Newsletter August 2025

The revolution of Italian design.

“Alchimia propagated a counter-reality, another vision for the world.

It is a world full of cheerfulness, color, and aesthetics, that is intended to make clear that another reality is conceivable.”
Bröhan Museum

On occasion of Studio Alchimia’s retrospective exhibition, Hybrid Space Lab conducted an interview with Alchimia’s founder Alessandro Guerriero at Fondazione Prada:

“Either we create spiritual objects, or it is better not to create anything at all!”

Frans Vogelaar was part of the transdisciplinary Studio Alchimia from 1981 to 1982, designing together with the Italian architect and designer Alessandro Mendini the chair and two-seater Sabrina for the Italian furniture firm Driade.

Newsletter Studio Alchimia @ Hybrid Space Lab, 25 August 2025

Alchimia

Alchimia is the first major retrospective exhibition of the Italian Radical Design movement at the Bröhan Museum in Berlin and at the ADI Design Museum in Milan.

Studio Alchimia was a post-radical avant-garde group founded by Alessandro and Adriana Guerriero in Milan in 1976, bringing together the most important Italian designers and architects of the 1970s and 80s, including Alessando Mendini, Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi.

Studio Alchimia revolutionized design worldwide.

Frans Vogelaar was part of Alchimia in 1981-1982.

Alchimia @ Bröhan Museum, Berlin, 17 April – 7 September 2025
Alchimia @ ADI Design Museum, Milan, 9 November 2025 – 15 Januari 2026

Chair Sabrina for Driade by Alessandro Mendini and Frans Vogelaar, 1982
Chair and Two Seater Sabrina for Driade by Alessandro Mendini and Frans Vogelaar, 1982

Interview
Alessandro Guerriero
Studio Alchimia

On June 23rd 2025, a very hot day, in the courtyard of Fondazione Prada in Milan; Alessandro Guerriero was interviewed by Frans Vogelaar and Elizabeth Sikiaridi of Hybrid Space Lab.

Interview with Alessandro Guirreiro by Hybrid Space Lab @ Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy, 23 June 2025

Studio Alchimia, Potrait Alessandro Guirriero, Anna Gili, 1986
Studio Alchimia, Catalogue Mobile Infinito, 1981
Studio Alchimia, Mobile Infinito, Shadow Lamp, Ettore Sottsass, 1981
Studio Alchimia, Mobile Infinito, Display Cabinet, 1981

Hybrid
Space
Lab

Hybrid Space is the fusion of Physical Space and Digital Space.

Hybrid Space is the Ambivalent Space that is at the same time analog and digital, material and virtual, biological and technicological, local and global, tactile and abstract.

Hybrid Space Lab is a Think Tank and a Design Lab for Architecture, Urbanism, Design and Digital Culture.

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