Close to Cloister: creativity and regeneration

What does it mean to interpret a neighborhood and a community through design?

Young designers from the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli are interpreting the concept of urban regeneration through creativity and craftsmanship, supervised by the team of Sovrappensiero Design Studio. One year after the first "Close to Cloister" workshop, the students have developed projects, taking inspiration from the Porta Capuana area, which will be presented during 2024 in Made in Cloister Foundation.

Output of the workshop Close to Cloister made with Sovrappensiero Design Studio at Officina Vanvitelli

The program of activities "Close to Cloister. Living and Producing with Design Communities" carried out as part of the initiative "Creative Place Making: architecture, design, craftsmanship for the city," stems from a teaching and research initiative carried out as part of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" Master's course in Design for Innovation in collaboration with Made in Cloister and Adi Campania on the theme of manufacturing in urban and suburban contexts in the city of Naples.

Through Jan. 27, 2024 at the Cloister Store an exhibition combining nature-inspired domestic objects by Sovrappensiero Design Studio and the Formamadre project that reflects on a question: how many forms does bread have in the world?

Sovrappensiero

Sovrappensiero is the Design Studio of Lorenzo De Rosa and Ernesto Iadevaia, listed among the Best Italian architects and designers under 40 in 2020, which entrusts the narrative component to the method of their design making.

For Made in Cloister, the design duo conceived an exhibition that combines objects from five collections: Carousel, Ale & Sandro, Al buio, Mediterraneo, Furnature. A condensation of reflections that moves from the shaping of products to the enigma of use, developing attention in the user, intrigued by the combination of technology and inspiration, precision and randomness, innovation and tradition.

Sovrappensiero looks to the "transparency" of the masters-such as Achille Castiglioni and Enzo Mari-to the logical rigor that links expression to content, ethics to aesthetics, and that denies consumption, affirming care.

The collections synthesize reasoning about the environment, the nature of things, the expected horizons of organic, inorganic and artificial matter.

Revolving mirrors, contemporary lies, unveiling candles, bewildered ceramics, unfinished artifacts become protagonists of living environments in which significant traces of the behaviors to come thicken in the enchanted and absorbed dimension of overthinking.

The first step, from Made in Cloister, of a longer journey of presenting projects developed during the Close to Cloister workshop by emerging designers from the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli.

Formamadre

Formamadre is the result of the work of a team of young designers composed of Marino Amodio, Michela Carlomagno, Alessandra Clemente, Ibtissam Jayed and Stefano Salzillo.

A concept that is outlined starting from the ritual of bread making, in the context of the Made in Cloister Foundation canteen and the peculiar instances of integration, aggregation and sharing expressed by it, in which bread becomes an intercultural medium.

The elements are designed to accompany and facilitate the ritual gestures performed in the stages of bread making: kneading, rising, breaking, forming and baking. The design derives from respect for the traditional recipes of the different cultures present in the Porta Capuana area.

The realization of the individual components involved artisans historically working in the neighborhood and other localities in Campania, formulating an unprecedented productive and relational network.

Each of the tools on display in the Made in Cloister Foundation responds to a specific function in bread making and at the same time and only together with the others configures the unique, totemic and maternal form from which the name of the project originates.

Learn the ancient craft traditions

The educational workshops begin with the School of Decoration of the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples

What does it mean to involve young creative minds and develop a dialogue with the local area? Art forms have demonstrated over time that they are able to bring contemporary discourses to the general public, becoming a means of expression and comparison.

The Made in Cloister project is from the outset focused on creating a link between the world of contemporary art and the city of Naples. Through the creation of exhibitions designed for the fascinating cloister of Santa Caterina a Formiello, the Foundation generates dialogue between international artists, craft traditions and the community.

The Neapolitan city has long been a point of reference for many craft traditions, largely replaced starting from the nineteenth century by the intelligence and speed of industrial production. To this day, many shops still preserve the knowledge handed down from generation to generation, which risks being forgotten in the near future.

The workshops with the artist Ara Starck, the glass craftsman Paolo Gambardella and the students of the School of Decoration of the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples want to bring the new generations closer to the techniques of working with stained glass, a material that will become protagonist of the Parisian artist's exhibition, opening in October 2023.

The workshops and the exhibition are in collaboration with the Cologni Foundation, an organization for the promotion and enhancement of Italian craftsmanship.

But how was cathedral glass born and how has it been used over the centuries?

Imagine entering a cathedral illuminated by high windows crossed by light that enhances its brilliant colors. The history of decorating and manufacturing stained glass is very ancient, dating back even to the ancient Romans.

They were born with a narrative function, to tell episodes from the Bible and spread the Christian message. But their greatest diffusion is found in Gothic architecture, as evidenced by the French cathedrals of Chartre, La chapelle and Notre Dame.

It's funny to think that despite the centuries have passed, the manufacturing technique has remained unchanged over time. Is simple. It begins by drawing a sketch to study the image and its coloring. It continues with the creation of a cardboard in definitive dimensions, useful for cutting the corresponding glass pieces, then assembled in the final composition. What can be difficult is the definition of the details, the nuances of a face, the drapery. Here painting comes in handy. The brush gives shape to faces and clothes, dipped in a mixture called grisaille which is fixed on the surface by cooking.

What will young artists, curators and cultural operators think of this experience? We ask him in small interviews soon published on our blog.

The Pope meets art

...and also Fondazione Made in Cloister

We are honored to have been included among the 200 from the art world invited to meet the Pope in perhaps the most identifying place in the relationship between art and church: the Sistine Chapel.

The meeting stems from Pope Francesco' desire to celebrate the work and life of artists, highlighting the contribution of art to the construction of a sense of shared humanity and the promotion of common values.

Guests together with Made in Cloister personalities from all places of art: from music and performance such as Laurie Anderson, from visual art such as Mimmo Paladino, Anselm Kiefer and Jason Martin, from literature, activism and journalism with Roberto Saviano and Michela Murgia.

A reflection on the function of art as a revealer of beauty, creator of harmony as a form of integration and coexistence in the chaotic nature of differences. A force that distinguishes itself from the idea of equality as homogenization and leveling, and that is capable of generating unity that welcomes the multiple contradictions and facets of the human soul.

The artists become the bearers of these values through their open, profound and critical gaze, preserving the imaginative and borderless vision of the child and at the same time pungent and far-sighted of the seer.

“Your art wants to act as a critical conscience of society, removing the veil from the obvious. You want to show what makes you think, which makes you alert, which reveals reality even in its contradictions […]

[…] We human beings yearn for a new world that we will not fully see with our own eyes, yet we desire it, we seek it, we dream it.”