Martino Gamper video

It’s fitting given the artesanal nature of Martino Gamper’s work that we created an award especially to honour the particular position he occupies in the design world. ‘Best Alchemist’ is of course not a literal description of Gamper’s trade, but figurative in that he takes materials of little value and turns them into design pieces, worth their weight in gold.

Creating 100 chairs in 100 days is certainly a feat of design alchemy in the ‘dust to gold’ sense. But the same can’t be said for ‘If Gio Only Knew’, another of his celebrated projects in 2007.

When word reached him that his friend Nina Yashar, founder of Milan-based Nilufar Gallery, had a considerable collection of original Gio Ponti fittings in storage Gamper begged her to hand them over in the spirit of design philanthropy. She duly agreed and Gamper set about deconstructing them in front of a live audience in Basel, before reconstructing the raw materials to his own designs.

Gamper has given us a short film to show of the process, which goes some way to explaining how and why he works as he does, not to mention why we honoured him with ‘Best Alchemist’ award in our 2008 Design Awards.

10 January 2008 | Design