Reframing Design Amid the Pandemic

The pandemic lockdown suddenly changed everyone's lives. I decided to use the time off well.

I was relatively new to Autodesk Fusion and used my free time to model a pipe organ mechanical key action in three-dimensional solids. I spent a semester computer modeling a library of typical key action components one year before building my first triangular organ pipes. Now, I could put that library of components to good use.

I would visit my workshop each weekend, where I made some upgrades.

Something unexpected happened during the pandemic. My sister and I connected with my grandfather's family in Italy. My grandfather Stefano immigrated to this country from the small village of Vermiglio in the northern Italian Alps. The Alpine region of Europe is a shared culture, regardless of national borders. I used a newfound understanding of my ancestry and upbringing to craft a design narrative that I identified as my own, seemingly passed down through an ancestry of shared cross-border culture that engendered a strong sense of community and purpose through art, architecture, and daily ritual.

Let me term that design narrative a design language I call Vermiglio design. It uses more straightforward build methods and Indigenous materials. Primitive finishing materials like milk paint can also be used for the sake of rural antiquity.

I had never used milk paint before, so I built two plant stands with what I thought Vermiglio design should represent. Each had a milk-painted leg set mounted to a frame and panel top consisting of contrasting hardwoods assembled with cope and stick joinery. I couldn't entirely escape the pluralist design language I spent years crafting.