This article is part of our Design special report previewing Milan Design Week.
Seating, Crisply Tailored
“I wanted to set myself the challenge of not being purely sculptural,” said the British designer Faye Toogood, of the reasoning behind Crease, her crisply tailored new seating collection for Meritalia. “I love generating ideas, feeling the energy in the room. I feel like being a barometer of what’s going on in the world.”
The pieces’ origami-like folds were inspired by the designer’s time spent in Japan, where she worked with Noritake on a dinnerware collection called Kiln. Crease’s taut wool covers were also influenced by her 15 years collaborating with her sister, Erica Toogood, a pattern cutter, on their recently discontinued fashion line, Toogood. (Instead, the studio will concentrate on its “radical exploration of design/art,” her website announced.)
“The sofa is like a body, and this fabric acts as its clothing, almost like a jacket covering the form underneath,” Ms. Toogood said. Contrasting slot seams emphasize the angular folds. The sofa, which is about 7.8 feet long by 3 feet deep by 2.5 feet high, can be paired with a matching armchair or love seat. Crease will be presented Tuesday through April 26 at the Salone del Mobile along with other products from the Italian Radical Design group, of which Meritalia is a subsidiary, Pavilion 22, stand B30; meritalia.com. — ARLENE HIRST
A Surreal Pouf, Full of Foam Spines
Fachiro, the newest addition to the furniture company Gufram’s playfully surreal lineup, takes its name from the Italian word for fakir, or a holy man whose asceticism may be so extreme that it allows him to walk across hot coals or spikes.
The try-me-if-you-dare spiny pouf was conceived by Marzio Cecchi, a Florentine architect whose work has become increasingly popular with collectors. Cecchi, who died in 1990 at 49, created this piece in 1975 while still a student at the University of Florence.
Charley Vezza, the chief executive of the Italian Radical Design group, which owns Gufram, learned about Cecchi’s work from a friend in Dallas. “If someone from the Italian past is known by an American, there has to be something there,” he said. The prickly beanbag struck him as a fine companion to popular Gufram pieces like a coat rack shaped like a cactus and a lounge chair that’s effectively a square of rubbery grass.
Fachiro looks daunting, but the ominous spikes are in reality Styrofoam pellet-filled leather tubes that have been sewn onto its vinyl body. It is 23 inches high and available in silver, black and red. The pouf will be shown Tuesday through April 26 at the Salone del Mobile, Pavilion 22, stand B30, in room settings that also contain products from Meritalia and Memphis Milano, Italian Radical’s other companies; gufram.it. — ARLENE HIRST
This Chair Is Named for a Shoulder Bone
A chance to exhibit (separately) at SaloneSatellite, the Salone del Mobile’s show of young talent, introduced Nicolas Moussallem and David Raffoul to Milan in 2010 and set them on their professional course. Schoolmates at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, they teamed up shortly after their Salone adventure to found the design studio David/Nicolas. As Mr. Raffoul said, they knew it would be better to be colleagues than competitors. (He added that he was joking.)
Now, with offices in Milan, Beirut and San Francisco, the men have sailed through many successful endeavors, but coming up with a design for Ceccotti Collezioni, the Tuscan-based furniture producer, stumped them.
Their original brief was to design a bookshelf, but “we were getting nowhere,” Mr. Raffoul said. “It kept looking over-designed.”
So they started thinking about a chair, in particular a dining chair with a profile that followed the line of a shoulder blade. Thus was Scapula, named for the shoulder bone, created. “Seen from behind the armrests go up; it creates a bit of confidence,” Mr. Raffoul said about the cheerfully swooping form.
The solid wood frame of American walnut or ash is paired with an upholstered leather seat.
Starting Monday, Scapula will be part of Ceccotti Collezioni’s display at the Poltrona Frau showroom, 30 Via Manzoni, Milan; ceccotticollezioni.it. — ARLENE HIRST
With This Sofa, You Are the Star
“Designers think of themselves and their products as the stars of the show, but it’s the folks using the furniture that make the difference,” said Todd Bracher. His Bitmap sofa for Nii, a new division of Itoki, the Japanese office furniture company, fluidly accommodates a variety of spontaneous approaches, configured as the user dictates.
Bitmap “allows people to choose how they engage, from casual to defined to more focused, heads-down collaboration,” Mr. Bracher said. “Each element works across modes, from lounge to work and everything in between.”
The sofa consists of just two rectangular blocks, one large and one small, that are connected along a single edge with a metal rod, with the smaller, cantilevered block acting as side table, arm rest, work surface or additional seat. Individual Bitmaps can be linked together, adhering only through the friction provided by the upholstery (which is available in a selection of Maharam and Kvadrat textiles).
According to Mr. Bracher, as rigorously minimal as it looks, Bitmap, which is filled with recycled polyurethane, is quite comfortable. “Edges are softened where the body meets the object,” he said. “Surfaces are firm where support is needed for perching or working.”
Bitmap can be seen from Tuesday through April 26 at Salone del Mobile, Pavilion 22, Stand A27; nii-ingenious.com. — ARLENE HIRST
Pensive Design Meets a Holy Site
In a church transformed temporarily for this year’s Alcova show, the Brazilian designer Leo Lague is creating an environment for contemplation. Milan Design Week “needs a space dedicated to introspection rather than commercialism,” he said, “where the poetry of the sacred can take hold.”
The holy site within the abandoned Baggio Military Hospital is an apt setting for Mr. Lague’s long altar of light. The installation sits in the center of the nave and is encircled by his monolithic steel-frame armchairs cushioned by hand-harvested silk chaff and flanked by totemic lamps shaded by Amazonian latex. The latex and silk were sourced from artisan producers in Brazil using harm-free, manual processes that yield varied results. “We live in a world where everything is industrialized and standardized,” Mr. Lague said, “but the irregularity of these materials links you to their organic origins and lends them a spiritual charge.”
The exhibition, called “Devices for Connection,” is curated by Versa, a Brazil-based arts organization led by Gabriel Brugnara, who invited creatives from across Latin America to contribute photos and videos of the natural world. These are projected on Mr. Lague’s illuminated altar. Ethereal choral music featuring Indigenous Amazonians fills the church, and visitors select cards bearing philosophical prompts to ponder.
“Latin America has deep ties to the Catholic Church,” Mr. Brugnara said. “We wanted to reimagine the church as a space for nature, spirituality and expanding consciousness — a place that helps people reconnect with themselves and the world around them.”
“Devices for Connection” is on view Monday through April 26 at Alcova, Baggio Mlitary Hospital, 10 Via Labus, Milan; alcova.xyz. — LAURA RYSMAN
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