Italian designer and architect Andrea Branzi’s second solo exhibition in New York, “Interiors,” will be shown at Friedman Benda from May 5 to June 11. Branzi is known for co-founding the design collective Archizoom and the design school Domus Academy, as well as for his impact on Italian radical architecture, Superarchitettura, Studio Alchimia, and the Memphis Group. He has had a solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier (2008) and a 50-year retrospective at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Bordeaux (2014-2015). The Centre Pompidou will host another Branzi solo exhibit in Paris next year.
Drawing for “Plank Cabinet 5,” 2015; “Plank Cabinet 6,” 2015
In “Interiors,” Branzi presents his “Plank” series for the first time, taking “abstract ideas about the history of cultural evolution and root[ing] them in these cabinets” through the use of aluminum, raw wood and spray paint. The designer first used raw trees in his work in the “Animali Domestici” series in the 1980s. The cabinets are intended to be filled with everyday personal objects, and are part of Branzi’s expression of technology’s impact on the changing role of the home.
Branzi, founding member of the Archizoom Associati, a group of designers who embraced the fall of modernism, is also a three-time recipient of the Compasso d’Oro Award, and has been named an Honorary Royal Designer in the United Kingdom. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.
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