Milan Furniture Show I Saloni 2013 – Rediscovering Classics
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At this particular juncture in the global economy, it has to be said, glaringly obvious as it may be, that the word “trends,” generally used at this time of year to describe the exhibits at the Saloni, seems devoid of meaning, if not pointless, within the context of increasingly risky and complex situations.

It is also true however, that like all creative disciplines, design develops in an “evolutionary direction,” which is clear to see at a distance. Leaving “trends” aside, therefore, we must ask ourselves what the evolutionary directions actually are this year. This means looking not just at the more interesting pieces being showcased in Milan from 9th to 14th April 2013, but examining several macro-environments in particular.

Re-editions

One thread, common to many of the manufacturers, is to some extent influenced by buyer insecurity. This is the significant increase in revivals: past masterpieces are being brought back under the spotlight as a result of what, in some of the best cases, can be described as philological research.

It is interesting to note that this approach, which initially concerned pieces that had genuinely been forgotten and “consigned to history,” is now sometimes applied to things that went out of production not that long ago.

Driade, for example, is showcasing a small table designed by Antonia Astori in the ‘80s. Made of precious marbles, it embodies a sort of nostalgia for early C20th Vienna. Moving on to the so-called “masters of Italian design,” responsible for the creation of Italian Style during the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Flos has reprised the 5 iconic lamps designed by Gino Sarfatti, master of Italian lighting between 1939 and 1973, using a complex technological process to replace the original lightbulbs with LED sources.

On the furniture side, Gastone Rinaldi has been another forgotten figure. A leading force during the giddy ‘50s and ‘60s, Rinaldi was the most American of the Italian designers, the only one capable of competing with the great Charles Eames. Poltrona Frau is showing an armchair (“DU 55”) and a small armchair (“Letizia”): designed in 1954, they belong to Rinaldi’s most organicist period, characterised by sensually intertwined volumes.

Vitra, along with the designer’s family, has come up with subtle new colour shades and different materials, inspired by Hella Jongerius’s material and chromatic awareness, in revisiting Jean Prouvé’s “Fauteuil de Salon” and “Fauteuil Direction” armchairs, using a plastic material for the backrest and seat of the famous “Standard” chair, rechristened “Standard SP.”

Companies normally more focused on contemporaneity have also looked to revivals: Meritalia is one such instance, with a piece designed by Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni in 1957 for the epoch-making “Colori e forme nella casa d‘oggi” (Shapes and Colours in Today’s Home) exhibition in Como.

It is a small armchair, a sort of abstract cube – its comfort apparent the moment you sit down. Generally-speaking it appears that the so-called top of the range companies are also pinning their hopes on the revivalist vogue, with peerless creations and significant artisan input providing “exclusive security” – the security deriving from objects from a bygone age, immune to obsolescence, guaranteed investments for any purchaser.

Nostalgia has also led to the revival of more popular yet reassuring style elements, in some cases, such as “Gradisca”, a re-edited version of Werther Toffoloni‘s “barstool” for Billiani. Ron Gilad’s “Goldman“ lamp for Flos has “ministerial“ overtones, especially the gold version with a green filter.

Democratisation of design

Revivals are not the only upshot of the current economic situation, however, there is also what could be described as a sort of “democratising of design“.

Given that design is still generally seen as an élite preserve, leading manufacturers are adopting sales and communication strategies in which top pieces are being offered in set configurations, i.e. with fixed finishings and at particularly attractive prices. This enables companies to keep stocks of certain products ready for delivery and the client to acquire a good design piece much faster than usual and at a lower cost.

One such example is a suite Flou developed around Vico Magistretti’s famous “Tadao” bed, now available in a grey oak version, combined with a four-season wardrobe and bedside tables. Classic The individual pieces philosophy, so characteristic of the last few years, has now been joined by a return to period “styles,” with sets and suites, both for bedrooms (bed+bedside tables+chest of drawers), and for dining rooms (table+chairs).

This pattern also shows that the public wants to be led by the hand, confused by the vast array of parallel – yet dissonant – stylistic offerings.

Another stylistically significant phenomenon, also responding to the consumer need for reassurance, is “classic furnishing.” This sector is seeing a decline in “reproduction furniture,” copies of authentic antique pieces that stick as faithfully as possible to the original, being overtaken by myriad fabulous interpretations where Louis XVI goes hand in hand with Alice in Wonderland, baroque frames are married with Neo–Classical shapes, Imperial pieces combined with Deco fabrics, then spiced up with unlikely colours, with a prevalence of metallics, gold to bronze, silver to burnished.

