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Tag: furniture

ClassiCon

ClassiCon

ClassiCon is a German company, based in Munich, that challenges time, presenting a design that has spanned the centuries without losing appeal and modernity; its name itself is a “classic” and “contemporary” case, highlighting its duplicity from the beginning, aspiring to offer pieces of established characters who have made the world of design history since the early 1900s such as Eileen Gray and Eckart Muthesius, but also to promote contemporary design and present examples of new design with advanced quality and shape, giving it the “classic” designation. The brand is synonymous with high quality, strong individuality and timeless aesthetics, out of passing fashions. Classicon objects are timeless pieces, combinable in any domestic or business context, with a strong personality, but outside the most fleeting trends in the world of design.

Many collaborations with young international designers, with whom the company establishes a lasting partnership that continues over the years, creating a design history linked to each individual designer. The most intense and productive partnership is certainly that with the Munich designer Konstantin Grcic, who, since the first projects with the company, has included refined references to the iconic design work of Eileen Gray: the projects of Konstantin Grcic, who later became a star world of contemporary design, I am the result of careful reasoning on ergonomics and the contemporary way of life, with cultured quotes to the masters of design in a never banal or dusty reinterpretation.

Eileen Gray’s projects are all produced and present in the Classicon catalog, which is the worldwide licensee of Aram Design Ltd: in the early 70s Eileen Gray began to collaborate with the manufacturer Zeev Aram to develop her furniture and its lamps for series production. Finally, in 1973 the designer signed a worldwide contract with Aram Design in London to bring all her projects into production for the first time. Classicon is therefore the exclusive licensee of the entire Aram collection by Eileen Gray.

Quality is a fundamental element for the company, so much so that each piece is indelibly and consecutively marked and numbered, as a concrete and visible testimony to the attention paid to the production of each individual specimen. The Classicon signature therefore guarantees the use in the production of high quality materials and methods, with compliance with all ecological requirements; the quality control of the production is very high. The logo and the progressive numbering offer the guarantee that each limited edition is an authentic replica of the original, made with the consent of the rights holders and with absolute respect for the original itself.

High quality and timeless furnishings are therefore the key points of the ClassiCon philosophy, which can boast the presence of its furnishing elements in numerous European and international design museums.

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Memphis-Milano: il fenomeno culturale degli anni '80

Memphis-Milano

Memphis-Milan is the great cultural phenomenon of the 1980s that revolutionized creative and commercial logic in design. Born in Milan in 1980 from the idea of ??Ettore Sottsass and a group of young designers and architects, who over the years have become famous designers on the international scene, Memphis has overturned all the existing parameters, precisely because his goal was to break the status quo of the design industry.

According to legend Ettore Sottsass was in his Milan apartment with a group of young designers, including the radical Michele De Lucchi, to discuss how design had become bourgeois and irrelevant by now … meanwhile we listened to Bob Dylan’s song by 1966 “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”. As a group, he decided at this precise moment to come together in a collective and to create a completely new collection, full of life and in step with the times, calling it Memphis.

Over the years many young designers passed through the collective, coming from different countries and cultures and all bringing their personal contribution in the context of a common manifesto; among them Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi; Aldo Cibic, Michel Graves, Nathalie du Pasquier, Peter Shire, Javier Mariscal, George Sowden, Alessandro Mendini, Matteo Thun, Masanori Umeda, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata, Marco Zanuso jr and many others. To all of them, and to the supervision of Ettore Sottsass himself, we owe the most interesting projects of the Memphis group.

Memphis has imposed new shapes, new materials and new motifs on design. A first collection was born in 1981 with the financial support of Ettore Gismondi, president of Artemide, and immediately has an explosive effect: bright colors, an abundance of decorations, courageous asymmetries, totemic vertical furniture … nothing like this has ever been seen, catapulting the design in the extravagant and colorful universe of cinema, comics and pop art, to which the collective looks with interest and respect.

The objects of Memphis, produced in limited series, try to escape the banality of everyday life, taking up names that arouse an imaginary world in each of us, with a strong surprise effect thanks to the shapes and materials used, especially the decorative laminates of the Piedmontese society laminated Bra Abet, but also the Venetian ceramics and glass for the beautiful Sottsass vases, made according to the ancient techniques of the Venetian glass masters.

Among the most iconic pieces of the collection we can mention the colorful Carlton bookcase, the Tahiti lamp, the Totem Casablanca furniture, all designed by Ettore Sottsass, the Oceanic lamp and the first chair by Michele De Lucchi. the Oberoi armchairs and the lamp on wheels Super Lamp by Martine Bedin, the Palace chair by George Sowden and many other projects including furnishings, rugs (extraordinary those of Nathalie du Pasquier), ceramics, glass, silver, lamps, fabrics … all unscrupulous, colorful, brave and unconventional.

Memphis has become a symbol of New Design; its influence has been immense in the history of design and is still very strong in various sectors of production and beyond: its aesthetic has been taken up and embraced in various artistic fields in recent years.

