Light relief: Tribeca from Pedrali

It’s not often you hear the words monastery and gynaecologist uttered in the same sentence. But, then again, I’m visiting CMP Design, the Como-based creative trio who, over the past few years, have acquired a reputation for designing furniture that’s at once fantastically considered and not short on irony and allusion. It’s rare that you encounter these guys without a smile on their faces. The location is their new studio in the city’s old town, a cluster of ground-floor rooms in an impressive 18th-century building that was once home to an order of monks, before, in recent years, playing host to the aforementioned medical practice.

‘We’re still moving in,’ says Michele Cazzaniga, gesturing towards an ad-hoc table made of cardboard that strikes a delicious contrast with the heavy, groin-vaulted stone ceiling. The new space gives the team more room and more natural light than their old atelier. And Como, unlike Milan, as Antonio Pagliarulo explains, ‘has a different dimension of time. Here we can think and reflect on what we’re doing. This is critical for us. Usually, the fastest way is the wrong way. We don’t want to produce garbage.’

Anyone who has seen the fruits of their ongoing partnership with premium Italian furniture brand Pedrali, known for their expertise in industrial production, could never accuse them of that. Both parties are in the business of creating products that, beyond a judicious choice of materials and the deployment of smart manufacturing processes, achieve the honour of being truly sustainable via their long-selling timelessness and eschewal of obsolescence.

Witness the latest Pedrali/CMP Design collaboration, Tribeca, a collection of super-graphic, contemporary outdoor furniture that – with its woven surfaces – nostalgically references the patio chairs and loungers that one so readily associates with colour-saturated, endless-summer images of Italy in the 1960s, both real and imaginary. Selected for the ADI Design Index 2019 (which means it’s in the running for that mother of all design awards, the prestigious Compasso d’Oro, in 2020), Tribeca reminds us how good design performs a neat dialogue between utilitarian function and something far less empirical – a kind of affective poetry. Certainly not easy to achieve.

Innovation comes in the form of a nylon core that runs through the extruded PVC ‘string’, which, in turn, is woven vertically around a powder-coated, 20mm-tubular-steel frame to create both seat element and backrest. The benefit? The comfort and freedom to move dynamically while sitting that the new chair, armchair, lounge-armchair, stool and two-seater sofa offer doesn’t come at the cost of robustness; the nylon ensures the seating surfaces return to their original taut shape after use. In short, no unpleasant sagging.

What’s more, the extruded PVC is flatter and more rational in profile, rather than circular, which delivers additional comfort and provides better purchase on the steel. ‘Tribeca is an evolution of our Nolita chair for Pedrali,’ explains Simone Mandelli, ‘which is also a reference to the 60s, but, while ergonomic, is made entirely of steel and, therefore, completely rigid. We wanted this time to work on something soft that changed its shape according to the user’s body and their position.’

It’s all going on inside, as Michele elaborates: ‘The nylon core slides through the PVC profile. It’s independent of it. This elastic response to the body means the chair adapts to the way you sit.’ It’s this kind of pioneering experimentation that puts fire in CMP Design’s bellies. The starting point of a project for them can be a new technology, a new process, a new material; whichever it is, they’re ultimately interested in making things better than they were before. Otherwise, as Michele puts it, ‘what’s the point?’

But we all know, if we’re being honest, that beauty is very much on the outside, too. Tribeca features a number of tone-on-tone colour options, specially created by the designers, who leveraged Pedrali’s expertise in colours for steel. Whatever its hue, the rhythm of the woven PVC performs an optically intriguing dance of presence and absence; the gaps between the weaving and the openness of the metal frames make for an optically light proposition – an idea that CMP Design’s clever, animated film to promote the new collection celebrates...

The location is Lake Como (where else?) and a white Tribeca chair is, in all its visual lightness, the hero. But its user is so utterly relaxed – with a book and long drink – that he’s gone one step further and become completely transparent. Think The Invisible Man meets Ocean’s Twelve. Who knows? Maybe it’s George Clooney. He’s regularly in these parts. When he’s not hanging out in the other Tribeca, that is.

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Photos: (2) Enigma Suites: George Sfakianakis; (4), (5) Caffè del Colleoni: Ottavio Tomasini; (6) Peck: Nathalie Krag, project by studio Vudafieri-Saverino Partners


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