Sicily, the home of mathematicians, philosophers, painters, playwrights. all this comes to mind in a conversation with Francesco Librizzi, an architect from the Madonie (the mountain chain in northern Sicily), trained in Palermo, who moved to Milan at a young age and was immediately indicated by critics as one of the most interesting talents of contemporary italian design.

An erudite and sophisticated thinker, today he is 39 years old, with 14 years of experience with his own practice, including important projects (like Padiglione Italia at the venice architecture Biennale in 2010, or the Bahrain pavilion at hte Biennale in 2012), Librizzi acknowledges a dual debt to his island, in terms of background and culture.

“Working in the countries of the mediterranean i have realized that part of my logical-speculative thought comes from greek culture. my compositional approach, based on the idea of creating spaces, functions and meanings around a central void, is connected to the greek and roman conception of the city and architectur. a geometric-mathematical vision also sustains my idea of residence.”

These influences are reflected in design practice, as demonstrated by the products that marked Francesco’s official debut in the world of design, which came this year with two outstanding brands: Driade and FontanaArte.

The collaboration with the first has led to Still Life, a series of cabinets, low tables and small display cases that interpret an idea cherished by the designer: the idea that the possibility of creating other spaces lurks inside the spaces in which we live.

“These pieces,” Librizzi explains, “get their life and identity from the image of what they contain and host. They are containers that prompt us to select the objects that represent us best, the things we want to have by our side; they become scenes of wonder in which everything is staged and multiplied. They are called Still Life because in this sense they fix and represent what exists in our home today, a portrait of its inhabitants.”

In typological terms Still Life is a small bookcase, a square tower that lets you place books, records or other items in a series of compartments that are actually conceived as theatrical wings capable of isolating, creating a backdrop for the objects.

The reference is to Antonello da Messina and his Saint Jerome in His Study, an emblematic work for Librizzi because it expresses a compositional vision that can be seen in all his creations: “The ability to give power to a minor space because it can absorb the larger space that contains it.”

The Setareh family of lamps designed for FontanaArte is also based on the design of space. “This was a more difficult challenge, because light has no body, mass, dimensions. So it cannot relate to space as a piece of furniture usually does. I have thought about a series of frames (I designed about 500 and then chose 5) that instead of caging light would display the field generated by the light source.”

The lamp is composed of a sphere in white blown frosted glass, magically suspended inside a slender metal structure that forms a system of orbits and circular trajectories around the source.

The resulting game of gravitational dynamics on a visual level is underscored by the reflections on the metal framework: through its impalpable but geometrically defined aura, the light creates a luminous field and gives form to the surrounding space.

In different ways, Francesco Librizzi applies an architectural principle to the scale of the object, aptly expressed in his installation D1, created for the 21st Milan Triennale in the context of the exhibition “Stanze. Altre filosofie dell’abitare” curated by Beppe Finessi.

The theme of the project was the origin of domestic space according to Mediterranean habitat culture, represented by an empty space, positioned at the center, that forms the pivot for a series of satellite spaces in orbit around it.

The designer explained it as follows: “The presence of structural elements sheds light on the influence objects can have to determine the fields of exertion of our actions. Concentric enclosures assemble the dialectic between inside and outside, from which multiple possible spaces are generated.”

With the Still Life series for Driade and the Setareh lamps for FontanaArte, Librizzi reminds us that it is not necessary to occupy space to make architecture, and to design our domestic habitat: it will suffice to make it visible.

Text by Maddalena Padovani