Curtain up: MIDJ

There was a time when commercial furniture needed to make a choice between function and form. Strong and hardwearing or welcoming and comfortable. When new materials and production techniques made it possible to combine the two, however, contemporary contract spaces such as restaurants, hotels and even offices became more like homes, putting relaxation and comfort high on their design agenda.

Proud-to-be-Italian furniture manufacturer Midj has been producing chairs and tables for joyful private and commercial spaces for over 30 years, placing both strength and comfort as central cores of the design values. Recently completed projects include providing chairs and tables for restaurants and bars like the San Giorgio Café in Venice and L’Arbre Tower in Montpellier; hotels and hospitality spaces like Hotel Indigo in Manchester and office refurbishments like the restoration of Future Age’s Brescia workplace.

Creating happy and comfortable environments, however, requires more than just tables and chairs. Modern commercial spaces use a wide range of, often non-functional, furniture, making them feel more like a friend’s relaxing living room. In Midj’s recent project at the San Giorgio Café, for example, designer Ilaria D’Uva and architectural practice Studio Paolo Richelli selected Midj’s Nenè chairs and Smart tables, but along with the dining furniture, they lined the room with almost purely decorative shelving, serving little functional purpose but to give the scene a comforting, home-like atmosphere.

Even when the brief calls for minimalism, however, such as at the iconic L’Arbre Tower’s bar and restaurant, without complementary lighting and decoration, the flavourless rooms would have made the 17-storey tower seem like a car park. Instead, Midj’s Apelle hide chairs and counter stools provide contrasting bursts of character alongside clinically sleek white window and table dressings, lighting and artwork.

Encouraging this desire to create more comfortable and holistic scenes, Midj has created a new range of lighting and other accessories in line with its core values of joy-sparking furniture, including four new lighting collections.

Charlotte’s suspension and floor iterations feature numerous adjustable eye-lid shades, giving the lighting a friendly sentience; the shade of Ghost is split into a top, frosted and light-giving, half with its inner workings peeking out from under a light-line like a gentle spectre; the Suspense collection’s table version is an animated caricature with its oversized head and trailing tail, while its suspended partner, the amusingly alliterative and fittingly named Suspense suspension, is a Newton’s cradle of lights; and the Japan series is specifically named after traditional Samurai headwear and hairstyles.

These four new light collections shine brightly within Midj’s new lighting and accessories range, but the same fire burns in a range of other categories as well. The award-winning Pippi family welcomes a coat stand to its chair range, for example. Too often overlooked in commercial interiors, coat stands provide a welcoming presence at a venue’s entrance. An immobile maître d’, filling patrons with calm and trust in their new surroundings. Speaking the same design language as the rest of the family, the Pippi coat stand complements its brothers and sisters while playing well with others in a range of material and colour outfits.

With further reflection, Spots is a collection of mirrors in three different shapes and sizes. Their asymmetrical form and innovative mounting system allow users to hang the mirrors at any angle and create a decorative collage of reflection, like large-scale raindrops on a window. Meanwhile, used either to decoratively line walls like the Spots, or to transform large, ill-defined spaces into smaller, more purposeful ones as a room divider, the Siena bookcase takes after its historic Tuscan city namesake. Similar to the 13th-century architectural attraction, the Siena bookcase presents its treasured objects to many visitors and admirers. With its lightweight materials and a tubular construction, the Sunrise divider performs similar but less permanent segregation. Its serpentine macro form provides aesthetics at both long and close range, creating an additional light feature when so positioned.

The Midj accessories collections, as with other product lines, are fully customisable in various colours, materials and finishes, all highlighting the brand’s distinctive Italian quality and craftsmanship.

Both private and contract designers can put end-users at ease in happy and joyful environments that complement any project, creating hospitable home spaces and hospitality spaces that feel like home.

* L’Arbre Blanc Project & Design: Pauline Percheron Architecte, Photography: Mary Gaudin

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