OUT OF THIS WORLD

From organic buildings to naturė-inspired resin designs, Gaetano Pesce's unique creations never cease to amaze

- MARIA CRISTINA DIDERO

Gaetano Pesce is a master architect and industrial designer by trade. He’s also a maverick intellectual, a prankster, and an avant-garde innovator by nature. Since the 1960s, Pesce – born in La Spezia, northern Italy, in 1939, and based in New York for years – has stubbornly pursued every oddball idea that has crossed his path, turning seemingly impossible dreams into reality. He treats each new creation, be it a towering building or a twisting vase as if it’s his first love – with boundless passion and endless curiosity.

His oeuvre is nothing short of iconic; a breathtaking showcase of daring creativity that is unmistakably his, and that inspires anyone who comes across it. Pesce has an entire world of wonder to offer and there have been many successes all over the globe. For example, back in 1972, for the notorious MoMA exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’ curated by Emilio Ambasz, the designer conceived an installation, The Period of Great Contaminations: Housing Unit for Two People, that played with the notion of temporality, as it was presented as a third-millennium archeologist’s discovery of an underground city from a hundred years earlier. Visitors entered his claustrophobic square bunker to discover an empty space, with only two screens showing two naked people walking around. It was a poignant exploration of human vulnerability and our quest for meaning in the face of the unknown.