“In Italy we have always built beauty”. With these opening words, Professor Paolo Belardi (ABA Pietro Vannucci, Perugia) started the presentation of the Scorched or Blackened project at the Università degli Studi of Milan, within the framework of the exhibition event Interni Open Borders.

Beauty and know-how have old roots in Umbria, from classic art to contemporary industrial ingeniousness. Based on these assumptions, some time ago the Regione Umbria started a project for the enhancement of local values with the objective of the creation of an Umbria brand.

FuoriSalone 2016 is the perfect chance for local brand marketing, through design, art and culture.

“The Scorched or Blackened installation interprets the Open Borders theme and turns it into No Borders”, Belardi explained. “We started from Monk, a 2.0 font which is constantly evolving, created by taking Benedictine and Franciscan codices as models. Devised for ExpoMilano 2015, it has been used on this occasion for a series of objects that draw inspiration from the basic materials of quality crafts from Umbria”.

Under the portico in the Cortile d’Onore, the installation is a black “horizontal” monolith which is content and container at the same time, and highlights emotional aspects of Umbria (from the Porziuncola church in Assisi to the Grande Nero sculpture by Alberto Burri in Perugia).

After all Umbria, today like a thousand years ago, “is a precious melting pot of artists, academics, travelers”, said Professor Michele Trimarchi, Culture Economy expert and professor at the University of Bologna. “A land of hybridization, synergies, exchanges, knowledge sharing. Just think of the monasteries, of the pilgrims in the Middle Ages, that are the tourists of our time. Players of a tourism that is changing: no longer holiday as experience of vacuum, but as experience and cultural exchange with other people and situations”, Trimarchi continued.

Future needs novelties, inventions, new ideas. From this viewpoint, Scorched or Blackened describes the traditional and the most innovative productions in Umbria. Among them design, an active element in an industrial process that is deeply rooted in the quality and in the experience of a region with a venerable history.

Text by Danilo Signorello – Photos by Efrem Raimondi

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From left, Michele Trimarchi, Michelangelo Giombini, Paolo Belardi, Gabriella del Signore
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Paolo Belardi
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Michele Trimarchi
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Michelangelo Giombini