On a mission to design furniture for real, modern living with Flou

How to update a furniture design that came to life when Boom! Shake the Room was in the charts? Or more to the point, why update it? The piece of furniture in question is the 30-year-old bed Tadao by Vico Magistretti, a designer whose elegant modernist style has not shaken any rooms, but quietly and consistently given us timeless essential pieces over the years. But the Italian brand Flou, who are the guardians of the design, nevertheless wished to mark the bed’s anniversary, and have created a version in Iroko wood.

Iroko is a material typically associated with outdoor design, but which can bring its hardy characteristics indoors without compromising any aesthetics. The update is small, but it underscores new priorities in the way we live today; the very contemporary story of indoor-outdoor material exchange, and our push towards warm, natural, enduring materials for our interiors; our search for comfort and tactility.

Tadao’s pared-back design in fact persisted in popularity because Magistretti knew how to design to last; ‘My way of designing is linear but arduous because it goes beyond appearances and focuses on simplicity: a continuous taking off and putting on until balance is achieved as an expression of maximum fulfilment,’ he once said. But Flou are masters in the art of gentle evolution. They want their furniture to truly reflect the way we live today – whether it means homogenising the materials of our indoor and outdoor lives, scaling furniture to fit today’s more compact living spaces, or embedding technology and multifunction beautifully, uncompromisingly, into its pieces.

Tadao’s material update brings it in line with other Flou designs, such as the Pierre collection which seeks to blur the boundaries of what is an indoor and what is an outdoor product. The Pierre seating collection was conceived for use indoors by Studio Contromano in 2021 and this year has been given new clothing – namely hi-tech fabrics Fabian and Miguel that are hardy enough to allow the pieces to live under open skies, but also soft and tactile enough to bring comfortable, cosy durability inside. The poufs have also now been supersized to give them the organic, voluminous appeal of a boulder – one that has possibly rolled inside. The textures of the fabric even echo the patterns and irregularities of nature.

It’s not the only evolution Flou is currently pursuing. Answering the contemporary call for furniture that is cosy and inviting but will fit a bijou apartment, or a nook in a boutique hotel – is Madame Butterfly.

Designed by the Touch Studio, this series of armchairs and sofas mimics, in a contained and gently rounded sort of way, the wings of a butterfly, exuding volume and enveloping comfort but not taking up an extravagant amount of room. ‘We respond to the request to furnish smaller spaces without abandoning the search for beauty, quality and comfort,’ affirms the brand’s president, Massimiliano Messina.

Connected is Flou’s ambition to declutter space by combining functionalities, exemplified in the now iconic CCLight bookcase designed by Carlo Colombo for Flou’s sister brand Natevo. Taking the shape of a bookcase crossed with an ambient lighting piece, it eschews the need for separate light sources. ‘These are modular bookcases that incorporate LEDs in the uprights and are able to perfectly illuminate a room without other chandeliers or lamps,’ says Messina. ‘They effectively combine technology and design for a flexible and contemporary interior design concept.’ It’s another enduring design, which happily combines with new pieces in Flou’s current catalogue to dress real houses for real life.

It’s not unusual to hear the need for more furniture being challenged, but here’s the thing: the way we live evolves. Design is meant to serve our life needs – beautifully and efficiently – so needs to shift with us. Tadao has taken a tweak to bring it extra relevance for today; Pierre has embraced new fabric technology to give it locational flexibility and longevity; and CCLight is serving our increasing need for multifunction. Sometimes, however, new ways of living simply require a new chair. Enter Madame Butterfly, stage right.

© Architonic

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