Alessandro Mendini
A paradox fulfilled: that is how
Alessandro Mendini defines his
latest version of an undisputed
icon of Italian design, the Proust
armchair. It was created in 1978
with Studio Alchimia as a redesign
of a baroque armchair upon which
innumerable polychrome dots
were painted by hand. The idea
of developing a piece of design
starting with an unusual source
of inspiration—Proust's visual and
object world—has since then been applied with countless variations
of colour, forms and materials,
including bronze and ceramic. It has
travelled worldwide and stopped
off at many museums. The latest
transformation into an industrial
object moulded in rotational plastic
is the work of Magis, who have
turned the Proust into a technical
and manufacturing jewel, a timeless
object charged with "a fresh energy
of colours and atmospheres".
Salone Pad. 20 C01-D02
Labt
When Frank Ternier (a carpenter
who formerly studied painting)
founded the firm Labt, his intention
was to realise new ideas for furniture
to be produced in small editions. He
defines his workshop, based in
Ghent, as "a greenhouse in which
to cultivate ideas and watch them
grow from the initial sketch on paper
through to the finished product". The
first collection of tables includes the
contribution of designers with whom
Ternier has developed a working practice in the intermediate space
between architecture and interior
design with the best of the current generation of Flemish
architects and creative talents like
Jan en Randoald, Henk De Smet &
Paul Vermeulen, and Architecten De
Vylder Vinck Taillieu. The plywood
tables play on the graphic qualities
of wood (for example the TTable by
Jan en Randoald), or spring from
reflection on familiar forms to be
"copied" from memory, or adopt a
method inspired by tailoring.
Pinacoteca di Brera, via Brera 28
Salone del Mobile countdown
On the eve of Milan's Furniture Fair, a behind-the-scenes glance at the preparations of established names and new talents.
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- 11 April 2011
- Milan
Real Industry
Future Classics
Comforty, the new trademark
founded by a solid Polish company
specialising in furniture production,
carries the positive energy of a
country in transformation. Poland
has entered the free market with
great vitality, despite a past of oneway
industrialisation. With equal
vigour, the nation has now keyed into
design as an opportunity to guide its
industrial transformation, thereby
prompting it to advance from its role as one of the world's biggest
furniture manufacturers (next to China and Italy) to become known as a "producer" of
its own designs with a recognisable
identity. A competition—from
which Philippe Nigro emerged as the
winner—has shown how much this
new Polish industrial brand is banking
on the youthful energy of a group of
international designers led by Tomek
Rygalik, with the aim of focusing on
a fresh identity of differences and
common elements.
Superstudio Più, via Tortona 27
Sezgin Aksu
Silvia Suardi
An insect borne on legs of different
dimensions and colours that can
be clamped as desired to support
shelves or tops of changeable shapes.
The tubular metal legs can be clad in
fabric or leather, while the top is in
tempered glass. Like the other pieces
by the new Italian brand Colè (an
enterprise set up by Matteo De Ponti
and Laura Macagno), Asymetrical
Table is inspired by the furniture
of memory, reinterpreting certain
archetypal forms that are updated with a marked sense of lightness
and irony. The idea that underlies
all Colè products, realised for this
debut with the studios Aksu/Suardi
and Lorenz/Kaz together with the
Colè Design Lab, is to exploit the best
craft and semi-industrial processes
to be found across Italy, along with
sustainability standards firmly based
on zero-kilometre principles and
on the possibility of making all the
product's components in one district.
Giacomo Manoukian Noseda, piazza San Simpliciano 2
Rotor
The Brussels-based group, which
curated the Belgian Pavilion at the
last Venice Architecture Biennale,
now presents a design specially
created for the Prada space in Via
Fogazzaro. Going beyond the borders
of mere installation, it offers food for
thought on the practice of building.
Rotor's exhibition design in Venice
surveyed the phenomenon of wear
and tear, seen as an inevitable process
that can influence environments and
behaviour. In Milan, their exhibit will concentrate instead on the reuse
of unproductive materials, such
as disused catwalk elements from
fashion shows. "Beyond the briefness
of their existence, their corporality
is transformed into a weight," say
the designers. The reuse of ordinary
and industrial scrap has long united
fashion with design
and been a constant feature of
historic art movements: from
cubism to futurism, Dadaism,
Nouveau Réalisme and pop art.
Fondazione Prada, via Fogazzaro 36
Francesco Faccin
Francesco Faccin is a woodworking
virtuoso and a passionate young
designer, backed by solid training
with Enzo Mari and Michele De
Lucchi. This project for Danese has
resulted in his first industrially
manufactured chair, enabling him
to emerge from the sphere of self-production
that has characterised
his work to date. The chair is the acid
test of every designer, and this one
by Faccin is defined by its material:
a smooth, dense and compact type of plywood. It embodies the
aspiration to an accessible, rational
and simplified production. Every
part of it (legs, seat and back) is
made from a single plane: a three-dimensional
object composed of
elements rigorously cut from a two-dimensional
plane.
