modern summer 2007

CONTENTS 5

16 NEWS & EVENTS MILAN

modern summer 2007

modern summer 2007

BEST DESIGN 2007 BOOK AND FAIR REVIEW 49

72 RETAIL REPORT OUTDOOR FABRICS

modern summer 2007

modern summer 2007

RETAIL REPORT OUTDOOR FABRICS 73

Out of the Ordinary The Campana brothers exuberant chair designs have given the design world a welcome antidote to the pervading minimalist mode writes Sophie McKinlay
A MILANESE MENAGERIE Summer came early in Milan this year as the hordes descended on the city for its annual week of design madness. The event is so much more than a trade fair. As well as the futuristic exhibition centre, warehouses, offices, churches and public spaces all over town are transformed into showcases for the latest design from round the world. The Metro announces welltimed strike action. Taxi drivers gesticulate and swear as they attempt to navigate streets jammed with thousands of designsavvy Milanese, international buyers and design journalists racing around on a futile quest not to miss anything. The medieval courtyards of the Castello Sforzesco were taken over by the Italian magazine Interni for ‘Decode Elements’, eleven spectacular installations by designers and architects including Gaetano Pesce, Ron Arad and Ingo Maurer, accompanied by giant film projections on the castle walls. The ‘Salone Internazionale del Mobile’ is now plural – the 24 saloni (halls) of the exhibition centre were largely filled with the slick and luxuriously finished kind of interior products synonymous with Italian design. For carpets subtlety prevails, with texture dominant over pattern. Animal-skin rugs abound, the most exciting of which were by innovative Tuscan company Parentesi Quadra whose cut, shaved, gaufraged and patchwork cowhide rugs are works of art. Apart from their tattoo rug, which was borrowed to give a hint of pattern on several Italian furniture stands around the

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walk around the Campana brothers’ neighbourhood in Sao Paulo provides the key to their working practice. It is here that you see the strange and eclectic fabric of their designs – lengths of garden hose, bubble-wrap, corrugated cardboard, furry toys, even carpet underlay – which are taken back to the studio and subtly transformed in their hands. The challenge, as they see it, is to create something decadent and opulent, out of the ordinary. In an increasingly global culture, the brothers are rediscovering the value of Brazilian traditions, employing local materials and low-tech production methods; the result is a challenge to preconceived notions of luxury. The brothers did not intend to be designers; Humberto trained as a lawyer, Fernando as an architect. In 1984 they decided to change careers and design furniture together.“At first we wanted to do clean, precise design, but then we realised that we are not German, so we adopted a strategy of need, borrowing from Brazil’s street people. They live on the streets and are forced to reinvent their lives for themselves, without having anything to fall back on… our designs were born in the street, from the urban kitsch of the popular quarters and from contact with nature.”The intricate Favela chair (1991) was one of their first designs to bring them international recognition. Inspired by the haphazard and chaotically built shanty towns of Sao Paulo the brothers designed a chair using the same construction techniques and materials. The result is a careful construction using hundreds of pieces of wood. In its assemblage, disorder and improvisation the work of the Campanas seems to hesitate between design and art. They have a willingness to experiment and improvise and continually

Seeking the Unique How can one find the best designers amongst the hordes of contenders? Looking at The International Design Yearbook 2007 and this year’s Milan Furniture Fair Alex Bagnor uncovers the cream of the crop

COME RAIN COME SHINE
There is a renaissance in outdoor furniture fabrics. Out goes the faded and sun-bleached in comes pattern in materials that can cope with any climate. Ros Weaver investigates
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MARK GABBERTAS

Gabbertas has brought highly skilled weaving of weather-resistant material into his furniture design. His Eclipse lounger for outdoor furniture manufacturer Gloster is a feat of weaving that takes a Chinese weaver about ten days. Extruded polyethylene tape – UV resistant, colourfast, tear proof and environmentally friendly, is woven onto an aluminium frame to create an other-worldly double lounger with a sail shade and cushions in Sunbrella. www.gabbertas.com www.gloster.com

▼ OSBORNE & LITTLE
Like many outdoor ranges of fabrics Osborne & Little’s collection is named after a tropical destination. The lesserknown Caribbean isle of Bonaire gives its name to a collection of light and airy designs in 100% Dralon acrylic. The designs, including florals and stripes, are ideal for beach, poolside, garden or terrace as they are water-repellent, stain and mildew-resistant and have excellent lightfastness. www.osborneandlittle.com

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ZOFFANY

Back to the Caribbean with Caribe, Zoffany’s first outdoor weave collection, an elegant ensemble of fabrics in tasteful colours. Interesting textured weaves including the two-tone Trinidad and four-tone Tobago, co-ordinate with a variety of stripe widths from broad to ‘barcode’ in both gay and muted colourways. The washable 100% acrylic fabric with a Teflon finish has been developed to meet the highest standards for poolside, garden or nautical upholstery. www.zoffany.com

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abrics for use outdoors are increasing at the pace of global warming. Fabric houses are competing with materials

DESIGNTEX ▼ ▼ JIM THOMPSON
In a departure from the finely woven Thai silk synonymous with the Jim Thomson brand, the company has begun to weave Andaman, an acrylic fabric with the same luxurious qualities but which is also suitable for outdoor use. Using an abundance of vibrant indigenous colours, these fabrics blend the exoticism of the East with the functionality of the West. www.jimthompson.com

Another solution-dyed material is BellaDura™ from Designtex which contains an additive that inhibits the growth of mildew and has been tested to exceed 1500 hours of lightfastness. Available in a range of two-tone baroque-style weaves – Solstice and Meridian – apart from the ubiquitous stripe, they are bleach cleanable, stain resistant, and exceptionally durable. www.designtex.com

