Alessandro La Spada is one of the most eclectic and daring names in Italian interior design, with frequent forays into highly creative fields: from luxury to lighting, from leather goods to custom motorcycles, from objects to visual design.
Curious and experimental, drawn to the cross-pollination of art, design and age-old crafts, he has extensive experience alongside historic furniture brands such as Visionnaire, Smania, La Murrina, Illulian rugs, Besana, Longhi and Milldue, surface-cladding giants such as Antolini, and young brands such as Clan Milano, where he is Art Director.
Distinctive traits
Alessandro has always been fascinated by the emotional side of objects and by a lively exploration of materials, understood as an introspective inquiry.
His projects share the same common thread, in which he condenses dreamlike suggestions, attention to detail, luxury and experimental functionality.
He likes to call himself a self-taught artist with the spirit of a craftsman rather than a designer, even though he taught furniture design at the Interior Design Institute IDI’Ac for many years and has held workshops at Domus Academy.
Portfolio
La Spada has dozens of collaborations with prestigious furniture brands to his name, designing intense, passionate collections that interpret the client’s taste without giving up his creative personality or his proud Southern roots.
He has conceived numerous exhibition design projects, including FIAT’s London showroom in 2007, the Visionnaire, Antolini, Smania, Longhi, Milldue and Clan Milano stands at several editions of the Salone del Mobile, and the Milan windows of the Boscolo Hotel for La Murrina in 2015 and IFDM in 2016.
Alessandro knows how to seduce and astonish with refined, expressive installations in which container and content engage in a synergistic dialogue, in a crescendo of irreverent, alternative stylistic contaminations.
“Space is not a constraint but a challenge”: this is how his constant design drive and his choice of organic and industrial materials take shape, creating exclusive, refined living spaces – from the placid shores of Lake Garda to the convivial spaces of a luxury Milan hotel and the cold latitudes of Saint Petersburg.
PROFESSOR MALERBA
and the Venetian Glass Crocodile
It was a clear winter’s day in the early eighteenth century. Professor Malerba – an incorrigible researcher, an extraordinary man curious about everything and about ‘nothing’ – stood at the window of his home in his native Sicily, overlooking a remarkably green and lush garden. He was pondering the long journey that would take him to the island of Murano, near Venice, where rumour had it a ‘Jardin de Verre’ was growing.
A little scatterbrained but at least as curious as he was, his assistant Bluma was hurriedly packing the bags, as if the final decision had already been made.
Needless to say, in the blink of an eye they reached their destination. There they discovered that the flowers and plants of the famous garden took shape thanks to the skill of local artisans, who could draw from the shapeless matter of fused sand and soda a small glowing gather, which they then blew, shaped, joined, drew into the finest threads, cut and modelled into a thousand different forms. Faced with such magic, Bluma squealed with delight and dashed tirelessly around the furnace.
Through a small opening, she glimpsed a strange creature half-hidden in the lagoon and, with an expression somewhere between disbelief and wonder, began pointing frantically at the beast. “It’s a crocodile!” exclaimed the Professor, overjoyed. Bluma begged the Professor to take the animal home with them, swearing, stamping her feet, that she would care for it as devotedly as she cared for him.
But the Professor had another idea in mind: to share such beauty by bringing the crocodile – which turned out to have been shaped over the years by the lagoon waters from the offcuts of the glass garden’s flowers – to Milan for the April Salone del Mobile, even then considered the apotheosis of international creativity.
He therefore called on Margel, a lady of the Venetian upper class and a part-time journalist, who, having confirmed the specimen’s absolute splendour through her ever-present binoculars, accepted without hesitation the invitation to join them on this fantastic adventure.
And so, all together – Professor Malerba, the faithful Bluma and the very snobbish Margel, chin held high and crocodile in tow – they set off for the Lombard city, where they proudly showed half the world ‘Le Crocodile en Verre de Venise’ inside the Murano artisans’ workshop on the city’s most prestigious street.
SANDRINO
The Butcher
“Sandrino! Where have you hidden Grandpa’s knives?”
It was one of the phrases that echoed most often through the alleys near home and the back of the shop.
Another Thursday, with Alessandro secretly tinkering with his grandfather’s tools, taken from the butcher’s shop. In his secret hideaway every relic he collected changed shape, taking on characters different from those intended for its original use. Blades, hooks, meat tenderisers – anything that could spark interest and curiosity was promptly snatched from its everyday use and elevated to a form of artistic experimentation.
Alessandro – always called “SANDRINO” in the South – was born on the outskirts of Reggio Calabria to Sicilian parents. He is an artist with the spirit of a craftsman, and by nature he sees things from every angle. He is driven by an irrepressible urge to customise anything that comes into his hands!
He was often seen darting from one door to the next, or riding his home-built bicycle, on those days when the heat seems strong enough to bend the shapes of distant things.
But perhaps things really did change; perhaps, under the scorching southern Italian sun, they could reveal their true nature, altering their form and taking on new functions. Sandrino moved through the world with the eyes of someone who can see another side to everything.
And so, helping his grandfather day after day in the shop and the butcher’s, he discovered that the tools around him – which he came to know so well – were ready for a transformation, becoming mirrors, side tables and sculptural pieces with the character of works of art.
In the hours after helping in the shop, Sandrino would retreat to tinker, with skill and a hunger to experiment, filing, welding and cutting, just as in a real atelier.
This is how “Sandrino the Butcher” was born.
“Sandrino the Butcher” is a reflection on the human condition through the Doppelgänger, the sometimes dark twin that belongs to every human being and with whom we often alternate unconsciously. Born from Alessandro La Spada’s vivid imagination, it is inspired by the work of his maternal grandfather, a Sicilian restaurateur whose theatrical gestures have been translated into the Art-Design pieces presented in London. Kitchen tools such as cleavers, hooks and knives are freed from their original function to become eclectic creations dominated by pure aesthetic beauty – a tribute to manual work that becomes art in its daily ritual, expressed in the Never on Sunday console, the Cleaver mirror with wall lamp and the Steak stool.
The series was produced in a numbered edition and includes fifty stools, eight consoles and as many mirrors with wall lamps.
Exhibited exclusively from 12 April to 10 May 2017 in the windows of Harrods on Brompton Road, London, “Sandrino the Butcher” is Visionnaire’s first limited-edition Art-Design project, conceived by designer Alessandro La Spada.
The installation, previewed on 30 March at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), is part of Harrods’ Art Partners programme, the initiative celebrating excellence in contemporary design through collaborations between luxury brands and internationally renowned creatives.
Published in OnlyONE Magazine #2