Pedrali party: 60 years of iconic Italian furniture design

Monica Pedrali is all smiles when I arrive. And with good reason. 

The occasion is the eponymous Italian design manufacturer’s anniversary dinner, marking its 60 years at the forefront of industrially led, innovative furniture and lighting production. She immediately launches, with typical and infectious brio, into an exposition of the special nature of the location. 

You see, we’re dining al fresco in Bergamo’s Piazza Vecchia, with a specially commissioned green installation by Berlin office Topotek 1 centre-stage as part of the city's Landscape Festival in the stunning Renaissance square, and a Rachel Whiteread exhibition in the architectural grande dame that is the Palazzo della Ragione directly adjacent. As cultural hotspots go, this one is sizzling. 

Which is why it makes perfect sense for Pedrali to be precisely here. As well as consummate connectors of people (a Pedrali event is typically like a salon, where you come away with your phone full of new A&D contacts), they deftly manage to connect considered design and a deep understanding of materials as much as with culture as they do with commerce. True to the tradition of Italian design, there’s always poetry accompanying the prose. 

This particular rendez-vous, however, with an international cast of architects, designers, clients and press, as well as long-time friends, is more than just a knees-up – as pleasurable as that is. We’re here to mark the inauguration of the brand’s striking new Pedrali Pavilion at its HQ just outside the city, authored by AMDL CIRCLE and celebrated Italian architect-designer Michele De Lucchi.

Made entirely of wood that’s joined together without the use of glue, the barn-like structure displays a levity that belies its monumental scale. ‘Set on legs, it’s a building for the community that is open at the base,’ explains the 71-year-old grandee, De Lucchi, to the assembled guests. ‘Without community, there is no sustainability.’

You could also argue that without sustainability there’s no community to speak of. How are we going to live in the future if our world becomes too inhospitable? Pedrali, which has long invested in winning meaningful environmental certifications, is – as its 60th-anniversary logo would suggest – demonstrably committed to achieving a circularity not only in terms of business, but also one that allows various societal stakeholders to contribute to the debate.

Appropriately, the Pedrali Pavilion speaks to this ecological commitment, while serving as a home for talks and events on our common future, with a particular emphasis on giving the space over to schools. An agile big-top for big ideas, if you will. And a much-needed one, according to De Lucchi. ‘We’re living in an age of enormous transformation,’ he reminds us pointedly. 

Transformation, it’s fair to say, has been one of the constants at Pedrali over the decades, as visitors to the Pedrali Pavilion over the next while will be able to see for themselves in the form of a fascinating exhibition of the company’s evolution. Curated by Luca Molinari Studio – founded by the eponymous architecture commentator and academic – and organised chronologically, the show drives home the fact that Pedrali’s success lies to a large extent in its ability to reinvent. 

Yes, it’s a family-owned concern and that means passion in spades (three generations of the Pedrali family were present at the opening to signpost the longevity of the brand, including, of course, Mario, who founded the company back in 1963); but it’s also a company that manages to take traditional manufacturing know-how, as well as traditional furniture and lighting typologies, and apply to them the latest innovative production technologies and systems. (A tour round its factory is like a crash course in robotics and computer programming.) The result is long-life products that are as beautiful in their aesthetics as they are in their manufacture. 

Interspersed among the myriad of prototypes, materials, sales brochures, advertising and fair-stand designs on display at the anniversary exhibition titled ‘Pedrali60, we design a better future’, are a raft of family photographs, showing CEOs Monica and Giuseppe Pedrali as children, teenagers and, later, young adults in a host of settings and contexts. There is, of course, a prurient fascination that comes with peering into the personal realm of others. But there’s also a sense of optimism to be had here in seeing how we reinvent our very selves over time, adapting to the challenges that continually face us. In the words of De Lucchi, ‘We have to be ready for change at all times.’ 

© Architonic

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