Conifera Installation

Conifera Installation

COS x Mamou-Mani

Every year we get excited to see who COS has tapped to create yet another extraordinary installation to be unveiled at Salone del Mobile in Milan, and this year was no exception.

For the eighth consecutive year, COS demonstrated its commitment to the art and design worlds, luring Milan Design Week attendees to its public installation, this time designed by architect Arthur Mamou-Mani and his eponymous studio.

Situated inside the Palazzo Isimbardi, “Conifera” was a 3D printed structure made from 700 interlocking modular bio-bricks that gradually changed from a wood + bioplastic composite that started inside the courtyard to a translucent + white bioplastic that extended into the surrounding garden.[1]

As visitors journey through the installation, the architecture of the installation shifts from a wood and bioplastic composite in the courtyard to a translucent and white bioplastic found within the palazzo’s garden, communicating a digitally fabricated bridge between the manmade and the natural world.[2]

Inspired by patterns within the palazzo’s architecture Arthur Mamou-Mani explained, ‘the geometry of Conifera comes from the square motif which is very present at Palazzo Isimbardi, through the courtyard to the tiles.

I wanted the piece to echo the circular nature of the compostable material and create a journey from architecture to nature in order to showcase how renewable materials, coupled with an algorithmic approach and distributed 3D printing, can create the building blocks of the future”.[3]

Three colours feature across the installation, ranging from clear and white to orange and brown. The translucent elements are PLA in its purest form, while the white sections contain a pigment, and the brown hues are achieved from adding wood pulp to the mixture.

Mamou-Mani and his team printed all of bioplastic bricks over a period of two months using four printers, with each print taking between four and a half to seven hours.

Each bio-brick has a lattice structure to take full advantage of the strength of the material, but to also allow light to permeate through the installation.[4]

  1. COS x Mamou-Mani’s Conifera Installation Bridges the Worlds of Nature, Architecture and Technology / https://design-milk.com/cos-x-mamou-manis-conifera-installation-bridges-the-worlds-of-nature-architecture-and-technology/
  2. COS X MAMOU MANI, CONIFERA / https://www.frameweb.com/project/cos-x-mamou-mani-conifera
  3. CONIFERA / https://mamou-mani.com/project/cos/
  4. Arthur Mamou-Mani promotes circular design with bioplastic Conifera installation for COS / https://www.dezeen.com/2019/04/08/arthur-mamou-mani-cos-installation-bioplastic-bricks-circular-design-milan/

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