ALESSANDRO MENDINI
Architect, writer, and painter born in Milan in 1931, Mendini is a much discussed and followed leading character in his field. He confronts projects with an interest that ranges from radical Utopian to commonplace design. A leading light of current postmodern and contemporary, his design is not aggressive, but of soft architectural shapes, almost feminine. He loves a project that favors emotion. "I am interested in the house as of kind place, where more emotion and introversion come out, with objects that stimulate slowness, ritual, and mythology. The world is violent, the house has to be protective". He uses provocative slogans such as: "sentimental robot", "hermaphrodite architecture", "universal cosmetology", "informed craftsmanship", "pictorial design".
Under the conception of Mendini, furniture is architecture, each piece a unique object of art, a theoretical plan. He has rediscovered the expressive value of decoration and has made that the foundation for the development of his pictorial designs. Fabrics, tapestries, and rugs participate in his design. "Art or design is not the message, but the means by which to reawaken the conscience". This position is closer to art than to design.
He has been editor of the magazines Casabella, Modo, and Domus, opening them to the artistic neo-avante garde. He has published books such as: Paesaggio Casalingo (Domestic Landscape), Addio Architettura (Farewell Architecture), and Progetto Infelice (Unsuccessful Plan). In 1979 he founded Studio Alchimia, a cultural movement which bursts with a reassuring standard of design. Of this movement, monographs in various languages exist.
The fruits of his truly "volcanic activity", are shown in various museums and international collections. There are works by him in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and other museums. Among his architectural projects are: the Teatro di Arezzo (1989), the civic tower at Gibellina in Sicily, a tower in Hiroshima Tower, and the Groningen Museum in Holland. Alessandro, along with his brother Francesco Mendini, founded the Atelier Mendini in Milan in 1989, from which he currently works.
ALLEGREA ROSENBERG
Born in Wisconsin, Allegrea Rosenberg works as a decorative painter, muralist, tattoo artist, and interior designer. Her work is an eclectic mix of acrylic paint, watercolor, varnishes, alcohol, crushed rocks and other found and recycled objects. She paints on a wide variety of surfaces such as furniture, walls, canvas, tile, wood, plaster, metal and any other animal-friendly objects. As an animal rights activist she only uses synthetic brushes, cotton cloth, paper, wood and cardboard.
Rosenberg’s specialty is fabricated into wonderful handmade pieces of human forms made from plaster that she paints on and decorates with exotic found materials, such as vintage fabric, antique beads and crystals, feathers, and embellishments.
AMIR AZIZ
Amir was born in Iran and raised in Canada. He continues to live and work in Vancouver. Amir Aziz works mainly as a digital artist, although his poetic tendencies lead him to explore with other mediums. Aziz plays with the perceptual limits of media, navigating between visual art and music.
Specializing in custom visual art for interiors, his work is mostly comprised of acrylic paint on wood, and Plexiglas compositions. He also works on commission, allowing his clients to connect and interact with his pieces, making the final product as much theirs as it is his.
Amir explores the boundaries of the art “industry.” He is “interested in the place where sound and light intertwine.” He is influenced by break-beats, dub music, high-tech painting, and Persian poetry, as he says, “my sense of aesthetic was not groomed in the halls of academia,” but rather out of heartfelt passion and deep-rooted impulse.
Aziz’s creations invoke a movement of the future. He describes himself as “standing on the edge of a very dark tunnel,” in which there is no darkness, only ever-widening rings of light trailing off into the future.
ARIK LEVY
Born in Tel-Aviv, Israel in 1963, Arik Levy has quickly risen in his field to become one of the most interesting and varied industrial designers producing in the 21st century.
In 1991 at the age of 28 he graduated with distinction in industrial design from the Art Center Europe in Switzerland and moved to Paris where he designed sets for production. The launch of his professional career as a designer came after winning the Seiko Epson Inc. competition. The exposure that the competition gave him allowed him to introduce his ideas and innovative concepts for installations to contemporary dance and opera set designs around the world.
In 1997 Arik formed the Paris based company L DESIGN with partner Pippo Lionni. Arik is constantly developing projects in industrial, interior and graphic design, lighting, and corporate identity and packing. Through innovation, simplicity and experimentation, Levy translates concepts into products, space and experience.
