Superfollies

The installation by British designer Faye Toogood has won the Milano Design Award 2017 for the poetic interaction it established with its surrounding space. #MDW2017

Set up in a late-19th century private garden in Via Palestro and conceived by British designer Faye Toogood for Italian brand Nobody&co., the Superfollies installation has won the Milano Design Award 2017 for the poetic interaction it established with its surrounding space.

Faye Toogood, Superfollies installation for Nobody&co., Fuorisalone 2017

Faye Toogood, Superfollies installation for Nobody&co., Fuorisalone 2017

Pet table di Nobody&co., Fuorisalone 2017

Uphill Chair by Nobody&co. is an outdoor chair, entirely in aluminium, capable of adapting to level shifts. The legs can be adjusted separately with quick clamps

Relog Chair by Nobody&co. is made by salvaging pieces cut from oak logs. Rounded semicircular slices take on new life as seats and backs. Joined by white painted 2X2 iron tubing

Close-up of the Missing Spring Chair by Nobody&co., Fuorisalone 2017

Close-up of the Missing Spring Chair by Nobody&co., Fuorisalone 2017

We know about them for the Bibliochaise armchair – which mixes seating and bookcase functions, and can hold up to five linear metres of books – and their ironic Buddino, a Buddha-shaped pudding mould. They are Alisée Matta and Giovanni Gennari who opened their design studio Nobody&co. in 2005.

For MDW2017, they asked British designer Faye Toogood to create an exhibition design for five new designs – Pet Table, Relog and Missing Ocean, Missing Spring, Uphill and Sliced Piola – in a private garden at Via Palestro 8, unknown even to many locals despite being in the heart of the city centre between the Istituto Svizzero in Piazza Cavour and the Villa Reale park around PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea. A part of the adjacent Palazzo Cambiaghi for which it provided riding facilities complete with paths through the bushes, stables and drinking troughs, this 19^th-century garden was sold off many years ago but it proved impossible to exploit it for new housing because of the major architectural restrictions. Its trees and birds have been censused: 33 wildflower species and 49 different arboreal species, including notably specimens of European beech, magnolia, white elm, ailanthus (also known as the tree of heaven), deodar cedar and sycamore plus kestrels, common swift, chaffinches, house sparrows, robin redbreasts, great tits and jackdaws hiding in the treetops and shrubs.

In keeping with the best romantic tradition of 19th-century garden pavilions and follies filtered via the sensitivity of Faye Toogood, this hidden paradise was chosen to display the five new products presented by Nobody&co. in eclectic 3D spaces developed jointly by the designer and contemporary artists Timorous Beasties and Chloe Patience who worked in multiple disciplines to create a consistent narrative nucleus.

4 — 9 April 2017
Superfollies
Studio Toogood
via Palestro 8, Milan

Superfollies

The installation by British designer Faye Toogood has won the Milano Design Award 2017 for the poetic interaction it established with its surrounding space. #MDW2017

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