In 2008, another limited-edition initiative made its debut: Plusdesign, a gallery and a brand that makes small series of furniture, lamps and home accessories, all conceived by artists and designers with a marked experimental vocation. Plusdesign is an actual place where ideas can be explored and different contemporary worlds and practices can intersect, where the boundary between artistic and design-related research seems to be increasingly thin and blurry. Asked why they want to mix artists and designers for the development of design projects, Plusdesign’s founding partners Lilia Laghi and Mariano Pichler explain that “artists who look for a direct physical impact on reality often make use of design on a practical level in order to obtain a privileged dimension where they can enter into contact with the public as consumers and offer a critical look at habits, aspirations and modes of consumption. Designers, on the other hand, who seek to verify the capacity of the intellectual framework that supports them, encounter art on an inspirational level.” Examples of the 2007 Vitra Edition were on display at the Milan Triennale during the 2008 Furniture Fair, and when compared to the first Plusdesign objects, similarities and diversities come to light: Vitra’s are visionary and radical, whereas Plusdesign’s are paradoxically functional.
