The Italian Ambassador to Iran, Giuseppe Perrone, has officially inaugurated today a special preview of the exhibit "Domus Design - Tehran 2022", which will open in its full scale on Italian Design Day in mid-March.

Special guest at the Italian Ambassador’s inauguration, which took place in one of the historical buildings of the Qajar complex that houses the residence of the Italian Envoy to Iran, was Walter Mariotti, Editorial Director of Domus magazine, who flew to Tehran for the occasion.

"The new design exhibition we are presenting in Tehran", Ambassador Perrone said during the inauguration event, "retraces the main stages of cooperation between Italy and Iran in the design sector, thereby highlighting the special bond between Italy and Iran which, from the 1950s onwards, has never ceased to produce design pieces of rare beauty".

The preview show follows the footprints of the video series of 10 episodes produced last year by the Italian Embassy in Tehran by the title "Domus Eyes on Iran". The video series singled out 10 very significant stories published by Domus magazine throughout the years featuring architectural and design projects related to Iran. The content of the video series was also showcased in a special publication by Domus, distributed throughout the world together with the November issue of the magazine. 

Among the most significant items included in the exhibit at the Italian Ambassador‘s residence are a few steel and glass items designed by Hans Hollein for the Museum of Glass and Ceramics in Tehran, featured in a 1980 Domus article; a few pieces designed by Gio’ Ponti in the 1950s and 1960s for the villas he was building in those years, such as the exquisite Villa Namazee in Tehran; the striking and visionary drawings by Gaetano Pesce for the Tehran National Library, as well as cutting-edge works by Iranian contemporary architects and designers such as Sara Kalantari’s iron and mirrored glass “Pass” door or the staggering zoomorphic shaped dining suite by Kamran Ashraf Naderi.

"I am happy to take part in the making of this exhibition and its itinerary in Tehran in collaboration with Domus," Walter Mariotti said during the preview event. "This is a valuable opportunity to reflect on the deeper meanings of design and its inner potential in terms of peacebuilding, in the sense that design is the opposite of anything that generates conflict because in reality designers only declare war on commonplaces, which are in fact likelier to generate conflict because they make different cultures and human destinies irreconcilable. Dealing with Italian and Iranian design in Tehran means first of all talking about brotherhood and human connection, which goes beyond design and touches upon what the Germans call “die lezten Dingen”, the ultimate things", Mariotti concluded.

By Siavash Sufinejad