Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi, Riccardo Rosso (Gruppo Strum)
In 1970, italian architects Pietro Derossi, Giorgio Ceretti, and Riccardo Rosso participated in the Sintesis Idee 70 competition. They presented the Pratone, a radical seating object resembling an enlarged piece of soft, green lawn in which the user can lie down and find a comfortable position. The form of the Pratone reflects the visual language of Pop Art, which introduced the play on dimensions, unexpected materials, and popular clichés into the language of design. The delicate task of assembling fortytwo polyurethane blades of grass, each ninety-five centimetres high, was managed by attaching them manually, fixed in four different directions, to a 140×140-centimetre base made from the same material. This resulted in a large piece weighing fifty-two (sixty-one in the current version) kilos, which was in fact hard to move.
A lawn made of polyurethane foam seems to be an ironic comment on the ‘longing for nature’ that emerged with the 1960s hippie movement: sitting on the lawn is exposed as an outmoded utopia. With their artificial modular lawn units and oversized flexible blades of grass, the designers also aimed to liberate people from their habitual behaviour patterns: although it is obviously possible to sit ‘in’ the soft Pratone, or bring together several modules to form a large seat-lawn, the sitter’s position remains unusual and requires their active and playful involvement.
In 1971 Italian manufacturer Gufram started small-batch production with technical advice from artist Piero Gilardi. In 1972 the Pratone was included in the exhibition 'Italy: The New Domestic Landscape' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a fine example of the experimental ideas then typical of Italian design.
Text: Fulvio Ferrari
