THE WORLD IS FULL OF CRAZY LOVERS

For the centenary of Turandot, Gumdesign’s project — on display until 20 September for the entire duration of the Puccini Festival 2026 in Torre del Lago — takes the enigma as its creative principle

As in the opera Turandot, truth is not conquered: it reveals itself in waiting, in the space between desire and refusal, between what appears and what continues to withdraw.

Inaugurated on 3 July 2026 and open until 20 September 2026 for the entire duration of the Puccini Festival, the exhibition “Turandot. Il mondo è pieno di pazzi innamorati” by Gumdesign, installed in the foyer of the Teatro Puccini in Torre del Lago, in the province of Lucca in Tuscany, presents eight collections from La Casa di Pietra created specifically for the Turandot Centenary and inspired by the theme of the mask.

Marble, wood, cork, rattan, cardboard, leather and scagliola each assert their own autonomy. In their encounter, they do not merge, but remain in dialogue, preserving their own nature while giving rise to a unified form.

The eight collections designed by Laura Fiaschi and Gabriele Pardi, founders of Gumdesign, inhabit the threshold between presence and withdrawal, between face and material, between permanence and transformation. Each explores a different dimension of the relationship between material and form, between function and symbol.

The mask, present in every collection, does not conceal — it makes encounter possible. It is the face we choose to offer to the other, the threshold at which identity exposes itself without ever being exhausted. Like the crazy lovers evoked by Turandot, it lives on the tension between desire and mystery: it makes no claim to reveal a definitive truth, but guards what remains irreducible to any explanation.

The eight collections developed by Gumdesign for La Casa di Pietra — a cultural and entrepreneurial project conceived by the studio to bring marble and stone back into domestic spaces through design objects — deepen this research further.

Sicilian stone enters into dialogue with leather, with rattan and woven olive wood, with wood inlay, with scagliola, with cork, with cardboard, and with turned and scorched wood. Each encounter produces a different expressive condition, generating a sequence of works whose identity lies not in the autonomy of the individual object, but in the construction of a system of relationships.

The collaboration with excellence in craft manufacturing — Cusenza Marmi, Stefano Parrini, Intrecci Toscani, Hebanon 1830, Bianco Bianchi, Greencorks, Angelo Lussiana, and Nicola Tessari — reveals a precise cultural vision: artisanal tradition is approached as a space for experimentation, not as a repertoire to be preserved. Manual skills, gestures sedimented over time, and technical knowledge become instruments for imagining new forms of contemporaneity.

The exhibition also includes an outdoor marble installation by Savema Spa, composed of elements conceived with a particular sensitivity: no material is wasted. From a single block, transformed through controlled subtraction, a family of tables emerges as “derivations” of the same original matter — 100 × 50 centimetres of marble, 40 deep. Then the cut. The Strata table investigates a condition in which form is not an outcome but a continuous derivation. A single material body that, through the repetition of the cut, opens into an extended spatial configuration while retaining its geological and conceptual origin intact. “A repeated gesture, almost ritual. Every five centimetres, and the matter is crossed, opened. There is no subtraction — only an unveiling. The individual elements emerge as variations of the same original body. The surface extends, multiplies, and spreads through space, taking on an architectural and relational quality. Each element remains inscribed in the memory of the initial block, which persists as the invisible matrix of the entire system,” says Gabriele Pardi.

Turandot. Solid Stories. The Matter of the Enigma.

Valeria Pardini speaking

A century after its premiere, Turandot continues to interrogate the present. Not only for the extraordinary musical and theatrical force that has made it one of the summits of the international operatic repertoire, but for the very nature of its symbolic construction: a work suspended between East and West, between desire and knowledge, between mystery and revelation. A work that, more than most, is grounded in the value of the enigma as a process of transformation.

The exhibition conceived by Gumdesign for the Turandot Centenary takes this condition as its generative principle, translating the language of music and stage into a grammar of materials, forms, and relationships. It is neither an illustrative exercise nor an iconographic transposition of Puccini’s opera. On the contrary, the project chooses to inhabit that intermediate space in which cultural heritage renews itself through contemporary design, making matter the privileged site of memory.

The installation unfolds across the interior spaces of the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano and the new Parco Museale del Teatro Puccini, building a continuous dialogue between architecture, landscape, and object. In this context, the large installation in Arabescato Corchia marble by Savema Spa takes on a function that exceeds the monumental. The sculpture does not simply occupy a space: it measures it, interprets it, and renders it narrative. Its presence enters into conversation with the landscape of Torre del Lago and with the Puccinian memory through a material that belongs deeply to the constructive culture of Tuscany and that, at the same time, carries an archetypal and universal dimension.

Marble thus becomes an element of continuity between geological time and cultural time. It holds a memory that precedes humanity, and that the act of design transforms into narrative. In this passage lies one of the most significant aspects of the entire project: the intention to treat matter not as the passive support of form, but as an active subject in the narrative process.

In this sense, the project is part of a broader reflection on design as a narrative practice. The works do not describe a story — they construct the conditions for its possibility. As in the dramaturgy of Turandot, meaning emerges through a process of traversal, of progressive discovery, of confrontation with a complexity that resists reduction to any single interpretation.

The idea of “solid stories” — which runs through all of Gumdesign’s research — finds here one of its most fully realised expressions. The solidity evoked by the title concerns not only the physical consistency of the materials employed but also the capacity of objects to become the custodians of experiences, memories, and visions. Each work configures itself as a threshold between past and present, between permanence and transformation, between local identity and universal dimension.

Within the context of the celebrations dedicated to the Turandot Centenary, the exhibition therefore takes on a significance that goes beyond the anniversary. It proposes a reflection on the very role of material culture in the construction of collective memory. If Puccini’s opera continues to live through its ceaseless reinterpretation, these works demonstrate how matter too can become an instrument for rewriting heritage — a language capable of making tradition contemporary without depriving it of its historical depth.

Between stone, landscape, and design, the exhibition locates in matter the place where time becomes visible. Here is where the enigma of Turandot continues to manifest itself: not as a question destined to find a definitive answer, but as a permanent possibility of generating new stories.