Divan: meeting point
For many centuries the city of Venice was a gateway to the Orient, with which it had woven a dense and continuous fabric of dialogue highlighted by cultural and commercial contacts which still radiate in the diaries of Marco Polo.
Our project is inspired by the concept of the meeting point, a seat in a special setting, the entry point of oriental traditions. We relate the concept of the divan as a meeting point with its other meaning in the Eastern Mediterranean of customs house, which is nothing other than the less pleasant aspect of the contact between different cultures, ethnic groups and nations.
Our idea was to express the natural potential of the Venetian briccola as a meeting point. So we thought of proposing the concept of it as a natural seat.
Here the concept of “long duration is relevant again”: natural seats are used again, products of human intelligence and skill, placed in a unique and permanent landscape, not only redolent of history but also providing a meta-temporal dimension.
Designer: Riccardo Arbizzoni
Italy
