B&B Italia's new collections evoke nostalgia and nature

B&B Italia has long embraced iconic furniture with curves – think Mario Bellini, Gaetano Pesce, and Zaha Hadid. There’s something special about the boldness, and unapologetic presence of a piece of furniture with curves. A curve owns space with confidence – it can steal the show, evoke an era or inject personality into space. Yet this confidence doesn’t necessarily mean impracticality, in fact, the curve can lend itself just as easily to modularity, flexibility and versatility.

This season, B&B Italia creates further ripples with ingeniously curved contemporary design pieces. The Allure O' tables and Flair O' armchair designed by Monica Armani present a nostalgic 60s slant on the curve, while the Noonu sofa system by Antonio Citterio is an organic form based upon the formation of islands in the sea. These designs continue to show that in fact, the curve has many angles. Certainly not binary, a curve has the ability to communicate, and even represent or capture a moment in time.

That could certainly be said about the iconic sunglasses of sixties icon Jackie Onassis Kennedy – a lens shape that Monica Armani was inspired by to design the Allure O' tables and Flair O' armchair for B&B Italia. Audacious and oversized, these sunglasses brought glamour to any look, and the same can be said for Armani’s designs in space: ‘For Allure O', a new family of tables, and Flair O', a small armchair, I designed light, precise, harmonious and lasting volumes that register in a person’s memory and evoke the fantastic glamour of the 1960s,’ says Armani, who also designed the elliptical Madison mirror for B&B Italia in 2017.

B&B Italia describes the Allure O' as a ‘graceful force’; a soft power in a space. It balances straight and sinuous lines with restraint; the tabletop with curved corners and bevelled edges, in square or rectangular shapes, is supported by a sturdy truncated pyramid base. It playfully opens up a dialogue with the Flair O' small armchair, also supported by a truncated pyramid, gently widening as it nears the floor. As a dining chair with a padded seat, a swivel base and an automatic return mechanism, it provides stability and comfort while encouraging movement.

Antonio Citterio’s approach to the curve for the Noonu sofa system is inspired by the shape of an atoll in the Maldives. It is a 'domestic island' constructed of four basic elements; a square, rectangle, 'piano' and 'sail'. The sofa system is generous in size, yet communicates a voluminous lightness so that the seating appears to float. The ability of the curve here is to evoke relaxation to the eye through echoing nature. Yet even while organic, it proves that it can be flexible through modularity; with a flexible armrest or headrest element, moveable cushions, and a wide range of finishes and upholstery options.

The Noonu casts its own ripples across B&B Italia’s recent designs – the journey of this curve officially materialised in 2018 with B&B Atoll, yet it extends back further than that, to the Sity range of the mid-80s, when Citterio started referring to the sofas as 'peninsulas' and 'islands'. Today these organic shapes exemplify connections with nature, individualism and even maximalism.

To each design, B&B Italia brings a vast range of customisation, finishes and material choices. With the ability to evoke nostalgia, contemporary luxury or even nature and geography, while functioning powerfully for modern life and being versatile across both intimate and formal domestic scenarios, each curve has its own history and meaning today – allowing these design pieces to become signifiers and shape-shifters in physical space and across time.

Photos: Santi Caleca

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