Through the Apacheta at Milan Design Week 2023, Cristián Mohaded and Loro Piana form a union rooted in Argentina, Territorio Hibrido
Cristián Mohaded and Loro Piana for Milan Design Week at Cortile della Seta
This is a sort of path in a dreamlike, Andes-inspired landscape. In an encounter between visions, this work is titled Apacheta. The designed landscape sees the space transformed into an encounter between rivers, angular rocks, and red and white lagoons characteristic of Catamarca’s contrast-rich environment.
Twelve towers rise in the Cortile della Seta to a height of eight meters, composed of individual stones of the most varied and irregular shapes.
These were covered with fabrics from the waste materials of Loro Piana Interiors’ productions, highlighting the issue of reuse. Between the towers that mark the visitors’ path are placed furniture complements almost like natural elements that populate the landscape in an encounter between materials: wood, fabrics and ceramics.
Apacheta: the meaning behind Loro Piana exhibition
The story told through the Apacheta is linked to the figure of the traveler. The wayfarer is the protagonist of the story told by the set up conceived for Milan Design Week because it was he who created in history the apacheta, or piles of stones that mark the path. From the plains to the heights, travelers on these long journeys carried a stone and then gave it as a token of thanks to Pachamama, Mother Earth, Mohaded explains.
The stones were placed before crossing a gap according to the wayfarer, and over the years they accumulated to form irregular and seemingly unstable towers. Their sacredness is represented by rising upward just like a prayer. This was the starting point for the designer’s reflection to implement a concrete and meaningful collaboration with Loro Piana Interiors, in a tribute to nature and attention to it through creation.
Linking the brand to Latin America: Cristián Mohaded
«This project is another connecting piece linking the brand to Latin America», Cristián Mohaded explains. «A landscape that challenges the imagination of each of those wandering souls as they travel and encounter those monumental tower-shaped constructions, animated by the colors and memory of a living land. In which we feel represented by each of the parts that make up the whole. Apacheta is a message addressed to our Pachamama, it is history, it is culture, it is honesty and respect».
Shared values: Cristián Mohaded for Loro Piana Interiors
The connection between the designer and the Loro Piana Interiors brand starts right from Cristián Mohaded’s homeland, Argentina, and specifically the province of Catamarca in the northwestern region. Here he was born and here the brand does sourcing of a precious material from natural animal fibers, vicuña. Nature and the gifts of it employed in the processing just some of the shared values from which the creation of Apacheta stemmed.
The choice of Cristián Mohaded according to Francesco Pergamo
«We contacted Cristián knowing his passion for craftsmanship, his research on materials, which he deeply loves for their textures and contrasts. Everything he creates starts from this, and we thought he was the right artist to entrust our own materials to», explains Francesco Pergamo, director of the Loro Piana Interiors division. Against the consumerist idea of devising design projects, Mohamed espouses the brand project by personally proposing the theme of apacheta in September 2022.
The concept was to create these real sculptures in different formats through a metaphorical and dreamlike rendering of the original towers. «I work with many people and artisans in Argentina and I travel to discover their pieces over the territory, so I explained to Pergamo that this concept in the exhibition is common to Loro Piana vision too», the designer points out.
Craftsmanship according to Loro Piana and Mohaded
Cristián Mohaded has been working with the hybridization of design and craftsmanship within his career focusing on this for the past fifteen years. Being an industrial designer, he explains, from the beginning of his career working in this field he noticed the clash between it and the way a design concept is conceived in Argentina.
Here the world of design is intertwined with the work of craftsmanship, and this has allowed Mohaded to also learn about and mix different techniques from diverse parts of the country. This way of working in contact with locals and their traditions has ranged from more or less upper class and affluent environments to completely out of the system ones, such as places where there is no light or water.
The lives of these people are more in touch with a natural environment, the designer points out, and he has tried to discover and give visibility to this world that, often with elements traceable in nature, devise real design pieces. Mohaded’s work thus aims to place itself centrally with respect to these two practices that are design and craftsmanship by allowing crosses between the two fields.
The state of art in design: the perception of a young leader in Latin American
Since 2017, Cristián Mohaded has spent several years practicing as a professional in Milan and, in addition to working in Argentina, has gained international insight into the current state of the design industry. Working in industrial design means in Europe and beyond homogenizing, chasing a style with known characteristics.
This does not allow individual designers to emerge according to their own ideas, background or culture, and their own production philosophy. It is difficult to try to recount so, Mohaded points out, often these projects lack depth and meaning that goes beyond merely producing a design piece suitable and in demand for sale. For example, projects like the one with Loro Piana Interiors, they bring out the desire to go deeper and to tell something more behind a product by inviting designers or artists to express themselves, he continues.
«Companies have begun to understand that this continuous production with unsuitable and unsophisticated materials is no longer suitable for building concrete projects. We need to rethink the role of design in a continuous connection with nature», the designer concludes.
The international view of Argentina by Cristián Mohaded: Territorio Hibrido
Central to Cristián Mohaded’s work is the desire to define the culture and image of Argentina by moving it away from the various and widespread stereotypes. According to him, the creative process is characterized by the strong identity of the craftsman and the more or less traditional methodology that makes the result unique. For this reason, the designer has activated a community and collective path that includes the union of different figures referring to rural or urban contexts.
Territorio Hibrido embodies this synergistic production by offering an exhibition that includes the work of various designers and artists. Fundamental to design development, Mohaded points out, is that form is projected to function, but also to emotion.
Territorio Hibrido – Beyond the concept of the individual designer
Territorio Hibrido was born in 2021 after one year of work and research through travels in different areas of Argentina. What Mohaded was looking for were new opportunities to show how strong the capacity of human beings is if related to their own territories and communities.
This work had already begun in 2018 with a small project called Entrevero, the designer explains, which means interweaving, creating a mix to make something stronger. Beyond the concept of the individual designer, to share a vision with other workers and artisans on the ground, to create a creative dialogue that starts from that land.
In this way, different collaborations were created in a synergy that saw artisans also take an interest in other projects active on their site. The exhibition simply gives back the materials used, the images of the artisans at work, the history of their homelands, and the projects they create.
Cristián Mohaded
Cristián Mohaded is a designer and artist whose work explores the link between craft and design. A prolific draftsman, Mohaded begins his working process by making sketches, until he sees how concepts and ideas evolve and take shape on paper.
In the space Cortile della Seta placed inside the Loro Piana headquarter in Milan, Cristián Mohaded imagined and created an exhibition for the Milan Design Week. The collaboration with Loro Piana Interiors placed at the center the will of the artist to connect his values with the one of the Italian brand.
