GX1993.204

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 67; Larghezza: 53; Profondità: 48

buxus

The building and interior furnishings designed in Turin between 1928 and 1929 by Giuseppe Pagano Pogatschnig and Gino Levi Montalcini for the SALPA offices of the Turin industrialist and collector Riccardo Gualino were considered at the time to be “one of the first realisations in Italy of so-called rational architecture”. This work, a true monument to modern managerial ideology, reflected - in its radical linguistic simplification, functional distribution of space and interaction between architecture and furnishings - an innovative and efficient model of work organisation. Manufactured by the Turin-based company FIP, Salpa's office furniture presented a wide variety of types, including sixty-seven models of tables, desks, chairs, armchairs, shelves, telephone stands, drawer units, filing cabinets, counters and filing cabinets. The ductile and elegant material that covered these furnishings was buxus, produced from the mid-1920s at the Piedmontese Giacomo Bosso paper mills and first used for the veneer of the furniture presented at the 1928 Turin Exposition, within the rationalist-oriented flat of the Novatori Architects' group. The consecration of this material was offered by the Gualino office furniture project which, however, also highlighted its intrinsic contradiction: in spite of its industrial plant production vocation, buxus was in fact regularly confronted with an elaborate handcrafted installation process. Rationalist-style armchair veneered in buxus.