{"id":16367,"date":"2014-09-21T22:31:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-21T20:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/the-perfection-of-imperfection-an-apartment-in-paris-2\/"},"modified":"2015-10-07T12:53:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T10:53:29","slug":"the-perfection-of-imperfection-an-apartment-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/the-perfection-of-imperfection-an-apartment-in-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"The perfection of imperfection – an apartment in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen we talk about an interior, if you go somewhere familiar, nothing happens because you know it already, and there is nothing to move your brain to understand something different\u201d, says Italian-born architect and designer Gaetano Pesce. \u201cBut new things provoke people to think. And that is why innovation matters so much. Not only is progress in technology and economic important, but so is progress in ways creativity is important. Because it provokes the progress of the human being\u2026 and that is vital because when you go in a space where nothing provokes you, then nothing happens\u201d.
\nPesce has had an unusual, ingenious, and continually evolving career since he began work in the 1960s. Recent projects include customizable shoes for the Brazilian firm Melissa, various new furniture and object design, and a sensational installation called \u201cItaly on the Cross\u201d, unveiled at the Milan furniture fair this past April. His work has included all manner of exploration, from written manifestos, drawings, chairs and furniture, to architectural projects. Yet there have been few wholly-conceived interiors \u2013 gesamtkunstwerks, to use the German term \u2013 that he has designed. The most important of these, though no longer extant, was the apartment he reconfigured for the late art collector and art-and-design aficionado Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hubin, completed in 1986. Situated in a 1930s art deco building on Avenue Foch in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe, this strangely beautiful apartment illustrates perhaps better than any project, Pesce\u2019s artistic goal of using innovation to prompt an alertness to the human narrative and our shared imperfection. By examinning specific aspects of the Hubin apartment, along with Pesce\u2019s own words on the subject, we see how a traditional apartment was transformed through a dramatic staging of a multitude of almost mythic tales.
\n\u201cI do projects not as a profession, but when I have something to express\u201d, says Pesce. \u201cHubin allowed me to do a kind of portrait of himself, because he was a collector \u2013 very curious, very open. So I was able to make a house in a new way. Each door has a different function, so each door is different. Take the workshop, for example. He was a photographer and a darkroom, so the door to the workshop was a hand, because you work with the hand. And he was a dreamer, so the bird (drawn around the door) represents freedom\u201d. Pesce\u2019s structural goal was to reorganize the space in a simple way, unifying the apartment both orizontally and vertically by breaking down the divisione of space. But his artistic aims went further. More installation art than interior design, Pesce\u2019s creation is dramatic mise-en-sc\u00e8ne filled with plot lines and character. He established momentary tensione of bilance, form, color, and function, and employed strong contrasting colors of red, yellow, blue, and green. Table legs canted inward at various angles. Doorknobs in unusual forms hung at different heights. The balustrade along the mezzanino was made up of skewed stanchions, each surmounted by an illuminated spere of a different color. Figurative imagery filled the decor. A corner of a wall was chipped away, and lights were inset along a faux crack in the ceiling. For the inhabitant-viewer, these interventions incited an inner conflict, which in turn spurred questions. For Pesce, this was the ultimate goal. Without this provocation, there would be no reaction and therefore no change.
\n\u201cThere was a huge window onto the terrace, overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, where usually they had a huge French flag in the middle of the arc, moving beautifully,\u201d Pesce recalls. \u201cSo I hung double-height curtains with the colors of the flag, and when the window was open in summer, the curtain blew outward, and from the street you would see the same thing that was happening on the Arc de Triomphe\u201d.
\nThe window curtains mimicked the flag, connecting with and drawing in the history of that famous landmark. The fabric related the public discorse with the private; the objective nature of history to the subjective nature of life and living. Or, as Pesce may prefer, the subjective nature of history and the objective nature of life. And throughout the main room and upstairs, a silhouette evocative of the Parisian skyline, cut of contrasting dark marble, was inset along the base of the walls: another story of the city as a counterpoint to the private space. The aesthetic colloqui was taken further on the apartment\u2019s upper floor. The guest bedroom wall opened or closed to the main room via a garage-like door, either to integrate the private room with the public space,
\nor to further isolate it. Lead, a nod in metal to the roof-tops of Paris, was used for furniture in the bedroom. \u201cI try to give to my objects a form that connects with the place where they are realized\u201d, says Pesce. \u201cI try to make objects that carry an idea of joy or an idea of sensuality. We need that\u201d. Pesce\u2019s use of color is almost expressionistic, but his surrealist gestures are equally key in his interiors. Take the bed\"\"<\/a> in the master suite, which resembled a giant paper-and twine-wrapped package. \u201cThink about a bed\u201d, he says. \u201cIf you go to bed with someone, you don\u2019t know what might happen. The bed represents that\u201d.
\nHe rigged a system of pulleys whereby the \u201cpackage\u201d opens up and reveals the mattress within. But to design a space punctuated by what he calls \u201csymbolic incidents\u201d is only part of Pesce\u2019s method. Another significant layer to his work is his process and idiosyncratic aesthetic language. \u201cI believe that the pursuit of perfection is the wrong goal\u201d, he explains. \u201cIn reality, it is good to show that we are human beings and we can make mistakes. We are not supposed to do something that doesn\u2019t represent us. I am not able to do something perfectly round, so I do something that is not round. But it\u2019s okay, because it represents me. It\u2019s a way to talk about individualit\u00e0, talk about a person, in opposition to the machine\u201d.
\nFor Pesce there is no repetition. He began in the 1960s to develop the concept of a diversified series, in which he seeks to produce objects where uniqueness rather than conformit\u00e0 transcends. Thus, he incorporates elements of chance in art-making, allows for \u201cmistakes\u201d in form and surface, and values the results of somewhat uncontrolled production methods. So if a series of ten vases is made, each will be different from the others.
\nIn the Hubin apartment, he employed diversification in a different way. Through the creation of theatrical moments, each experience of the space is punctuated by the chance encounters he staged. Through the use of powerful and subjective narratives, he created a space that could not be duplicated in another location, or for another person. The space was unique to Avenue Foch and to Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hubin, Pesce sought to exploit and highlight the imperfections of himself and of his client\/audience \u2013 understanding that no one person is perfect, that each comes with their own set of knowledge and understanding defined by so many personal traits and histories. For Hubin Pesce made a space that reflected his client\u2019s character in whole. To some, the results were perhaps unnerving: to others, comforting; but to all, a provocation.<\/p>\n

This text by Brent Lewis was published on Modern Magazine, Summer 2011<\/em><\/p>\n