Artijanus/Artijanas

ArtiJanus/ArtiJanas is a cultural project born in Sardinia. It was created to stimulate local productive realities operating in the various sectors of craftsmanship to reinterpret their productions, hybridize them, and generally innovate. Following the presence of the products at Homo Faber 2022 in Venice, Dontstop curated the installation at Palazzo Litta of the work of Collezione Terre (Terrapintada + Zanellato/Bortolotto and Laboratorio Tessile M&Dusa and Serena Confalonieri). The installation is realized using a sinuous shape as a backdrop for the products, made from the typical yarn of Sardinian textiles, and echoing some of the typical stylistic features of vase work. The decision to use a material such as threads to create space is also a tribute to the Sardinian artist Maria Lai.

Hainan, thanks to its recent Free Port status, is becoming the bridge between South East Asia China, and the rest of the world, and has invited Italy as a Partner Country for its first Design Week. The ‘Window of Italy’ exhibition, curated by Michele Brunello, which DONTSTOP designed the set-up, explores the innovations taking place in the various fields of design, which can be traced back to ‘Made in Italy’ and the Italian territory. The general theme of Design Week is “Low Carbon and New Consumptions”, and a particular focus of the exhibition addressed the theme of the Mediterranean dimension, which creates a bridge with Hainan, an island with a climate and historical/geographical conditions similar to some Italian regions.
Italy, one of the laboratories of possible (and necessary) transitions for the future, is presented through the involvement of partners, designers, and enterprises, design, and business projects, divided into five thematic sections: Design, Fashion, Food, Cities, and Education.
These thematic sections will represent some case studies of realities that represent Italian quality in the various fields, and as is usually the case, the cultural content reinforces the entire system of business operations that accompany the event. The layout is conceived as a dynamic wave-shaped path, which the visitor passes through, delving into the various institutional presences, including the Marche Region and Milan Polytechnic, and industrial and commercial realities.

ITALIA 110 e lode is an exhibition dedicated to the one hundred and ten year history of the Italian national football team. Hosted in the sub-stand of the First Ring of S.Siro in Milan, the exhibition gathers memorabilia of the national football team, but at the centre of this story is the symbol that represents the team and the passion for football: the jersey.   In this short journey, the jersey is tinged with a single colour, blue, until it becomes the very concept of national representation; until it summarises in a single word the set of people, hearts and legs for whom to spend their passions: The Azzurri!

The Chinese Design Weeks have developed as big public events of urban innovation, far from the concept of design linked to “products” or “services”, but a ground for experimentation of every form of design. The first room of the exhibition shows the results of these investigations in three symbolic cities where innovation is produced and where the future of design is redesigning millions of people’s lives. In the second room, the redevelopment process of the Beijing Dashilar district, located southwest of Tian’anmen Square, is explored in depth. Started in 2011, it is characterized by a bottom-up planning process.

The exhibition gives evidence of the research and training currently underway at the LABA (Libre Académie des Beaux-Arts) art academy in Douala – Cameroon’s booming economic capital city – which aims to build a contemporary Cameroonian approach in the world of visual art, fashion, graphics and design.  On the occasion of the Biennial of the Cities of Favara Cultural Park, a selection of projects made within the framework of the CamON! program between 2018 and 2019 by students of the academy were exhibited.

The exhibition “How do you play” collected a selection of 12 objects inspired by the theme of the game, developed by the designers of the LABA Academy in Douala, the main urban centre of Cameroon. The exhibition was the final stage of a design training course led by Dontstop Architettura, as part of the “CAMon! Promoting art and culture: capacity building, social enterprise and education in Cameroon”, coordinated by the COE Association and supported by AICS – Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, aimed at cultural promotion through the creation of a HUB integrating tradition and technological innovation.

Chinese Design Weeks have developed as major public events of urban experimentation, far from the concept of design linked to “products” or “services”, but field of experimentation for all forms of project. The first room of the exhibition will tell the results of these experiments in three symbolic cities, where innovation is produced and where the future of design is redesigning lives of millions of people. The second room explores the redevelopment process of the Beijing district of Dashilar, located south-west of Tian’anmen Square, which began in 2011 and is characterized by bottom-up planning type.

The exhibition explores the relationship between cities and their landscape systems linked to water: today we need a new architecture capable of recovering urban qualities starting from the relationship between cities and their water. The metaphor of “posture”, of how the body reacts to its surroundings, is placed in different environmental contexts. The exhibition combines the postures of the “men of water” (such as the gondolier of the Venetian boat or Suzhou) with contemporary reflections and projects on the relationship between space, people and water. The exhibition, through symbolic objects and metaphors, helps viewers to understand how urban environments, in dialogue with water, are the most important resource for a sustainable and good quality future development. In China we play along the blue infrastructure of the Grand Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which dates back over 2000 years of history: 1700 kilometers of canals connecting the most important cities of China. Today, as in the past, the link between Venice and China passes through water.

In the prestigious location of Errotaja, in the centre of Helsinki, one of the main installations consisted of a survey of the most important transformations, people, communities and projects of Design in Beijing. The exhibition “Beijing: a harmonious and livable city of culture”, co-curated by Michele Brunello, Wenyi Wu, Tao Haiying, was set up by Dontstop Architettura and divided into five rooms: “City” tells the story of Beijing’s transformations up to 2030, “People” tells the story of the young protagonists of design and culture, “Community” describes the complex operations of urban regeneration and community building in the Hutongs, “Objects” shows the objects and arts&craft connected to the great monuments of the capital and finally “Rituals” tells the rituals and practices related to the Chinese calendar and the Moon Party, celebrated during the exhibition period.

“Across Chinese Cities – The Community”, promoted by Beijing Desing Week in partnership with Souzhou Municipal Government explores approches to planning linked to the development of “communities” as mechanisms that create new system of social, economic and spatial belonging.

The project offers unprecedented look at over 20 cases studies that drawn upon the “emancipating potentialities of commoning” through integrated design strategies which embody new notions of collective identity and thus novel interrelated norms of co-dependence, participation and inclusivity.