Arik participates in many exhibitions and shows in museums and galleries worldwide. Some of his work can be found in the permanent collections of such museums as the
Museum of Modern Art, New York and the JerusalemMuseum.
ARNO ELIAS
Arno Elias is a multi-talented French artist who has painted since childhood. Born and raised in Paris, he was inspired by the teachings of his grandmother who studied at the Beaux-Art in Paris, and was a guide for young Arno. His artistic sophistication, sense of color, and dramatic expression can be seen in his diverse scope of creation.
Arno transforms selected images with themes of intellect, complexity, music, and wisdom by juxtaposing print media with Plexiglas, minerals, and layers of acrylic paint. He creates a cohesive dynamic representation of energy. His exciting mixed media collage paintings feature powerful icons and images, ranging from the contemplative Buddha, to musicians, philosophers, mathematicians, writers, and beautiful women. His range flows from the profound to the aesthetic. His visuals echo the energetic world rhythms heard in his music. Elias has developed a personal and symbolic graffiti language, reminiscent of Sanskrit, Asian characters, and mathematical codes, which he includes in every piece he creates.
Elias’ new limited edition Lightbox print series is an eclectic combination of digital video imagery and photographic collage. His collection portrays a mixture of powerful icons and images with life's contrast of wildlife and antique elements in a metropolitan universe. Music composer and visual artist Arno Elias captures an array of moments in time. His images vibrate with energy. One can see the juxtaposition of moving light and static light. The rapid movement of a video comes to a standstill, and is superimposed with symbolic images. Looking at the lightboxes one can feel how “time flies,” and decades collide resulting in a union of historical places and faces.
Arno is also an accomplished musician, known for his compositions for globally renowned Buddha Bar. Through his involvement with UNICEF, he also composed the music for their worldwide campaign with Latin recording artist Shakira. He also created a painting for the United Nations in New York, which is on display at their headquarters.
Arno Elias continues to travel the world to find new motivation and challenges in order to keep creating inspiring images.
Arno is a true pioneer in the artistic community and will be exhibiting in major cities around the world within the coming year.
BOCA DO LOBO
Boca do Lobo produces high decoration furniture complements. They strive to create a design that reflects an urban and simultaneously classical lifestyle. In order to achieve the desired cosmopolitan yet lavish environment BL uses the highest quality materials and textures in their designs.
BL is dedicated to exploring the collective artistry of Portugal, focusing on the knowledge and tradition of working a noble material such as wood. Each distinctive piece reflects BL’s dedication to design, with a luxurious and sophisticated character. All their pieces are hand-made in Portugal, by the best artisans, with precise attention to detail according to traditional methods.
Boca do Lobo’s personality is built on an apparent contradiction: the merging of the artisans’ capacity and technical vision of the designers’ creative passion. Inspired by the best classical canons, yet conceived for the contemporary lifestyle, all of BL’s handmade pieces are combined with culture, tradition, and artisans’ manual ability with highly advanced technology.
A vow to excellence, comfort, and distinction sets BL apart from other design houses. Their goal is to cater to the customer’s wishes, be part of their daily routine and contribute to their luxurious lifestyle. For that reason the collection consists only of high prestige pieces. The dynamic innovative process that characterizes BL is both technological and in design and requires constant brand reinvention and reinterpretation. Yet, there are unchangeable aspects in their philosophy: the final product’s high quality is always a priority.
Boca do Lobo’s collective mission is to understand the past, reinterpret it through technology and contemporary design, and execute it with the delicacy of traditional artistry.
DOUGLAS HOMER
Blink encourages interactivity by engaging the onlooker. As you walk around the piece, the lenticular graphics change and play with your mind.
The BronxProject blends the old and the new to create stylistically fresh, but also conceptually provocative furniture. In the series, the surfaces of vintage highboys are "burned" with graffitti. This pairing of conflicting cultural and stylistic languages helps to resuscitate both the object and the image, giving them new life. While the object becomes a new architectural support on which the tag can exist, the painted word breathes new life into the used furniture.
Revitalization, transformation, and innovation are the driving forces behind these compelling artworks.
