The ADI Design Index 2022 was presented in the inspiring location at the ADI Design Museum in Milan, with the participation of ADI President Luciano Galimberti and ADI Foundation – Compasso d’Oro Collection President, Umberto Cabini.
This year’s edition of the ADI Design Index – the preselection for the next Compasso d’Oro Awards in 2024 will be completed by next year’s choices – opens with three words: freedom, system and quality.
Quality has always been central to the ADI Design Index, which was created in 2000 precisely to identify it in every sector of Italian manufacturing. It is implicit in the attention given to the choices of the over one hundred experts which make up the ADI Design Permanent Observatory.
In this edition there are 248 selected products. Abet Laminati has been selected in the “corporate research” section with ” SuperSuperfici! – the spirit of Memphis reloaded,” a project by Giulio Iacchetti and Matteo Ragni – design curators for the company – created to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Memphis Group. The main topic: rediscovering the meaning of being radical today.
Indeed, to truly celebrate what Memphis means, we need to ask what Memphis design would look like if Ettore Sottsass Jr and his associates had founded the movement forty years later. How would they have realised the radicality that defined the group during their six years of activity from 1981 to 1987?
This is the question from which SuperSuperfici! was born. The collective workshop involved eight designers – Federico Angi, Zanellato Bortotto, Agustina Bottoni, Antonio de Marco, Chiara Moreschi, Martinelli Venezia, Panter & Tourron and Mario Scairato. All were committed to reinterpreting the radical nature of Memphis from a contemporary perspective: not designing furniture or objects in the Memphis style but trying to generate new design, borrowing the same revolutionary inspiration of the movement.
Some products of SuperSuperfici! – including ‘Beep Beep’ by Federico Angi and ‘Tornante’ by Antonio de Marco-will be on display in Milan until Nov. 27. The exhibition, from Dec. 13 to 18, will then move to Rome at the Treccani Institute.
Abet Laminati boasts two Compasso D’Oro awards in its history. The first was in 1987 for Diafos laminate, the ideal solution for those who want to experiment with material and light, and the second in 2001, where the company won a Compasso d’Oro ADI as a Lifetime Achievement Award.
