MOROSO / Milan International Furniture Fair 2008, Milan Design Week 2008, Milan Furniture Fair 2008, Patrizia Moroso, Milan Furniture Show 2008, Patricia Urquiola, Ron Arad, Tokujin Yoshioka, Philippe Bestenheider, Nipa Doshi, Jonathan Levien, Edward Van Vliet, Enrico Franzolini, For Use, Tomek Rygalik, Martino Berghinz

MOROSO / MILAN INTERNATIONAL FURNITURE FAIR 2008

Moroso's consistently brilliant success is the fruit of a business philosophy which ignores the rules and deliberately bucks the trend. Always being "out of the box" allows Moroso to be pioneering and make bold statements in its pursuit of new functions and forms.

So trying to describe what Patrizia Moroso is presenting at this Milan Furniture Show is not easy because of the large number of products in many different categories and because of their very diverse materials, designs, inspirations. It's a long time since a Moroso collection was composed only of sofas. Today, the firm produces a comprehensive range of upholstered furnishings which define what Patrizia Moroso has succeeded in conveying as "united diversities". The best example of these concepts is Patricia Urquiola 's design style; her Bohemian collection perfectly interprets Moroso's spirit. Bohemian links the past to the present, function to material, detail to design, craftsmanship to industrial production, in the form of innovative objects. These concepts are in Patricia Urquiola 's genes. She shares Moroso's design vision and her alliance with the firm has resulted in some of her best creations. In the Bohemian collection, Patricia turns her hand to the classics - classic shapes and manufacturing techniques - and reinterprets them with originality, introducing a modern, revolutionary new twist. Bohemian is not a simple ready-made, but a full-blown experiment. Capitonné work has been reinvented, brought up to date, applied with press-studs and used for new, almost liquid shapes which blend into the main frame. The upholstery is totally unique - there are layers of leathers, traditional and technical fabrics, Brasilian rugs, etc. Bohemian is a kind of luxury patchwork which imbues the product with a sophisticated, global-nomad, contemporary spirit.
In her Bohemian collection - sofa, bergère, chaise longue, armchair and pouffe - Patricia Urquiola skilfully mixes sophisticated technologies with the quality and refinement of craftwork, pushing its potential towards new horizons.

And this all comes naturally to Moroso, unostentatiously, leaving the designs to speak for themselves about their meaning, which is embodied in a meticulous study of details, in manufacturing techniques, in technologies. With Bohemian , Moroso showed it knew how to make an excellent industrial and craft collection, while for Ron Arad 's Do Lo Res sofa it concentrated on upholstered-furniture manufacturing know-how. Do Lo Res is certainly not a classic upholstered sofa; its shape comes from the digital world and its complex construction is a blend of modularity, different-density foams, backrests of different heights and lots of small units of various sizes fixed to a platform to form a futuristic cityscape with an irregular skyline.

Tokujin Yoshioka 's Bouquet chair is the fruit of highly refined haute couture tailoring skills together with the ability of knowing how to produce such a complex product on an industrial basis. The Bouquet chair is in fact an exploration of the perfection of detail.
Tokujin Yoshioka studies and plans each seam. He also studies the effects external elements like light reflections, colour, sensations and chromatic matching will have on the chair's surfaces.

The designer sought to create a chair of petals that would allow a person to "sink into" them when sitting down but return to their original shape when the person stands up again. Moroso rose to this construction lenge and created a chair that unites the beauty and poetry of Japanese culture with Moroso's manufacturing know-how. Through a contrast of forms and materials we come to Nanook by Philippe Bestenheider , another young, up-and-coming designer on the Moroso team. He studies the geometry of Nature filtered through technology to achieve truly groundbreaking effects in terms of form and manufacturing. Bestenheider presents a resin chair with technical-fabric upholstery, using colour to highlight its geometries, plus a stackable low steel table.

Moroso's partnership with Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien continues with the My Beautiful Backside sofas and the Princess daybed, adding new elements to the Charpoy collection presented last year. The two designers' products are a perfect example of how craftwork and industrial production can coexist. Exquisite Indian textiles hand-sewn with luxury materials are combined with technical fabrics set on industrially-made frames. These objects express globalisation as an enrichment in design. They also express the breadth of vision typical of Moroso, which seeks design enrichment by rendering ideas internationally relevant and launching new trends.

Moroso also chooses Dutch designer Edward Van Vliet, luxury-interior decorator, for high-prestige furnishings which display a meticulous study of upholstery. This partnership has produced a comprehensive collection of a sofa, chaise longue, pouf, armchair, lamps and rugs. Textiles have a nomadic air, they are handmade in Morocco and Thailand. Van Vliet and Moroso suggest a new way of interpreting interiors, making them exclusive through the use of exquisitely-worked fine brocades. This collection is ideal not only for domestic applications, it also covers the luxury-contract market segment for highly exclusive hotels, bars, clubs etc.

A collection for contract applications, with a functional design approach. This is the fruit of Moroso's work with Enrico Franzolini, who has designed the practical yet highly elegant Stainless collection of a sofa, armchair, lounge chair, chair and stool. These have a light, discreet frame with comfortable seats available in different versions and endless solutions.

New ideas for chairs made of various materials are always a feature of Moroso's production and so For Use present X Chairs and Y Chairs with metal or wooden frames and a special focus on comfort and ergonomics. Tomek Rygalik proposes Tennis Chair and Net Chair; the former is made of foam, the latter of a metal mesh.

Further enriching Moroso's all-embracing range of furnishings, there's a new bookcase collection, Hal, designed by the Kairos team. Perfectly in sync with Moroso's vision, Hal defies the laws of gravity and Cartesian rules. This complex composition features slanting spacers which give strength and create a strong visual effect, making the bookcase extremely recognisable and customisable.
This abundance of new ideas and products is presented at the Moroso stand designed by Patricia Urquiola and Martino Berghinz.

Further info about older products are available in MIFF 2005, MIFF 2006 and MIFF 2007