Not only does the art of this credenza provide storage, but also the beauty of mounted colors and patterns that bring out character and taste in one single space.
Authentic vintage furniture pieces by Harry Bertoia, revitalized and remastered by Douglas Homer. Comfortable, versatile and fun. This surprisingly cushy bench is a great piece to mix-up your collection with.
ENZO MARI
One of the most thoughtful and intellectually provocative Italian designers of the late 20th century, ENZO MARI (1932-) has proved as influential to younger generations of designers as to his peers as a writer, teacher, artist and designer of products, furniture and puzzle games.
There is a possibly apocryphal story that Enzo Mari once devoted over a year to thinking about – and experimenting with – the design of a single ashtray. He worked on other projects at the same time, but the ashtray was always at the forefront of his mind. When finished, it was praised by Mari’s peers as exceptionally elegant and dramatically different from existing ashtrays. Unfortunately it proved too different for the public’s taste. The ashtray flopped and its only enduring legacy was Mari’s “two-packs-a-day” cigarette habit.
Such conundrums have characterized Mari’s career. As a designer he is too esoteric to have attained the commercial success enjoyed by fellow late 20th century Italian designers such as Ettore Sottsass and the late Joe Colombo. Yet the depth and complexity of Mari’s work ensures that he is greatly admired by the design community and, in his seventies, is still sought out as a designer.
Born in Novara, Italy in 1932, he studied classics and literature at the Academia di Brera in Milan from 1952 to 1956. As a student, Mari supported himself by working as a visual artist and freelance researcher. In a period when Italian design was flourishing as enlightened industrialists collaborated closely with designers to rebuild their businesses, he also became interested in design and painstakingly taught himself about it.
Mari’s approach to design was predominantly theoretical. He was more concerned with its role in contemporary culture and relationship with the user than with becoming a design practitioner. After graduating in 1956 he opened a studio in Milan to continue his studies of the psychology of vision, systems of perception and design methodologies. These studies took physical form when Mari created three-dimensional models of linear elements and planes. Forced to earn a living, Mari made contact with the Italian plastic products manufacturer Danese and agreed to develop a series of mass-manufactured products.
His first project for Danese was 16 Animali, or 16 Animals, launched in 1957. It was a wooden puzzle to which Mari applied his theories of problem-solving to create a group of simply carved animal shapes – including a hippo, snake, giraffe and camel – that join together to form a rectangle. The puzzle marked the start of a long collaboration between Mari and Danese, which continued at the turn of the 1960s with the development of containers and vases. Mari was determined to develop these products for mass production without compromising his belief that the outcome of each design project should be beautiful to look at and feel, while performing its function efficiently. Describing his philosophy as one of “rational design”, he defined his work as being “elaborated or constructed in a way that corresponds entirely to the purpose or function”.
Mari continued his experimental work in other areas of the visual arts notably by founding the Nuova Tendenza group of artists in
Milan in 1963. Yet he was equally productive as a designer. In 1962, he began to work with Danese’s signature material – plastic – in a six year-long project to develop a hat stand, umbrella stand and waste bin. By the end of the 1960s, Mari could manipulate plastic so skilfully that, in his hands, it attained a sculptural fluidity. One of his most accomplished plastic products was Vase Model 3087 which Danese put into production in 1969. It was a reversible vase with a central cone to ensure that it functioned equally efficiently as a vase whether standing on its top or bottom. Made from glossy ABS plastic, Model 3087 had such a sensual shape that, to many design critics, it played a decisive role in persuading the public that plastic products need not necessarily be cheap and tacky.
Yet Mari’s interest in design remained predominantly a linguistic analysis of its role as a system of communication. Central to this was his continuing development of puzzles including Il Gioco dell Favole – The Fable Game – in which twelve pieces slotted together to depict forty-five animals, the sun and the moon. Mari saw this as a means with which people could engage their imagination to invent their own stories with the pieces. He designed the curvily abstract pieces in another puzzle – 44 Valuations – to interlock in to the form of a hammer and sickle, once the symbol of communism and the Soviet Union.