Rediscovered typologies

The so–called “classic” pavilions and the “contemporary” ones, are seeing the reprise of finishes such as intarsia and marquetry and typologies such as Bérgère, which appeared to be obsolete for a long while. See the high–backed “Dolly” armchairs by Doriana and Massimilano Fuksas for Baxter, and Umberto Asnago’s “Mobius” for Giorgetti. Various other forgotten styles are also being reprised: Driade’s new-entry designer, the photographer Francesco Bolis, has come up with a photographer’s screen that now functions as a triple-mirror, reminiscent of the old seamstresses’ shops of long ago.

These are sometimes given a “distressed” look, an attempt to convince that entirely new pieces have always been part of our lives: a case in point is Paola Navone’s “Sorrento” sofa for Baxter. Even “slip covers” used to protect armchairs, have come back into vogue: Paolo Imperatori puts a new spin on them with his “Vesta” sofa for Biesse, which can be dressed up or dressed down. Dreams The dream dimension is no longer the exclusive preserve of the classical pavilion, but has become cross–cutting. It translates as a desire for escapism (as discussed further on with regard to outdoor furniture), postulating the notion of a home/nest, a “shelter from the elements.”

Many of these pieces could be singled out, but the most astonishing is the bed collection from Edra with Fernando and Humberto Campana. This typology is a first for the Tuscan firm. The Brazilian brothers have taken thousands of pieces of salvaged wood and tangled bent metal wires and “turned them into beds.” There are also less far–fetched pieces, such as the “Profumo d’estate” lamp, a firefly in a jar, by Davide and Michele Groppi for Davide Groppi, and “Yoko” by Anderssen & Voll for Foscarini – a soap bubble on an opalescent light.

There are also references to “fairytale pasts” as well as to dreams in both the contemporary and classic furniture pavilions: the designer–inventor Ingo Maurer’s “My new flame lüster” lamp combines the magic of candlelight with cutting edge LED technology. Paul Cocksedge’s “Shade” hanging light for Flos aspires to the “Harry Potter effect”: an empty lightshade hangs in the air, capturing light provided by a LED source unpredictably positioned at ground level. A new spin on nature as an enchanted world is being taken, almost as if to justify man’s invasion of the environment, and has been directly translated into pieces such as Laudani&Romanelli’s wooden Valsecchi 1918 tray, in the shape of large jagged leaves.

Evolutionary directions

Lastly, let us examine some of the “evolutionary directions of design.” Clearly the theme of “preciousness” has now leapt to the forefront. The “shape/function” paradigm clearly no longer suffices to seduce the buyer. This means that, as has been the case in the fashion world, there is a need to find a different way of communicating “difference,” the specific distinctive quality of a product. The word “preciousness” has taken the place of the rather dubious word “luxury.”

There are two clear readings of this: on one hand there are references to the art world, such Tokujin Yoshioka’s small “Element” table for Desalto which, as the designer says, “is inspired by the structure of natural crystals,” and the young Brazilian designer Zanini de Zanine’s “Trez” armchair for Cappellini, which looks more like a character in a mysterious alphabet than a chair. This latter approach sometimes comes close to a sort of “formalisation of difficulties,” as in the collection of “Palm” vases by Cedrìc Ragot for Bitossi, in the marble sculptures doubling as side tables by Zaha Hadid for Citco and in Jean Nouvel’s ceramic “Chelsea” handles for Olivari.

However, preciousness is also conveyed through sophisticated perceptual explorations, as in the “Deep” collection of small tables and bookcases, designed by Nendo for Glas: extra–light stratified welded sheet glass. The pieces, in gentle blues and greys, can be simply assembled – altering the distance between the sheets accentuates the colours. The effect is “literally” expanded by a mirrored base.

Complexity of execution

Complexity of execution is also a major strand of “preciousness.” Not simply with regard to technical complexity, as was the case until quite recently, but also in terms of the number of different yet contemporaneous manufacturing processes involved, some manual and some totally industrial. Where both are involved, they demand different skills and therefore different suppliers, which means that each piece has an absolutely individual background, ensuring that it is almost impossible to imitate.

Take for example the pieces by Benjamin Hubert and Patricia Urquiola for Moroso. The young Englishman has designed a sort of hybrid hammock/textile armchair, while the exuberant Spaniard, who has been recognised for some time as one of the greatest leading lights of the Milanese cultural circuit, is showcasing her “Mafalda” wood–frame and thermoform fabric armchair.

Moving onto lighting, in his first collaboration with Oluce, Sam Hecht, has combined blown glass with galvanised metal to create a lamp called “Semplice” (Simple) which is, in a way, a manifesto for this new preciousness.

Then there is deliberate and recherché “ecological” complexity, as demonstrated by the “Re–Made” initiative organised by Fiam, involving a group of young Italian designers – Donata Paruccini, Nicola De Ponti and Paolo Cappello among them – each of whom breathed new life into the leftovers of one of the Marches–based company’s best–sellers, the “Ragno” table, making them into objects with completely new identities.

