Creating icons together: Mara’s collaborative furniture design synergy

‘You are the company you keep’ goes the old expression. Meaning those who you choose to associate with say a lot about your own character.

Measured against this adage, Brescia-based company Mara’s stock would appear to be up. The Made-in-Italy brand, which has long specialised in producing systems and furnishing elements that feature strong technical components, is enjoying a renewed identity, as it pivots from a dyed-in-the-wool office manufacturer to one that responds to both work and residential. And the external design collaborators it has engaged of late speak volumes about the level of its ambition. ADML CIRCLE and Michele De Lucchi, Christophe Pillet, Ferruccio Laviani and Marcello Ziliani each bring with them an indisputable wealth of design expertise and award-winning output.

‘All the time in design, we want to create something new, something spectacular, something that’s shocking, but in a positive way.’ So said Italian A&D grandee Michele De Lucchi in conversation with Architonic recently to mark the launch of AMDL CIRCLE’s Typo chair for Mara. The design, which sees De Lucchi and his colleagues turn a controlled mishap into a virtue, has a steel-profile back bent in such an innovative way as to create a series of deep creases.

The result is the optical impression of something soft and fleshy that belies its actual super-robustness. ‘Folds in design are usually not something you want,’ says De Lucchi. ‘But this is an example of what we always try to tell design students. To be awake to what’s passing in front of you. You just need to grasp the best ideas. There are always ideas passing by. You need to grab them at that very moment.’

Visitors to the Orgatec 2024, which takes place from 22 to 25 October in Cologne, will be able to get to grips with Typo, as well as with Christophe Pillet’s Foil table collection, Ferruccio Laviani’s Elle bookcase system, and a brace of additions to the Icon chair family authored by Marcello Ziliani. Pillet describes Foil, which eschews any visible complexity or overwroughtness in favour of the ultra-rational, as ‘a line, a sign imprinted in the air’. Indeed, the all-metal structure reads simply as a horizontal surface with four thin legs.

There are two variants. One with a fixed top, the other with mechanisms that allow the top to slide open, revealing storage space underneath. Drawers are also an option, but are hidden within the table’s standard frame. ‘In Mara,’ explains Pillet, ‘I found a very modern idea of how to use the technology. It is there, but it is carefully hidden. The mechanics disappear and the product is perfectly functional.’

You could describe Ferruccio Laviani as the local talent. The fêted architect and designer, who, over the years, has steered a number of Italy’s premium design brands in his role as creative director, hails from Cremona – ‘down the road’, as it were, from Mara in Brescia. While the manufacturer values his ‘Brescian soul’, Laviani was taken with the company’s ‘desire to invest in new designers, without fear of taking risks, to propose something new and challenging for them on the market.’

The fruit of their first collaboration is a transversal, modular bookcase system called Elle. Its basic structural element is an L-shaped, bent-metal profile, which, depending on its configuration and combination, can create open shelving, closed storage space, or division. ‘A passe-partout for contemporary furniture’ is how Laviani puts it.

And completing the quartet of collections is Icon, which, launched last year, has already picked up a number of design gongs, and where Marcello Ziliani has delivered two new seating models. The Brescia-based architect and designer sees this as a ‘vertical extension’ rather than a cosmetic expansion. ‘We’ve not simply changed the bases or the colours, but have conceived real seating options that take up the design of the collection, adapting it to new functions.’

Ziliani has deployed polypropylene to create chair shells that marry sturdiness with a comfort-affording elasticity. This considered material choice, together with the addition of removable, washable seat cushions, means that the new Icon – be it standard height or high-back version – is now not only suitable for office and contract environments, but also for outdoor settings.

If you’re the company you keep, then make sure you go a bit Brescia in Cologne!

Hall 6.1 Stand D050
22.–25.10.2024, Cologne, Germany

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