From the elaborate radiatori and campanelle to the minimal pici and fazzoletti, pasta shapes issue from every corner of Italy, and you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s little room left for invention.
However, it’s a challenge that has been embraced this year by a curious collective, which launched a new short-form pasta, Alma, during Milan Design Week earlier this year. Product designer Chiara Andreatti (W*225) and photographer Alice Schillaci, of Casalinghe di Tokyo (a product brand Schillaci conceived to celebrate the beauty of the everyday object), joined forces to come up with the look, while the manufacture has been a combined effort by two top pasta factories, Trafile Turconi and Baradello.
The curvy organic shape is described by the team as ‘female’ and was born, like many a project, while the two designers shared a pasta meal. Integral to the creation of Alma is the gesture used to eat it: an elbow planted on the table (‘indifferent to etiquette’), the pasta filling the mouth between chatter and laughter.
Made with Senatore Cappelli organic wheat, ancestor of the modern durum wheat, Alma is a true product of fresh design heads applied to old materials and craft.
A version of this article originally appeared in the July 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*244)
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