Cross–typing

In addition to the cross–cutting production, ranging from artisan to industrial, and therefore the resulting variety of people involved in creating one single piece, the “crosscutting nature of typologies” needs to be examined. Manufacturers are tending increasingly to look beyond specialist typological concepts and turning themselves into complete, exhaustive and sometimes self–referencing micro–worlds.

Once a purchaser has been seduced into buying a table or a chair, an attempt is made to steer him or her towards vast arena of domestic solutions, perhaps starting with the hall and going right up to the bathroom, and vice versa. This means that it will seem quite natural to find fireplaces or chaises longues in a bathroom or a kitchen, for example.

Naturally the contract sector finds itself in a similar situation, the hotel sector in particular, although on a much larger scale, obviously. The result is a blurring of the product lines that once firmly served to set each particular manufacturer apart. It is now by no means unusual to come across lamps outside Euroluce, home–office solutions outside SaloneUfficio, and knick knacks just about everywhere.

Finally, there are the actual joint–ventures, such as Kartell and Laufen, in which the former’s translucid, coloured plastic material is combined with the latter’s ceramic sanitary ware.

Outdoor

The outdoor furniture sector is particularly cross–cutting. The field of exterior design is actually in constant expansion: almost all the leading furniture manufacturers now have a sizeable outdoor section. Designs for the outdoors, however, are increasingly shedding their “rugged” identity, becoming increasingly analogous with interior designs. Technological research, for example, into wicking fabrics, has undoubtedly served to encourage this process.

Outdoor furniture is now being gentrified and prettified, in fact it is now made in such a way that it can be moved indoors from outdoors and vice versa. Vitra’s pieces are something of a paradigm in this sense, with some extremely important and historic pieces by people such as Ray and Charles Eames (“Plastic side chair”) and Verner Panton (“Panton chair”), and rather more recent designs such as “Vegetal” by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, the late Maarten van Severen’s la chaise “MVS” and Konstantin Grcic’s “Waver” armchair, simply “engineered for outdoors.”

Although on one hand this means dispensing with design specifics, on the other it allows for genuine integration of the two environments and the option of different uses for every piece, according to the season: during the finer months they stay outside, during the harsher months, they are moved into sitting rooms or hotel lobbies. In terms of shape, even in the outdoor sector, there are clear traditional references: one such is the frequent reference to “deckchairs” (see “Orson” designed by Gordon Guillaumier for Roda).

Colour

Clearly much of the above with regard to permeability also applies to internal and external home furnishing, but 2013 undoubtedly marks the return of a natural palette, especially a stunning range of greens that vary from muddy nuances tinged with yellow, to a petrol hue that borders on the blue. Then there are dozens of shades ranging from rope, mastic and mud, enlivened with hints of dirty red and mustard yellow. There is also a predominance of all shades of grey, warm and mixed with blue. In some cases the colours are provided by the material itself, as in Nani Marquina’s “Natural” collection, in which natural fibres such as nettle and jute are interwoven.

The designer/manufacturer relationship

One of the undercurrents of design 2013 is the allocation of commissions and the choice of designers. This is probably much less obvious to an outsider, but it becomes clear when compared to the past: in the ‘50s and ’60, the leading companies built their identities around individual designers. These relationships were ongoing for years, developing at hand in hand with creativity and business.

Cases in point: Marco Zanuso and Arflex, Achille Castiglioni and Flos, Vico Magistretti and Cassina, these days, however, many of the most famous designers, from Starck to Nendo, work cross–cuttingly for companies with vastly differing philosophies. This may be hard for the end user to comprehend.

Cutting–edge

Rounding off this first overview of the 2013 Saloni, are some of the more avant–garde pieces, innovative in terms of typology. There is the “Booken” “horizontal bookcase” by Raw Edges for Lema, in which the volumes rest on a towel–like structure, and “Mikado”, a bread–cupboard/aviary, designed by the Swedish Front group of designers for Porro, in which precious objects are “protected” by a double row of wooden rods. “Terrazza” by the Spanish duo Emiliana for Valsecchi 1918, an asymmetrical multi–fronted chest of drawers, and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s “Aim” hanging light for Flos. This sets up a conflict between two basic principles of lighting design: the centrality of the light point, negated here by being connected to a ground–level plug, and the usual attempts to minimise the cable, which is prominent here in lengthy coils.

There is also the young Norwegian designer Daniel Rybakken’s stunning and poetically simple new “Ascent” floor lamp for Luceplan, a bell–shaped head that slides, mysteriously, along the stem, imparting a luminous intensity.

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