Penthouse roof, an inward curved facade, bold curves also inside, circular windows: what the Milanese star architect Gio Ponti built from 1933 to 1935 on behalf of Mussolini in the valley end of the Martello Valley, was from the beginning suspicious of the locals. The mountain farmers living there were used to the Tyrolean and Habsburg style, no futuristic buildings shaped by the Bauhaus idea. For them the mountain hotel Paradiso del Cevedale was a fascist foreign body in front of the Ortler massif. Today it is one of the most beautiful proofs that alpine design does not have to be as rustic as many believe.
The hotel was intended to promote alpine tourism in South Tyrol and offered every conceivable luxury, a reading room with English fireplace, hairdressing and massage parlors, a sauna and even its own post office waiting for the wealthy hotel guests at 2160 meters. Mainly Mussolini's minions and Italian industrialists stayed here. After the Italian surrender it used the SS as espionage school and vacation base, 1946 it went bankrupt. Today, the hostel beckons abandoned and half decayed into the valley.
The former splendor of the luxury hotel can only be admired in pictures, for example in the magnificent illustrated book "Design From The Alps 1920 - 2020". Six pages dedicated to Claudio Larcher, Massimo Martignoni and Ursula Schnitzer, curators of an exhibition of the same name in Merano, only the defunct interior of the hotel. We see wall designs and furniture that give a good deal of curves and warmth to the rationalism, which is often cited as a little bit of a secret. Gio Ponti had designed individual furniture for each room.
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Discoveries and Innovations: The World of Northern Italian DesignOn 450 large-format pages Larcher, Martignoni and Schnitzer provide a meaningful summary of the design developments in that area, which was designated before 1918 as Tyrol and then was torn apart by the political developments. The Austrian Tyrol as well as South Tyrol and Trentino in Italy. "An area that is embedded between two different but mutually communicating cultures and thus forms a natural bridge between the Germanic north and the Mediterranean south of Europe," writes Martignoni in his preface.
This area captures the book by following two principles. Once it's about designers from the region. Sometimes that leads to surprises, as in the case of Ettore Sottsass. Most of the great Italian designers are located in Milan's design world because of his work with the Memphis group - but he comes from Innsbruck. In the book, he is represented with his Olivetti Valentine, the iconic, as chic and as quiet shred travel typewriter from the year 1969. In addition, companies are presented, which produce in the region. Konstantin Grcic's award-winning "Miura" stool? A product of the furniture manufacturer Plank, which is located near Bolzano.
The result is a historically accurate panorama, which tells a lot about contexts, but always looks for anchors in the present. Above all, it covers a wide range of objects. It starts with industrial design and ranges from classic furniture design to sports and tourism, reflecting the great design flows of the past hundred years.
Much is likely to be known only to specialists. For example, Siegfrid Mazagg's armchair designed in 1929 for the Hotel Berghof in Seefeld: a dream of massive wooden planks, extra-wide and extra-deep. Or the first stuffed animals of the Broschek brothers from Fieberbrunn in Tyrol. Made in the material scarce years after the Second World War from Wehrmacht ceilings, parachute silk and uniform buttons. From 1972 comes the caravan line "Series Blu" of Laverda Spa Trento, light blue boxes whose form dispenses with tand and which seem to insist on their panoramic window from right angles.
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13.12.2019, 18:13 clock
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DISPLAY
Design from the Alps 1920-2020: Tyrol South Tyrol Trentino
Publishing company:
Scheidegger & Spiess
Pages:
460
Price:
48,00 €
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The rustic, which adheres to the term "alpine design", is not completely missing by the way. It sometimes appears as a quote, especially with designers of the past decades. This sometimes leads to astounding results, for example in a cabinet from the "Edition Tirol" by the company Wetscher in the Zillertal: filigree Kerbholzschnitzereien after centuries-old tradition meet on a frills-free cube shape. A dream home first class.
That's what the mountain farmers from the area of the Paradiso Hotel thought at some point. For as soon as it was no longer guarded, the built-in furniture custom-made by Gio Ponti disappeared from the hotel piece by piece. Today it is completely empty.
