Amelia Tavella’s debut furniture meanders elegantly like ‘an almost living animal’.
The Corsican architect's sculptural ‘A5951’ desk-bench hybrid in solid oak winds sinuously as an organic root, chasing ‘an infinite desire for poetry and beauty.’
Corsican architect Amelia Tavella’s buildings are known to exude sensuality, where materials are treated as skins, where a skillful composition of natural light is sculpted, as it filters through built apertures. Her architectural interventions are deeply inspired by the beautiful and natural built context of Corsica, emphasizing interaction with the mountainous geographical setting, those of ridges, valleys, scrublands, and maritime worlds. "Every time, it’s a question of movement, of torsion. The aim is not to bend nature, but to adapt to it, to respect it," she believes. In keeping with this approach, her debut furniture called ‘A5951’ embraces the Mediterranean island’s context of a vintage private place in her native Corsica in France.
“The name of the piece hides a code, just like the enigmatic plot embodied by Eileen Gray,”
Organic and dream-like, the seemingly continuous panel made of solid oak meanders gracefully through the space to occupy it, serving as a seat, support, and desk in its cohesive form. Tavella’s sculptural design exists in a seamless continuum, embracing freedom in its seemingly suspended mass. Delicately balanced between air and earth, its construction is simple and elegant, intentionally devoid of any visible connections, joints, or harsh unevenness. ‘A5951’ performs as both, furniture and sculpture, exuding a solid and organic quality, while encompassing elements both feminine and masculine, and evoking an essence of the primal as well as the sophisticated.
Amelia Tavella’s Architecture is sensual. The material is skin, the light is captured and shaped, passing through the openings: bays, windows, moucharabiehs. Suddenly, we possess the supernatural power to capture the light so dear to the Corsican architect, whose gaze is inspired, saturated.
The lines of his buildings embrace the forms that surround them; they are those of ridges, valleys, scrubland and the maritime world.
Every time, it’s a question of movement, of torsion. The aim is not to bend nature, but to adapt to it, to respect it.
The construction moves, undulates, arches. It is a witness to and mirror of the great landscape it greets. An infinite desire for poetry and beauty. From this desire was born a piece of furniture for a deeply restored private setting in his native Corsica.
« I practice architecture as an art of freedom and constraint. Freedom to create and invent, constraint of space and materials. It’s a balance between two forces that are not adversaries, but that get along and complement each other like Siamese twins. »
This solid oak panel occupies the space, winding its way through it with its dual functions. A seat and a support, the object balances between air and earth. It is simple and spectacular in its construction, with no trace of links, joints or accidents. It seems to stand, to exist in a single line. It hangs with no attachments other than the floor and ceiling above it. It is furniture and sculpture, solid and organic, feminine and masculine, animal and living. It’s captured the space without cluttering it up, like the buildings of the architect-archaeologist who invents without undoing. Here, once again, is the expression of learned delicacy. The object is the child of buildings, schools and convents. It has the texture, the profile that responds to the geography.
Here, it unfolds in an enclosed space whose walls reproduce the stone and, on a smaller scale, wood that Amelia Tavella has also worked on for an office or library. From the largest to the most intimate, the gesture of love is not betrayed. It unfolds its aesthetics, its philosophy, its just wish. The furniture embraces the person who will use it. It is a tool and an art, and this is surely what architecture is all about. Amelia Tavella sets out on a new path. The vision of her furniture is equal to that of her work.
« I designed a piece of furniture, curvilinear, an almost living animal. Its curves are feminine, its skin is oak, veined, one-sided. The object is a marker of space, crossing it from side to side. Like a sinuous arm, this work-counter links the interior to the exterior. It’s functional, both desk and seat. It’s my first piece of furniture and the starting point for a creation that’s different from my buildings, but which reproduces the gesture of blending in with what is. »
It’s the first piece of furniture designed and the starting point for a creation that is different from that of my buildings, but which reproduces the gesture of blending in with what is, while retaining a desire for aestheticism and fusion with the site.
I conceived and built a unique and natural central work, without constraint, a work within the existing work, a space within the space, a link between host and guest. Crossing its threshold is a step towards a dream. The imprint of Corsica beats here, in the silence and grandeur of its nature.
I worked in this imaginary world, delivering a topographical, geographical map, in the lair of a place of reference, the megaphone of a sinuous, bewitching island. »
