Adventure of Design

In his furniture and accessories, Italian avant-garde designer and interior decorator Dino Gavina often makes deliberately provocative statements. A zoomorphic table, armless armchairs, public benches, stores and showrooms come under theoretical scrutiny by an Italian urban development researcher in this laudatory monograph crammed with color photographs and artists' sketches. Gavina thrives on collaboration, and one finds here the tubular, chrome-plated steel furniture he manufactured for Marcel Breuer and a Man Ray lamp shaped like a woman's hat along with pieces made for, or designed with, Carlo Scarpa, Kazuhide Takahama and others. ``If one is not familiar with literature, the figurative arts, and perhaps a bit of music, then one cannot understand or design a piece of furniture,'' claims Gavina. His open-ended approach seeks to infuse cold functional patterns with poetry and a sense of traditional design values. (May)