Love, it is known, can take very different and wonderful forms.
Even Gianni Veneziano (architect, artist and designer) and Luciana Di Virgilio (designer)partners and parents, who have made love their reason for living, professionally and personally.
Their latest work is called Heartbreakthe new pasta format designed for the company La Molisana. A macaroni whose shape resembles that of a heart, furrowed by small inlets that hold the good flavours of a cuisine that speaks of authentic feelings.
Like those of Gianni's 93-year-old grandmother Nina from Puglia, who tried to cook the rigacuori in the classic Sunday 'pasta al forno', gathering around a tasty and colourful table the stories and hugs of a family reuniting.
"With our projects we want to tell love stories'. This sentence by Luciana is enough to make us understand the scope of a project, which is as simple as it is essential. 'Gianni and I,' she continues, 'have asked ourselves how we can reach hundreds, thousands, millions of people, truly entering their homes, in the most democratic and sustainable way possible. After all, man will never stop eating, just as he will never stop designing. According to Enzo Mari, the urge to design is one of man's basic needs, equal to that of hunger, i.e. the survival of the individual"..
In 2021, the meeting with La Molisana, and thus was born Heartbreaka new pasta format, the result of a love story born around a drawing board (or perhaps it is more correct to say dining table!). Heartbreak takes a symbolic and ancestral form that has already characterised previous projects in the production, between art and design, of Gianni Veneziano, which has thus made it the subject of experimentation over the years. Rigacuore,' explains a La Molisana note, 'represents in short the company's love for sustainability issues and is the forerunner of a new direction for the brand, which in 2021 will publish its first Sustainability report.
The historian pasta factory in Campobasso also changes its dress and 'dresses' in a new, fully recyclable paper pack. Paper that comes from responsibly managed and certified forests Forest Stewardship Council (Fsc).
How was Rigacuore born and what is the story it tells?
In the shape of the heart we have recognised the whole world since the 13th century, it is a universal symbolism that Gianni Veneziano has used over the years, making it a form and an object of experimentation between art and design until arriving at the iconic One Love stool, designed by Gianni and myself in 2015 for Riva1920, protagonist among others at the Pyeongchang Olympics. In February, on the occasion of Valentine's Day, our studio designed an advertisement for La Molisana with graphics featuring two pasta hearts and the phrase 'Fall in love, every day'. A simple phrase that leads one to reflect on what really matters, especially in the light of the last period that the whole world has gone through and is still going through. Among the certainties is that man will never stop eating, just as he will never stop planning and loving. That advertisement, which appeared among others on a full-page spread in the Corriere della Sera, as well as on the company's social channels, triggered an unexpected response from the public and La Molisana consumers, who insistently asked if the format already existed, where it could be purchased and so on. There was a real push from below that La Molisana was able to seize, thus bringing forward our project proposal for a new pasta format, which was anticipated in that Adv. Rigacuore, just like all special stories, is born from simple ingredients that in this case I would identify in project and entrepreneurial vision, design and excellence of raw materials, and it is one of the most democratic projects ever because, at about one euro per package, it enters everyone's homes, without social differentiation of any kind, demonstrating that concretely design can be part of everyone's life.
Design, Food and Feelings: how do these concepts fit together and what potential can they express?
If we think of pasta, we know that it is a theme in which very few architects and designers have managed to grapple. The shapes of pasta are rooted in popular traditions, which are evidently in our Apulian DNA. And it is in our design practice that we have always been interested in preserving what I call 'archaeology of feelings', in an active dialogue with contemporaneity. For us, design, food and feelings are united by a single denominator: beauty. That beauty that I would identify in the (often unexpressed) potential of our territory. A territory, if we think of Puglia for example, which should focus on a new cultural paradigm 'of caring', declining it in Hospitality, Crafts and Agriculture. This pandemic has made us think a lot about many conditions related to work, but it is not enough to say 'I'm going to live outside the city', it is necessary to plan and design by using the strategic lever of design, and culture more generally, to rebuild a new social fabric. I sincerely and strongly believe in this.
Why is Design more important than ever today?
Nine years ago, the press release for my radio project, the Capital Design column that went on air on Radio Capital, reported "...Design still continues to unite Italians today and is more present than ever in everyone's homes and everyday lives. That's why certain objects are indispensable, they are to be used, known and above all loved. No home is without a Bialetti moka, how can you make coffee in the morning without design?". I still firmly support the above and today I would add, to those iconic objects that I have recounted in the episodes, Rigacuore: an indispensable 'object', to be eaten (better than to be used), to be known and loved, as the naming itself tells us.
The next project in the pipeline?
I decided from an early age that I would 'plan', perhaps because all this life I cannot keep to myself. So I would say a life in the making, and that's one of the many things that Gianni and I have in common. We are currently in Salento where we are working on projects for private individuals and in the hospitality sector and, as I speak, I am sitting in the shade of a pomegranate tree in a space that will become a cultural hub in which we aim to bring together the values of the territory and hospitality by leveraging art, design and food. A place where we can gather around a table to eat Rigacuori and talk about beauty, without boundaries of any kind, in a perspective that I have renamed 'from inside the spoon to the city' - paraphrasing Rogers, because of our very broad approach to the Project but first of all to Life.
Ph: Roberto Lusito