By the 1970s Mari expressed his principles in books: both theoretical, such as 1970’s La Funzione della Ricera Estetica, and visual in his series of pictorial “books without words” including The Apple and the Butterly and The Chicken and the Egg.
While continuing his work as a product designer, he also turned to furniture. In 1971, Mari unveiled the Sof Sof chair for Driade in which a single removable cushion upholstered a simple welded rod frame. Equally ingenious was the 1975-76 Box for Castelli, a self-assembly chair consisting of an injection-moulded polypropylene seat and collapsible tubular metal frame which came apart to fit into a box, just as his puzzles interlocked into a rectangle.
During the 1980s when Italian design was dominated by the flamboyant forms and kitsch colours of the Memphis group’s exuberant take on post-modernism, Mari and his thoughtful rationalism seemed dated. His designs of that decade, such as the perfectly plain Tonietta cast aluminium framed chair for Zanotta unveiled in 1985, looked like a carefully calculated antidote to Memphis. Yet the same rigour and restraint revived interest in Enzo Mari’s work during the 1990s, when once again he was acknowledged as an important influence on contemporary design.
By the early 2000s, as Mari entered his seventies, he won new commissions from Muji, the Japanese home store with a rationalist aesthetic remarkably empathetic to his own, and Gebrüder Thonet in
Vienna, which invited him to create a contemporary version of its famous late 19th century bentwood chairs. Meanwhile Danese, the company for which Enzo Mari had begun working less than a year after graduating from the Academia di Brera, produced a limited edition of the first fruit of their collaboration – his 16 Animali wooden puzzle.
FREEDOM OF CREATION
Freedom Of Creation (FOC), is where cutting edge technology meets design. FOC is the first design company to specialize in design for layer manufacturing, and develop projects for both the FOC brand label, and for manufacturers, research organizations and universities. FOC also provides design consultancy services to OEM manufacturers in a variety of sectors.
Since 2000, the extensive research conducted by FOC in Design for layer manufacturing has resulted in innovative and successful new commercial product designs, the development of new industrial materials and software products, and has been the foundation for significant R&D projects with a range of industrial partners. FOC began commercializing its own collections in 2006.
FOC was founded in 2000 in Helsinki, Finland, and is currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
GAETANO PESCE
Gaetano Pesce, an architect-artist-designer based in New York City, has undertaken diverse commissions in architecture, urban planning, interior and exhibition design, industrial design and publishing. In more than forty years of practice, Pesce has conceived public and private projects in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, from residences to gardens and corporate offices. Pesce's extensive body of work - recognized for its emotive and tactile qualities, unrestrained use of color, and insistence upon innovative building materials developed through new technologies - has been described by prominent architecture critic Herbert Muschamp as "the architectural equivalent of a brainstorm".
Born in La Spezia, Italy, in 1939, Gaetano Pesce was trained at the University of Venice Faculty of Architecture. He has lived in Padova, Venice, London, Helsinki, Paris and, since 1980, New York. Pesce has served as a visiting lecturer and professor at many prestigious institutions in America and abroad, including the Cooper Union in New York. During 28 years, he has been a faculty member at the Institut d'Architecture et d'Etudes Urbaines in Strasbourg, France. Pesce has also worked in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Japan, the United States, and Brazil, which has influenced the internationalism of his approach.
His multidisciplinary work, that encompasses art making and performance, has been the subject of numerous publications and exhibitions and is currently displayed in the permanent collections of museums in France, Finland, Italy, Portugal, England and the United States. In 1996, he was honored with both a comprehensive career retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and publication of the Cataloque Gaetano Pesce: Le temps des questions. In 1993, Gaetano Pesce was the recipient of the influential Chrysler Award for Innovation and Design.
A distinctly figurative aspect and a hand-crafted quality characterize Pesce's most well-known commissions. Among these are proposed projects for Les Halles (1979) and the converted Lingotto Fiat Factory in Turin (1983); the Children's House for the Parc de la Villette in Paris (1985); the Hubin's Apartment in Paris (1986); the OrganicBuilding in Osaka (1989-1993); the Gallery Mourmans in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium (1994); and the Shuman residence in New York (1994).
