After the success of last year’s installation, Gruppo Saviola returns to Milan Design Week with an installation created in collaboration with the international design and innovation studio CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota (1953-2024) and constructed by Maestro Technologies. This year’s project, “The Wood Without The Tree”, is a way to showcase the intelligence of the natural world and the benefits of using wholly recycled products in construction. The project will be shown at the Salone del Mobile until 21 April 2024.
The installation is inspired by the natural form of the artichoke, recalling the PH Artichoke, designed by Poul Henningsen for Louis Poulsen, while also taking direct inspiration from the plant itself. “The Wood Without The Tree” also features light as a major design element, as the installation is lit from within, creating a diffusion of light across each of the 104 individual petals, suggesting the individual leaves of the artichoke and reminding visitors of the mathematical beauty of nature – the leaves of an artichoke form a perfect Fibonacci spiral in the heart of the fruit. In total, these panels equal 89 trees not cut down, and they are ready to be reassembled and reused for multiple installations.
The product used for “The Wood Without The Tree”, Gruppo Saviola’s Pannello Ecologico®, is made entirely of post-consumer wood, namely recycled high-end furniture and interior fixtures. Just like the artichoke, whose fallen petals nourish new buds, so too do the panels allow post-consumer wood to feed into new design projects. After the exhibition, the pavilion will be dismantled and reused in new locations, before eventual recycling itself.
The installation represents a pioneering advancement for Maestro Technologies, who have used this project to showcase their groundbreaking digital construction tool, the Maestro Platform. QR-coded labels on each component bridge physical and digital realms, enabling seamless integration and visualization for all team members. Part of the Maestro Method, this platform translates architectural designs into digital instructions for machine production across Europe, facilitating easy assembly. By tagging components with crucial digital data, including geometric specifications and assembly guidance, Maestro links each part with its digital twin, optimizing construction efficiency.
“Inspired by the form of the artichoke, we have to ask ourselves, can we ever build anything as intelligent as structures that form in nature?” says Carlo Ratti, founder of CRA and curator of the Biennale Architettura 2025. “We have used technology to improve installation and application processes by building a loop of continuous innovation: starting from the Panel as a circular material, passing through the reference to Henningsen’s work, to the way Maestro smartly connects the parts of the work.”
“When designing the components, we were inspired by the centuries-old tradition of Japanese joinery,” adds Mykola Murashko, CEO of Maestro Technologies. “When we rendered CRA’s architectural vision into a precise digital model, we designed jigsaw-like pieces that fit together perfectly – and using our new Maestro Platform, they can be assembled, and disassembled, just as easily.”
A project by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Italo Rota for Saviola, construction by Maestro Technologies
Creative lead: Italo Rota
CRA Team: Carlo Ratti, Andrea Cassi (Partner-in-Charge), Ina Sefjini, Gizem Veral
Maestro Team: Mykola Murashko, Kohei Nakajima, Corrado Curti, Konstantin Loshkov, Sara Zampieron