knowledge, coupled with the desire to subtract, reduce and take the experience of living to a dimension that is clearer, leaner and almost radical. The architecture and decorations of Palazzo Bovara are expunged. The design develops as an open exchange rather than a sequence of rooms, a catalogue of experiences, unhurried and without compromise. Each space is a statement: the food is food, the water is water, the books are books, the art is art. Nothing is mediated, nothing is “decorated” so as to be more acceptable. Everything is exactly what it is.

What is the concept for the kitchen?


I have always considered the kitchen a very technical space, a laboratory that transforms ingredients into food. So the kitchen at Palazzo Bovara had to be a laboratory — naturally with the warmth of a domestic laboratory, but a laboratory nonetheless. The V-ZUG appliances are one of the main elements in the kitchen. These products are not simply machines, but technological presences that transform ingredients into food through cold, cooking, and a whole series of other elements. I worked on a large island — the island is for me a primary idea, an architecture in the midst of so many food concepts: amid the chaos of the kitchen, it stops you architecturally. The chef works around the island, which is my gesture as an architect.

And the restaurant?


The restaurant displays and expands on the ritual of eating. I wanted it to be a stage for food — somewhat raw, even. A restaurant that denies decoration: glass tables, very cold neon lights, reflective walls, a Porro piece that is a glass cage, packed full of glass. I wanted to break away from the classic, gentle idea of decoration around food. Here, the food does the talking, amplified by the mirrors. Everything becomes infinite, forcing you to confront food in an almost monastic way.

How did you integrate V-ZUG appliances into the two spaces? 


Actually, I didn’t integrate the appliances — they are the protagonists. For example, in one of the two rooms they are mounted inside a luminous wall. They are like paintings, technological works of art. I treated them in this way because of the beauty of their design, their high-tech quality, and their excellence as machines. I had no need for mimicry or artifice.

You have witnessed and taken part in many Design Weeks throughout your career. How has this event changed over time? What does it represent today?


It has improved, it has gained more courage, it is less naïve. There is naturally a greater effort from every point of view — in quality, in the level of presentation, in avoiding the trivialisation of what is shown. And then visibly it has developed a language that speaks to the world. That is where I see the real difference...

Your studio turns 40 this year. What does this anniversary mean to you?


When I started, it was me, my partner Nicoletta Canesi, and a kitchen table. Today I find myself more or less in the same situation — with just a few more kitchen tables.