Veteran Italian architect and designer Andrea Branzi, who set up radical architecture studio Archizoom in the 1960s and co-founded the Domus Academy, has packed his multi-decade career with regular exhibitions of his work, published manifestos, taught at various institutions and collaborated with various major design producers, but he’s still not resting on his laurels. The 74-year-old has just launched a startling new series of shelves at Carpenters Workshop Gallery Paris.
Made up of aluminium and birch wood components, each shelf is subtly different in shape and format to the other. Intended to question the duality of the nature-culture relationship, the sharpness of the minimalist shelves is abruptly interrupted by rough tree trunks and twigs.
Situated in the 4th arrondissement, the new Parisian outpost of Carpenters Workshop Gallery is located in a space that formerly housed the influential Galerie de France, the spiritual home of the country’s greatest postwar artists. Catherine Thieck, the Galerie de France’s manager, has curated a selection of objects from her own collection, which are displayed on Branzi’s shelves. They range from works by Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brâncuşi to Méret Oppenheim and Rebecca Horn.
