Natural Sea Remnants Adorn Acqua Alta Furniture Collection by Designer Federico Rosa

FDT Bureau

“We are used to the water, but are not ready for it,” states product designer and photographer Federico Rosa. Reflecting the side effects of high tide, which are commonly referred as acqua alta in Italy’s Veneto region in Venice, Rosa has created a furniture collection by incorporating the remnants of tides into bronze ornaments for their legs. Know more about it on Furniture and Design Technology (FDT).

Each year the sea level keeps on rising and the floods in Venice keep getting worse. Stirred by a week of extraordinary low tide, which showed all the formations such as molluscs, barnacles and seaweed accumulated in hundreds of years of sea level rise, Rosa initiated the Acqua Alta project to create awareness on the risk of the world being submerged in the near future.

Acqua Alta evokes the illusion of a layer of sea detritus and water in the room, thus evoking a grim warning of climate change. The designer combined these natural elements of disruption and handcrafted them into a stylish yet thought-provoking furniture range comprising a chair, a coffee table and a mirror. Its basic design derives from classic baroque models, which are very popular in the old Venetian Republic.

Leftovers of bricole (Venetian docking poles) production have been upcycled into chairs and table, and its upholstery is crafted from reused materials. The mirror is created on an ad hoc basis. Also, the bronze is recycled and re-fused from older production leftovers. However, the only unsustainable component of the project was its first leg mould, which was printed in 3D from a model made from 3D scans of real mollusks, barnacles and seaweed.

Image credit: Federico Rosa