Pesce's Manhattan office for the advertising agency TWBA/Chiat Day, completed in 1995, was hailed by the New York Times as "a remarkable work of art… that bears no resemblance to the sleek, hard-edged esthetic we have come to associate with the modern world". In this project, as in all Pesce initiatives, the architect expressed his guiding principle: that modernism is less a style than a method for interpreting the present and prescribing a future in which individuality is preserved and celebrated.
More generally, Pesce's work is characterized by the "diversified series", the double functionality of objects and architecture, the creative use of colors, the political dimension of his projects, the theory and practice of the "poorly made", the provocation, the use and improvement of synthetic materials, the theory of "femininity" in the architectural projects and, lastly, the culture of objects.
On the subject of his work, Pesce recently said: "For the past 30 years, I have been trying to give architecture back its capacity to be "useful", by quoting recognizable, figurative images commonly associated with street life and popular culture, and by generating new typologies. I strive to seek new materials that fit into the logic of construction, while performing services appropriate to real needs. Architecture of the recent past has mostly produced cold, anonymous, monolithic, antiseptic, standardized results that are uninspiring. I have tried to communicate feelings of surprise, discovery, optimism, stimulation, sensuality, generosity, joy and femininity."
Polyurethe, colored resin and synthetic wool, mixed with glue, are all materials favored by this Renaissance man. His ceaseless experimentation has its roots in a love of history. "When someone expresses himself in a certain time, he does so with the tools and materials being discovered then," he says. "Stone or wood are from another moment." As draftsman, painter, and sculptor, Pesce likewise works in varied materials, with many of his pieces owing a debt to Arte Povera. The stylized I Feltri wing chair in wool felt, the boldly colored polyester-resin Sansone I table, the biomorphic Nobody's Perfect bed in resin and steel. Weird and wonderful when introduced, they're now part of the contemporary cannon.
Compared to Pesce's prolific output of furnishings, his interiors and buildings are few. "It's harder to be innovative in architecture. People don't take risks," he points out. His innovative character and non-conventionalist spirit define Gaetano’s work, which has often given rise to uproar and controversy.
HZL BY HENZEL
HZL by Henzel is built upon a foundation of creativity and a desire to make rugs a key element of interior design. Today HZL work closely with the world’s leading architects and interior designers on special projects. Their rugs are handmade, in high quality and not in high volume. Nothing they do is mass produced.
The multi-disciplinary design studio HZL by Henzel are founded and rooted in Sweden with an international recognition in the private as well as the professional market. The company is built upon a foundation of creativity and a desire to make rugs a key element of interior design.
HZL use 100% wool imported from New Zealand, the best wool in the world for carpets. New Zealand wool provides the very best nature can offer. It is the whitest wool in the world which means it can be dyed to provide the widest range of colors from pure white and soft pastel to the most striking, rich colors. Its soft, springy fibers are naturally strong and uniform. The wool is durable and resistant to dirt and crushing.
HZL is dedicated to setting and pushing current trends. Their rugs have a striking appearance - frequently referred to as a piece of art.
KARIM RASHID
“I believe that we could be living in an entirely different world - one that is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places, worlds, spirits and experiences.”
Karim Rashid is a leading figure in the fields of product, interior, fashion, furniture, lighting design and art. Born in Cairo, half Egyptian, half English, and raised in Canada, Karim now practices in New York.
He is best known for bringing his democratic design sensibility to the masses. Designing for an impressive array of clients from Alessi to Dirt Devil, Umbra to Prada, Miyake to Method, Karim is radically changing the aesthetics of product design and the very nature of the consumer culture. He has had some 2500 objects put into production to date. His designs of the Morimoto restaurant in Philadelphia and the award-winning Semiramis Hotel in Athens have successfully expanded Karim's scope to include the realm of architecture and interior design.
Karim was honored with the title of 2007 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards Product Design Finalist, the 2006 Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design, the 2005 Honorary Doctorate from Corcoran College, the Sleep05 European Hotel Design Award, and the 2005 Pratt Legends Award. Karim has also won the prestigious I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review, Red Dot Design Award, and Chicago Athaneum Good Design Award numerous times throughout his career. His work is in the permanent collections of 14 Museums worldwide including MoMA and SFMoMA and he exhibits art in various galleries.