Danese, via Canova 34
Valentina Del Ciotto
Simone Spalvieri
These two young Italian industrial
design graduates have worked
together for two years under the
common conviction that new products, especially furniture, are
inspired by the search for emotion
and surprise. For this reason each
of their design objects is based on a
thorough selection of new materials,
signs and meanings. The illusions
of material represent the guiding
thread that unites the projects they
present at SaloneSatellite, including the Sacchetto armchair which sprang
from the use of Tyvek for interior
design. The two designers devised
a method of joining material that
requires no glue or seams: the Tyvek
sheets are joined by ultrasound
welding which makes them
waterproof. The visual effect is that
of a fragile and delicate paper chair,
a sort of outsized bag containing the
upholstery. At the same time, it is
tremendously resistant and can also
be used outdoors.
SaloneSatellite, A6
Michael Young
His inspiration comes from the
Trussardi archive, an incredibly
rich collection of designs ranging
from motorboats to cars and from
aeroplane interiors to experimental
furniture. Many of the historic
designs found in the course of his
exploration already displayed a
surprising wealth of inventiveness
and research into new product types.
Although he started with designs from the past,
the project development is rooted in
the present, located geographically between the Como area and Hong
Kong, where Young has his office. He
took the best of both worlds in order
to develop this new range of seating:
from Asia the latest 3D technology
and all the equipment associated
with it, and from Italy the matchless
skills of leather-working craftsmen.
This is the first in a series of products
to be developed for the Trussardi
collection.
Palazzo Trussardi, piazza della Scala 5
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
True to ten years of collaboration
between the designers and
Established & Sons, the Folio
shelving system—presented in the
off-Salone circuit together with a
new collection—is a poetic object
created with very few elements
and a starkly essential vocabulary.
The search for a simple but richly
technical and formally inventive
process to keep an interior in order is
developed by combining the extreme
functionality of flat shelving with the more elaborate use of cabinets
and doors. With Folio, objects can
thus be hidden behind a felt "curtain"
attached to the base of an oak shelf
via an aluminium mechanism.
Teatro Versace, piazza Vetra 7
Monica Förster
The organically shaped Glory lamp,
designed for the Spanish company
Vibia, uses a combination of polyester
(85 per cent) and lycra (15 per cent)
laminated with a polyurethane film.
This is then shaped and glued onto
a support frame to achieve forms
with a double curvature that enable
the designer to create attractive
lighting effects. The lamp comes in
a variety of sizes, with diffusers in
three or seven cavities, shaped as
irregular reversed pyramids. These are attached to the pedestal column
with magnets to facilitate removal
while ensuring a secure fixture. The
diffusers in the suspension version
are connected to three steel cables
fixed to a ceiling base.
Salone, Pad. 9 D06-C15
Nipa Doshi
Jonathan Levien
The work of this Anglo-Indian duo,
who have now developed a proven
design harmony with Patrizia
Moroso, is concentrated on the
visual and tactile qualities of "liquid
wood", a material whose properties
are different to those of any other
industrial plastic. This thermoplastic
compound used for the Impossible
Wood chair, with 80 per cent wood
fibre and 20 per cent polypropylene,
can be processed using normal
injection moulding machinery. The pressure and heat emitted during
the moulding phase release the
wood's humidity, which burns on
the aluminium surface to create an
irregular oxidised effect similar to
that of leather. The characteristics of
this material (which even smells like
wood) inspired Doshi Levien for this
seating: the form takes its cue from
the work of African-American sculptor
Martin Puryear, and in particular his
Cedar Lodge of 1977.
Salone, Pad. 16 C23-D22
Francis Chabloz
This young French designer, who
started making cupboards before
studying as an industrial designer
at ECAL in Lausanne, now brings the
Fast collection of chairs and tables
to Salone Satellite. With their design
based on versatility, the chairs and
tables can be made quickly to meet
contingent needs. The system is
inspired by the belt found in some traditional wood tables, which is here
exploited as the structural element
to characterise the whole collection.
In Chaboz's work, the system is now
so strong that chair and table legs can
be fastened to seating and worktops
without the aid of screws.
SaloneSatellite, A10
Wouter Nieuwendijk
Jair Straschnow ik
Esterni brought in these two Dutch
designers, who recently won the
Brit Insurance Design of the Year
Award from the Design Museum in
London, to contribute to the birth of
Esterni Design, a new brand which
showed the first item in its collection,
a circular bench, at the Public Design
Festival. An object-manifesto of
urban furniture created in 2006, it invites users to socialise and relate
to others even in urban contexts that
are not always friendly. It is made of
untreated wood and has a reclining
backrest for extended pauses.
Cascina Cuccagna, via Cuccagna 2/4