Someone once said, at the base of any good project, there should be the passion or “love in doing it.”
This someone, confessed just yesterday at the Fuori Salone in Milan, during the presentation of #sofa4manhattan held at Onwards, the exhibition was opened to the public until April 13.
That influential “someone” is, Stefano Micelli, one of the three creators of the project called #sofa4manhattan, Filippo Berto and Diego Paccagnella are among the makers.
What we do want is to share the emotion we experience during each stage of production: from studying carefully the prototype to actually making the #sofa4manhattan in a crowdcrafting workshop.
We would like to tell you about this experience, while sitting comfortably on the #sofa4manhattan, the sofa co-created for the city of New York, together with New Yorkers.
Let us proceed in order.
– What is # sofa4manhattan?
The #sofa4manhattan is a project created by Berto and Design –Apart, of whom put together a team of designers, master artisans, makers and ordinary citizens of Manhattan to create the ideal sofa representative of the New York City life style.
– Who was responsible for choosing the design of #sofa4manhattan?
The design of #sofa4manhattan came from a shared process, a workshop held in Manhattan, where 10 designers, who reside in the city, faced the difficult task of designing a sofa ideal for Manhattanites. From that workshop, a final project was submitted, elaborated and accepted. The designers of the #sofa4manhattan are Joe Graceffa and Lera Moiseeva, coordinated by Luca Nichetto.
– How was the #sofa4manhattan made?
The #sofa4manhattan was made in three distinct phases.
- The Design workshop held in January of 2014, where we organized a workshop in the loft of Design -Apart with 10 international designers, who are based in New York City.
- The first prototype was made in February of 2014; we studied carefully the final design and developed the first prototype, made by the best artisans in the Berto laboratory.
- The final Crowdcrafting event was held in March of 2014, exactly where it began, in New York City. The event was an open workshop of artisanship, where the actual construction of the product took place with a diverse group of people, but all living in the same place.
In addition to the participation of Filippo Berto and master artisan Flavio Cairoli there were, in fact, other guests’ creative makers and citizens of Manhattan to help us build the sofa.
This however, is not the right place to judge the quality of the project itself, but rather an opportunity for us to show our commitment, dedication and passion for our craft to every person we met.
During the design process, with each new test we encountered, we stand firm knowing that who took part in the workshops in March and in every hand we shook tight thereafter in Milan, now understand what drives us, “the love in doing.”