On the occasion of Milano Design City 2020, Italian architect and designer Elisa Ossino presented Abstract Landscape. Abstrat Landscape is a collection of unique design pieces made entirely by hand using AbonosTM wood and other sustainable materials.
AbonosTM is a wood that protects the environment and safeguards resources because the trunks are recovered from riverbeds. This wood has in fact fluvial origins and it is quite unique: it has been underwater for thousands of year and this give the wood important properties such as hardness and resistance.
The wood has been deposited over the years along the riverbeds following large-scale flooding and inundation and can date back up to 8000 B.C. Earth, sand and gravel have then buried the trunks and the lack of oxygen has slowed down the decomposition. The minerals and iron found in the water helped the fossilization.
The Abonos trunks used by Elisa Ossino are recovered by Arte 9 Milano from the waterways of the Balkan Peninsula.
To preserve the territory and the rivers’ ecosystem, all trunks are recovered manually by professional divers using oxygen-filled balloons attached to the trunks through ropes.
The wood is then transformed by Carlo Tuzzi and Arte 9 Milano using innovative processes and it is skillfully handcrafted into the Abstract Landscape sculptural objects . Each piece is unique because each trunk has his own particular color, veins and characteristics created by the water.
The designer drove inspiration from the lock-down months caused by the pandemic. This strange time that we are living has strongly underlined the urgency of a new balance between man and nature. “Animals are watching you “ (Gli animali ti osservano) is the message written on a wall of the exhibition.
Photography by Giorgio Possenti
