Amelia Tavella ARCHITECTES . photos: © T.Dini
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.
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.
It is the first piece of furniture designed and the star- ting 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.
Nina Bouraoui
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