For over ten years, and ideally using a power saw, Michele De Lucchi has been working on small houses; coarse or fine, straight or crooked, thin or thick, open or closed ones – or rather on what are actually sculptures. In the process, he is less concerned with building something; his main aim being reflection. As he himself says “All these not-to-scale architectures have four facades and a gabled roof from which the rain can run off. There are no doors or windows. It would be impossible to live in them. Yet they are beautiful, precisely because they are not meant to be built, but are rather reflections on living.”

The desire to shape wood by hand came to the architect quite suddenly while sharpening a pencil with a penknife. “I have,” explains De Lucchi, “moved from the quiet grace of the pencil to the noisy coarseness of the power saw, but without abandoning my endeavor to handle the wood as gently as paper. The results are sometimes chance, but they never come about through an automated sequence of movements.”

Now De Lucchi has designed a casket inspired by these little houses. Like his tray “Quattro muri e due case” (which actually creates an enclosed area from four walls and two houses), “Cabin” is made of bamboo, a material, that gains increasing character with time, and becomes ever more beautiful with use. This small, solid house offers space for all those things that should not simply lie around somewhere, but be kept in a specific place so that we do not need to spend ages looking for them, or for those things most dear to us: letters, postcards and pens, but also buttons, recipes or jewelry, notebooks or brooches, photos or DIY materials. Measuring 32.7 by 24.7 by 12.5 centimeters “Cabin” is spacious without appearing bulky. Or as De Lucchi says: “Houses store many things that are very valuable; they protect our loved ones, our stories and our secrets. They are the receptacles of our life, like this small box by Alessi.” (tw)

www.alessi.it