From Nucleus to Planet: Formafantasma on Being Home

As summer drew to a close, I joined Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin from Formafantasma for one of our regular video call catch-ups. The couple was relaxing (Simone in the shade of course) at their serene summer house by the Maggiore lake, while I settled into my new New York home. Having worked alongside the duo for several years, I have witnessed first-hand how deeply intertwined their personal lives and their expansive practice is with the notion of ‘being home’. Our conversation was candid and familiar—marked by humorous (censorable) apartés, yet always underpinned by the thoughtful and reflective nature that defines their work.

Ibrahim Kombarji: I thought we could discuss the notion of ‘being home’ on three scales. First, your personal home (composed of the two of you and Terra, your Italian greyhound). Second, your Milan-based design and research studio, Formafantasma, as another home, and finally, I want to understand how this shapes your thinking on the role of design in our shared planetary home.

Andrea Trimarchi: My understanding of being home is not limited to a physical space — it is more about the people. Whether it is with Simone, my family, or colleagues, it is about the connection and the way we shape spaces as we move. Every time I am back in Sicily, where I grew up, I slip back into my childhood routines — living by the sea shapes my daily activities in a specific way. Our Milanese home is tied to work, the house is more functional. Our retreat home in Besozzo, by Lake Maggiore, is a completely different lifestyle, centred around relaxation and being outdoors. In the last 15 years, we have moved cities and homes five times.

I.K.: I remember you showing me how to carefully pack glass pieces during our studio move from Amsterdam to Milan in 2021. We were packing both your personal glass tableware and Alphabet (2013), one of the studio’s first works — a collection of glass vessels made with Lobmeyr. It somehow highlighted how the studio felt like a home to all of us.

A.T.: Being a couple has shaped the studio as an extended family and for a long time our studio was also our home. There was no division between personal and professional life. Now, our studio and home are more distinct. We value clarity and tidiness in the office because it brings a sense of order to our intellectual and formal work. However, it is essential to have a level of informality and familiarity too, like being able to cook and share a meal together in the workplace.

Simone Farresin: When I think of home, I still associate it with my family house. For me, the challenge in adulthood has been trying to recreate that sense of safety, the presence of loved ones and comfort.

I.K.: I remember on work trips how you would always find ways of making standard hotel rooms feel like home.

A.T.: That’s true! I always arrange my clothes in the hotel closets. Sometimes, if we are staying for a longer time, we even change the light bulbs if the lighting is not quite right, when you end up in a room with a mix of warm and white light. It is about creating an environment of home wherever you go.

I.K.: It was during one of those work trips, while we were riding a Shinkansen train through Japan’s landscapes, when you first mentioned to me the title La Casa Dentro (The Home Within) for the show you were preparing at the brilliant Fondazione ICA, curated by Alberto Salvadori and supported by the chic Roman gallery Giustini/Stagetti. The exhibition consists of a series of around 10 domestic objects placed in the space. The mostly bent tubular furniture and lighting pieces are embellished with embroideries, stained wood panels, hand-painted floral patterns and silk fabrics. Could you tell us more about the genesis of the work?

S.F.: This solo show was commissioned by the ICA, but we had complete freedom in deciding the subject and were purely driven by our instincts. The pieces in the show explored the home as a complex set of human relationships and themes linked to personal identity and collective memory. It is a deeply personal work, reflecting on many things, including the recent loss of my parents. This project would not exist without that experience –– it is about grappling with the idea of home when the place you once called home no longer exists in the same way.

A.T.: The project reflects on the simplicity of our upbringing and how modernist architecture and design can often distance people from their roots. We were interested in the way the modernist ideologies of architects such as Le Corbusier or Adolf Loos often associated rationality to masculinity and then by opposition everything that was decorative was an extension of femininity. This work also considers how these views can be manifest in design and the way design is taught.

S.F.: We, for instance, looked at staples of domesticity like tablecloths and bed linens as well as some of our childhood memories and incorporated those elements into the pieces. La Casa Dentro explores the tension between what we have learned to value as “good design” and the sentimental, often chaotic, elements of the homes we grew up in. It shows the difficulty in reconciling these two different approaches to understanding the domestic environment. We were educated to appreciate certain aesthetics and functionalities in design, but this project confronts us with the emotional and personal history of the objects and spaces that shaped us.

I.K.: Bent tubular metal is a staple of modernist 20th century furniture, the thinking of architect Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair designed in 1925 and inspired by a bicycle frame. I recall us discussing the reference of metal tubes in other contexts and environments.

S.F.: Indeed, we realized that the use of metal tubular in this work was also a reference to medical environments and furniture, which connects to our recent experiences of being in hospitals.

I.K.: Hospital rooms as last homes for many.

A.T.: Often these spaces feel more like prisons than places of care, designed with non-human purposes in mind. In contrast, I was thinking of works by architect Alvar Aalto, such as his Paimio Sanatorium (1933), who thought that spaces could be beneficial for both the body and mental health. In La Casa Dentro we wanted to bring back warmth and kinship into these sterile environments.

S.F.: I remember a specific moment when we were in a remote area in India for a workshop. I got very sick and had to spend a few days in a hospital. The room conditions were poor, but there was this classic hospital room divider — structural metal with a cotton textile printed with a large lily flower. If that were the last image one would see on Earth, at least it would be one of poetry and beauty. This work acknowledges that and addresses the cultures that traditionally resist this kind of decorative, what some would consider “feminine”, approach. It is our way of queering a culture that often opposes such combinations.

I.K.: I remember you two were sewing parts of the lamps up until days before the opening with colleagues in the studio, sculpting the pieces down to the most minute of details.

S.F.: We were deeply involved because we didn’t want the work to be misunderstood as postmodern pastiche or decoration from a position of “intellectual superiority”. This work is about recognizing the decorative as important, necessary and qualitative, not something to be dismissed as superficial.

A.T.: This project reconnects us with how we worked at the beginning, like when we created our Botanica (2011) vases made of natural rubbers — really hands-on, moulding, and pouring the resins. Over time, our work became more intellectual and abstract, but with this project we have returned to a more experimental approach. We were nervous because the topic we were exploring was quite sensitive, but clarity came in the final stages when we were fully immersed in making the pieces.

I.K.: At the same time as this solo show, we were also working on Prada Frames: Being Home, the planetary symposium we developed with Prada for Milan Design Week, which delved into the entanglements of design and ecology. For its third edition, the symposium gathered around thirty thinkers from multidisciplinary backgrounds to look into domesticity, collective forms of living and shared realities. I think it would be good to end with this expansive understanding of Earth as our home, thinking of the interventions of design critic Alice Rawsthorn and curator Paola Antonelli, scholar Jack Halberstam, researcher Kate Crawford or architect Anna Puigjaner.

S.F.: The series of talks is available as podcasts this year, which we thought was a nice way of keeping these discussions growing in the comfort of one’s home beyond the symposium. Design is about shaping the world we inhabit. At this moment, the biggest challenge is to shape globalization in a way that makes it work for people and the planet. Core to that is recognising that planet Earth is our common and shared home.

www.formafantasma.com

@formafantasma