London’s Design Museum has topped Marco Campardo the winner of the annual Ralph Saltzman Award for Rising Designers. Right here, the Italian designer introduces us to 5 of his key initiatives and explains why he is “not a really ornamental man”.
Campardo, who began his profession as a graphic designer in Venice, arrange his personal studio in Peckham in 2019, specializing in experimenting with supplies and ‘hacking’ industrial processes to create surprising outcomes.
“Marco caught my eye due to his contemporary tackle design,” mentioned Edward Barber of Barber Osgerby, who nominated Campardo for the award. “He isn’t constrained by the previous and creates new, thought-provoking designs utilizing attention-grabbing and experimental supplies.”
![Marco Campardo holding his Jello chair](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/marco-campardo-ralph-saltzan-prize_dezeen_2364_col_16-852x1278.jpg)
Campardo follows within the footsteps of Nottingham furnishings designer Mac Collins because the second winner of the annual Ralph Saltzman Prize, which was based by the Design Museum and the late American textile designer Ralph Saltzman’s basis to supply a platform and funding for the event and… future product designers.
To this finish, the designer will obtain a £5,000 bursary and a devoted solo exhibition on the museum, which opens on 2 February and can characteristic key initiatives that illustrate his process-based method.
“I am obsessive about discovering supplies or methods that, by themselves, generate the ultimate setting or aesthetic,” Campardo informed Dezeen. “More often than not, I begin with that after which I put plenty of limits on myself.”
“I am not a really ornamental man,” he added. “So I am afraid to design a rug. If I can not discover a method that provides me a process-based aesthetic, it will be a complete catastrophe.”
Right here, the designer presents the initiatives that might be exhibited within the Design Museum and the way they took place.
![Green Elle Chair by Marco Campardo, winner of the Ralph Saltzman Award](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/marco-campardo-ralph-saltzan-prize_dezeen_2364_col_14-852x852.jpg)
Her assortment, 2019
Elle started as an experiment to see if Campardo may take a available mass product – “the crappy L-profiles you should purchase at B&Q” – and mix it in unconventional methods to kind a chunk of furnishings.
“I discovered that by defining three several types of joints, I used to be capable of make a chair,” he defined. “After which, I used the identical system to create a bookshelf, a desk and a bench.”
“Elle was my first try at a extra refined method. I examined to see if my concept was sturdy sufficient to permit me to create totally different outcomes, not only one object.”
Iridescent machine paint was utilized to the ultimate items to focus on their sides and provides them an nearly two-dimensional look, like digital strains or items of folded paper moderately than strong brass.
![George side table by Marco Campardo](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/marco-campardo-ralph-saltzan-prize_dezeen_2364_col_8-852x852.jpg)
George tables, 2020
Knowledgeable by the method used to rework wooden into load-bearing laminated timber (CLT), scraps of wooden veneer from Italian producer Alpi are stacked and pressure-glued collectively to kind every structural component of the George tables.
The layers and the ensuing sample are solely revealed on the very edges, which Campardo hand-chives to create a “foolish” impression of the wooden’s pure, sturdy texture.
“The truth that each bit is exclusive is just not a advertising and marketing technique, it’s the results of a sure course of,” he mentioned.
“The client cannot select from a catalog. All of it is dependent upon what they’re throwing and the pallet of supplies they’re getting.”
![Bullnose Wooden Chair from Ralph Saltzman 2022 Award Winner](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/marco-campardo-ralph-saltzan-prize_dezeen_2364_col_11-852x852.jpg)
Bullnose chair, 2020
Though at first look the Bullnose would possibly seem like a “very unhealthy picket chair”, Campardo says the design is distinguished by way of a single form, primarily based on that of a traditional decoration.
This form is repeated numerous occasions in several widths and lengths to kind the seating design that’s now set to enter manufacturing with a widely known Scandinavian model as half of a bigger product household.
The piece is rendered in wavy maple wooden, named for the expansion defect that creates its irregular grain and offers the design a particular wavy end with out the necessity for paints, instruments or therapies.
“It is purely ornamental, however made by nature, not human beings,” defined the designer. “So nature provides us the aesthetics of the ultimate piece.”
![Yellow Jellos Sideboard from 2022 Ralph Saltzman Award Winner](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/marco-campardo-ralph-saltzan-prize_dezeen_2364_col_3-852x852.jpg)
The Jello Assortment, 2022
Though it now features a vary of chairs, tables and storage (pictured above), the Jello assortment started with a fee for a single stool from the Macro museum in Rome and goals to provide 30 of those chairs on a shoestring finances in simply 5 days .
Working inside these constraints, Campardo tailored the established industrial means of rotational molding utilizing customized molds made out of scrap laminated cardboard, as conventional metallic molds can price a whole bunch of 1000’s of kilos to develop.
Reasonably than a handicap, this mildew helps resin furnishings its character by imprinting its shiny plastic wrap end and cardboard sample the best way butter retains the contours of its wrap.
It additionally permits every product to be forged in a single piece, because the mildew can merely be lower on the finish of the drying course of.
“The truth that the mildew is product of cardboard means that you can make shapes that you simply could not make with the traditional industrial course of due to the complexity of the mildew,” mentioned the designer.
![Reversible pedestal by Marco Campardo for Selfridges display](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2023/01/marco-campardo-ralph-saltzan-prize_dezeen_2364_col_15-852x852.jpg)
Reversible show, 2022
Emulating the best way granola bars are held collectively by sugar and honey, Campardo used a synthetic sweetener known as isomalt to bind collectively these expanded clay pebble stands, which he designed for London retailer Selfridges.
This binder merely dissolves when it comes into contact with water, permitting the pebbles to be reused elsewhere as mixture or rising medium for vegetation.
“It is a problem,” mentioned the designer. “My purpose was to not suggest a brand new product or customary, however to level out that we must always begin rethinking the best way we design storefronts.”
“They’re at all times momentary. However we make these installations that can final possibly 60 days out of virgin supplies like plastic after which we throw them away – and more often than not they are not recyclable.”
The 2023 Ralph Saltzman Prize Exhibition might be on show on the Design Museum, London from 2 February to three April 2023. See the Dezeen Occasions Information for an up-to-date record of structure and design occasions happening world wide.