For Dubai Design Week 2018, Navone has teamed up with Abet Laminati, a leading Italian decorative laminate company to create a kind of welcoming structure for all visitors.
Installations are one of Paola Navone’s favourite ways of working. They are an opportunity to concentrate all her energies and myriad ideas into something that does not necessarily have to stand the test of time. Almost like a dream, a passing thought or a flash of inspiration, installation art offers a fresh platform for creativity.
Navone is one of Italy’s best-loved designers and known for her quirky avant-garde, anti-design style. Her work, like her life, is a combination of colour, texture and pattern and she has long been associated with following the stream of her own consciousness, meaning her products are bold, bright and innovative. For Dubai Design Week 2018, Navone has teamed up with Abet Laminati, a leading Italian decorative laminate company to create a kind of welcoming structure for all visitors. Gate is a three-dimensional puzzle comprised of stacking boxes, which come together to create a giant gate – encouraging people to make a symbolic entry into design week.
Each stacking block is covered in a different pattern. Delicate baroque motifs jut up against unexpected tartan geometries to create friction and fusion. Stripes and dots multiplied thousands of times give a cheerful optical effect alongside large flowers inspired by Oriental printing. Although sometimes referred to as the “queen of colour” Navone has opted for a monochrome palette for this installation, which helps to give unity to the juxtaposition of patterns.
Abet Laminati’s collaboration with Paola Navone underscores the prominence the company gives to the relationship between design and culture. Founded towards the end of the 1950s, Abet Laminati has always been adept at tapping into the creative impulses of each era. Notably, they supported the anti-design movements like Alchymia and Memphis at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. Continuous technological experimentation and creative research have also led Abet Laminati to develop an exceptionally rich catalogue that has fed into and contributed to the most perceptive designers in the world.
Navone has been collaborating with the company for more than 30 years and at Dubai Design Week 2018, she will give a talk, which will shed light on her various collaborations and her career trajectory.