Studio for Immediate Spaces
Matteo Viviano+
Matteo Viviano is an Italian designer fascinated by the anthropological results of the uses of space. In his practice, he questions spatial situations made of facts and events, relations between beings and artefacts.
Trained in design research and material-based explorations, Matteo looks to architecture and art as a working tool, transforming
archive-based material into storytelling objects.
While the built environment is undergoing increasing pressures of globalisation, domestic spaces are becoming more and more homogenised. Consequently, traces of traditional crafts and hand-made production are fading into industrial processes and commodification. Designers Emilie Bordes and Matteo Viviano harvested the shelves of hardware stores, supermarkets and other warehouses, foraging for objects and materials to produce a series of speculative furniture. The pieces emphasise how such spaces for consumption conceal the extractivist nature of ready-to-use modern goods and the commodification of vernacular practices. Vernacogene oscillates between the functional and the absurd, framing a space in tension between traditional crafts knowledge and contemporary industrial processes.