September is always a hectic month, made up of reports and new beginnings and, especially this year, we could not be happier with what we have achieved and what awaits us in the near future.
Among the most important goals that we have reached with great satisfaction there is certainly the expansion of our showroom in Forte dei Marmi, the FORTE IN, with renewed spaces that are now increasingly devoted to sharing ideas and developing projects together with our customers, and the architects we collaborate with.
There are many dreams and objectives that we have linked to this place, and this summer we managed to achieve the first: to host the architect Piero Lissoni for a chat about Art Direction and its secrets.
The cherry on top? Having organized the event with 2 brands of absolute prestige such as Boffi and B&B Italia, which have accompanied our group from the beginning and contribute to making our spaces characterized by quality, luxury and Made in Italy elegance.
Becoming an art director: Boffi and 30 years of success
As Lissoni says one of the most fascinating aspects of the architect’s work is the ability to tell a story and express oneself with a method that oscillates between a scientific and a humanistic approach.
And this is how he too began to talk about himself thirty years ago when, just graduated and together with Boffi, he began to take the first steps in the career of Art Director.
What does this mean concretely? To choose the role in which the company proposes itself externally, to give it an innovative imprint and to reaffirm its position on the market.
In the specific case of Boffi, it means having changed the kitchen in its essence, passing from being an exclusively functional and service place to somewhere in which to delight oneself by transforming ingredients into food. Typically professional elements, such as large islands and technologies, are transferred to the home thanks to projects and designs that arise from the imagination and the study of everything that revolves around this world.
Art direction according to Piero Lissoni
The Art Director’s figure is extremely complex and multifaceted: it is a role that within it combines the soul of the engineer, the architect, the graphic designer, the photographer and which takes the form of a person who is part of a team, works with companies’ managers and owners, with technical departments and the creative offices, with those who think and with those who build.
Lissoni likes to describe his work by comparing it to a musical motif, a sequence that becomes harmonious only when it reaches a balance between notes and spaces. The showrooms and buildings, even temporary ones, represent the pauses, the silence between what was built before and what will come after.
There is the three-dimensionality of objects and spaces and there is also the two-dimensionality of the message: architecture is one of the interpretation’s codes of what we really are and it is not enough to simply make a good kitchen, to design an installation or to think about the way it will be seen, but to imagine how these can interfere with human quality life.
The process ends with advertising, the last part aimed at communicating everything that was there before, an all-round work placed within a mosaic.
A new way of communicating. The B&B Italia example.
A concrete example of the way of conceiving this type of communication is given by B&B Italia with which Piero Lissoni has had the opportunity to create VIEWS a new generation of magazines that replaces catalogs and allows him to work by granting himself a degree of incredible freedom, thanks also to the visionary attitude of the company.
Thus the Art Director imagines everything he touches each time with a different face, and from a serious, technical, and structured B&B Italia he moves on to the presentation of a showroom, on the occasion of the last Salone del Mobileemblem of maximum freedom: from the projection of an original film to the performance of the dancers, in conjunction with the presentation of a new collection of furniture.
Beyond the furniture: the artistic direction of Sanlorenzo
The architect Lissoni has an unrestrained passion for stairs which, by connecting different spaces, create a magical dialogue that takes us from a known environment to one yet to be explored.
And right around the staircase as the center of everything he built one of his latest challenges: the artistic direction of Sanlorenzo shipyards, one of our local industry’s emblems.
These floating architectures have been emptied from their cabins and, with an incredibly modernist approach, have revealed to the world the enormous spaces that compose them.
Thanks to the work of Piero Lissoni and Sanlorenzo, yachts have begun to represent the same type of culture, outline and furniture that enriches the homes of those who buy them.
A final thanks to the architect Lissoni, to Boffi, B&B Italia, and to the many guests who attended our event on the 21st of July, new faces and loyal customers, architects with whom we have been happy to collaborate for some time and new partnerships from which exciting projects are springing up.
This is the time to create quality architecture and interior design together … while waiting (also) for the next party!