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Molteni&C - mobili e design, sedie, divani, tavoli, arredi

Molteni

Molteni & C was founded as a craft company in 1934 in Giussano in the province of Milan (later in the province of Monza and Brianza), by Angelo Molteni, a businessman from Brianza, among the promoters of the Milan International Furniture Fair, which will see its first edition in 1961 In the first post-war period the company made furniture starting from the trunk and covering all the production phases and in the mid-1950s it participated in the first “Selective Exhibition – International Furniture Competition” in Cantù, with a project by the Swiss architect Werner Blaser, a pupil by Alvar Aalto and assistant to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who wins first prize. The chest of drawers, with the triple fork geometric joint, is the first prototype of modern furniture and has recently been reworked in a precious numbered and certified edition.
1968 is the year of the revolution: in a few months, production is converted from classic to modern, to create well-designed furniture, designed for the series; Luca Meda, a pupil of the Ulm School, is the man of the revolution, his Iride containers presented at the Salone del Mobile in 1968. The following year the complete conversion to design furniture took place, followed by the purchase of the Unifor companies and Citterio, in the office sector and, in 1979, of Dada, a kitchen furniture company. Over the years Molteni & C therefore becomes a reality for the production of furniture.
During the artistic direction entrusted to Luca Meda, the architects Aldo Rossi and Afra and Tobia Scarpa are called to design for Molteni; Aldo Rossi will design some now iconic furnishings such as the theater sofa, the weekly Carteggio and the Milano chair, rare examples of the Maestro’s forays into the world of design.
In the 1990s, however, collaboration began with some Italian and international designers, including Jean Nouvel, Foster and Partners, Patricia Urquiola, Rodolfo Dordoni, Hannes Wettstein.
In 1994 Molteni & C received the Compasso d’Oro for Lifetime Achievement. “Among the protagonists of the Italian furniture culture”, says the jury, “he has been able to present an offer of products designed with constant dignity, safe quality and a broad vision of the cultural context”. In the same year Jean Nouvel designed the Fondation Cartier in Paris, Molteni created all the furnishings through Uniforo: thus the Less series was born, an icon of design in the world, tables with minimal thickness and with elementary and rigorous shapes.
In early 2000 To support international expansion, Molteni & C created the Padded division and, in a few years, established itself among the best international manufacturers with the projects of Patricia Urquiola, Ferruccio Laviani, Rodolfo Dordoni, Hannes Wettstein and Ron Gilad and many others.
In 2012 Molteni & C presented the Gio Ponti Collection at the Salone del Mobile, furnishings never mass produced by the great Milanese architect, in collaboration with Gio Ponti Archives. The collaboration between Molteni and Gio Ponti’s heirs continues annually thanks to an exclusive agreement for the rights of the Maestro’s projects.
The Molteni Group recently celebrated 80 years of activity with an exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery in Milan, entitled 80! Molteni. With an installation curated by Jasper Morrison and the graphic project by Studio Cerri & Associati, prototypes and furnishings from all the companies of the Group recount, for the first time, 80 years of experience, quality and innovation. The exhibition has become the core of the Molteni Museum in Giussano.
As of April 2016, Belgian architect and designer Vincent Van Duysen has been appointed creative director of the Molteni & C brands; after the success of the Gliss Master collection of wardrobes, the new collaboration focuses on coordinating the image and the design and artistic choices of the group.
Born as a company specialized in the production of systems, today the company still fully produces in Italy an integral offer for the home, from containers to upholstered items, from chairs to tables … flanked by a contract division that manufactures cruise ships, theaters , museums, hotels, restaurants and collective residences.

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Moooi: mobili, interni e illuminazione moderni olandesi

Moooi

For 20 years now, Moooi has inspired and seduced the world of design with sparkling, innovative, ironic and courageous projects.
The Dutch company was founded in 2001 by Marcel Wanders and Casper Vissers initially to propose the projects of Marcel Wanders himself, who in the 90s made himself known to the famous Dutch collective of designers Droog Design mainly thanks to his knitted chair, Knotted Chair, later edited by Cappellini; Wanders’ designs are often too original for design companies, so this publishing house is founded in order to maintain its independence and creativity intact: Moooi which means “beautiful” in Dutch.
Marcel Wanders’ capricious, unique and provocative style is fully expressed in the Moooi collection. In addition to the creations designed by Marcel himself, Moooi also edits other well-known designers such as Bertjan Pot, Jasper Morrison. Ross Lovegrove, Studio Job… enriching the catalog every year with always surprising pieces.
The company does not hesitate to leave the usual and aesthetic paths of design by editing unusual and courageous creations such as the surprising spider-shaped chandelier, composed of a multitude of technical desk lamps and called Dear Ingo in tribute to the Master of light Ingo Maurer , created by Ron Gilad in 2003 or even the “charred” Smoke wooden armchair from 2002 by Maarten Bass, who later became one of the most acclaimed Dutch designers.
In this way, the Moooi collection easily combines a suspension in pressed white paper by the creative couple Studio Job and a life-size black horse wearing a lamp on its head, a project signed by the Swedish studio Front Design and part of a particularly iconic collection completed from a rabbit_lampada and a pig-table.
Many designers are now called to collaborate with the company, always under the artistic direction of Marcel Wanders, now sought after by all the most important international design companies, from Flos to Baccarat, from Cappellini to Alessi; recent collaborations include those with Jaime Hayon, Nika Zuoanc, Joost van Bleiswijk.
Moooi’s style has not changed since the beginning and has remained exclusive, bold, playful … based on the belief that design is a matter of love, irony and joy. They are timeless objects, which possess the uniqueness and character of antiques combined with the freshness of modern times. This merger leads the brand to focus more and more on the production of iconic and spectacular objects.
With this unique and iconic mix of lighting, furniture and accessories, the company creates interior spaces decorated with a variety of inspiration of models and colors to embrace any type of space, domestic and public, and makes people of different ages, cultures fall in love and personality.
This vision of unexpected home always highlights new ideas with a clever touch of magic. Behind the apparent irony and playfulness there are always intelligent projects, the result of continuous reflections on the way of living and living and its continuous changes.

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