GT DESIGN

Bologna-based GT Design specialise in using plain and simple materials to stunning effect. Husband and wife team Deanna Comellini and Michele Preti have developed a fabric similar to Paola Lenti’s Aquatech, but much softer to the touch, for their range of outdoor carpeting: O Sole Mio, which uses a bouclé technique in alternate low and high loops to achieve a corded effect. www.gtdesign.it

designed to withstand climate changes in our gardens, round our pools and on our yachts. New ways of locking colour onto yarn has given rise to a wave of outdoor upholstery. Deck-chair style stripes still abound but there is a departure towards leafy and floral prints and interesting weaves. Fabrics developed to stand up to sea, sun and salt can look and feel surprisingly natural. Most polymer-based fabrics will keep their strength and colour for several years; Sunbrella® and Bella-Dura™ are guaranteed for five. “But everything will fade eventually, says Peter Rosborough of the ” Modern Garden Company. “To prolong its life you need to keep it clean, mildew grows on dirt, and don’t leave water on it. ” Classic upholstery is being replaced by furniture with its covering woven directly onto the frame, using hard-wearing weather-

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PAOLA LENTI
polypropylene cord that is anti-bacterial, mould-resistant and with vibrant colours that stand up well to the detrimental effects of sun, chlorine and salt. A more recent development has been Aquatech, a polyamide fibre with a more natural, raffia-like appearance. www.paolalenti.com www.moderngarden.co.uk

Former graphic designer Paola Lenti was one of the first to challenge the classic idea of outdoor furniture. Instead of furniture with fabric cushions, she set out to produce furniture made of fabric. She worked with a company producing tubing and cord for surgical applications to produce cord to weave directly into furniture or rugs. The result is Rope, a

saloni, GT Design were showing their silky viscose rugs in muted shades including a delicious antique rose. Prolific Portuguese carpet designers O.A.T. had a few splashes of colourful design as well as their Leaves and Flowers rugs. Danskina, whose designer Ulf Moritz always enjoys experimenting with new materials, showed Papyra – a new paper-and-wool shag-pile carpet – the first use of paper I have seen in textiles other than flatwoven. A number of top designers including the ubiquitous Mr Wanders, Ron Arad and Patricia Urquiola had designed new furniture for Moroso. Urquiola’s Sardegna Rugs, with blown up motifs from traditional Sardinian weaving provide a welcome excursion into the decorative.

In the Salone Sattelite, home to smaller stands of emerging designers, Christel Månsson proposed wool bubbles, padded bubble-like elements of sound-absorbing wool to attach to the wall, while Myminigolf presented the perfect set of accessories for any large rug: a mini golf set of plastic handicaps to scatter around the room complete with club and balls. Back in town the happening Zona Tortona warehouse area was temporary home to non-Italian designers and collectives including Marcel Wanders’s latest collection for Moooi with his digitally printed nylon carpets and the specially designed pavilion Paola Lenti has furnished with new carpets and furniture designs in her hi-tech

resistant materials. The same materials are also being used to produce carpets, a final touch for the great outdoor indoors.

▲ ELITIS
Innovative French fabric house Elitis has launched a chic range of outdoor fabrics in water and bleach-resistant Dralon® that has undergone calendering – a process of pressing that gives material a glazed look. The collection includes: Urban Voile, a light-weight black, white netting; Macassar, an ethnic design dual-colour jacquard for seats and mattress covers and Possession, a raffia-style, dual-colour jacquard with a large cashmere design (above). www.elitis.fr

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ANNEMETTE BECK
panel by ceramicist Sotis, ideal for an outdoor installation. Beck uses stainless steel to make Silver room dividers finished off with electrical wires. She is also fond of weaving rubber recycled bicycle tubes and even creating rubber shag pile – perfect for an urban roof garden. www.annemette-beck.dk www.sotis.co.uk

Much of talented Danish weaver Annemette Beck’s work is with metal threads to form extraordinary outdoor panels, screens and decorative elements. “At the moment I am doing a lot of experiments with various metal threads for outdoor use, she says. Stainless steel ” and brass threads are used to make ‘curls’, a kind of loopy weave of stainless steel and brass wire – as used in [this] wall

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72 Editorial The strength of innovation at Milan and beyond News & Events News: Rubber fur from Eelko Moorer, Arzu Firuz rugs, Timorous Beasties meets Brintons Exhibitions: Neo Classicism to Pop textiles at Francesca Galloway, Conceptual carpets at Milan’s Morris e Co, The V&A’s slave trade view Books: Techno Texiles 2: Revolutionary Fabrics for Fashion and Design Fairs: India’s Carpet Expo, Salone del Mobile Insight Bereket’s Celaleddin Vardarsuyu on the art of breathing life into discarded textiles Swedish carpet designer Anita Graffman In Situ Textural Therapy? Interior design in healthcare Features Minimalism’s antidote: the Campana Brothers What became of Edinburgh Weavers? New textile designs commissioned by London law firm Allen & Overy Best Design 2007 as seen in The International , Design Yearbook and the Salone del Mobile Heartfelt designs: the current felt renaissance Art Production Fund: high art for the masses Product Selector This season’s run-away runners Retail Report Stock in trade: Design Within Reach Richard Morant’s one-of-a-kind designs Trends in outdoor furniture fabrics Last Page A life in stitch by Laura McCafferty

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I learnt everything I know about design with my hands, I also learnt by watching, by observing. This still hasn’t changed

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Humberto Campana

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