ARFLEX / MILAN INTERNATIONAL FURNITURE FAIR 2007 |
Immediately after the war, in 1947, a group of technicians and entrepreneurs began to work on two new upholstering materials, foam rubber and elastic tape made by Pirelli. The following year they presented the technical specifications to Marco Zanuso who at once saw the huge potential of the new materials in interior furnishing.
New materials drove and guided product design, especially in the way of being structured, of the assembly of the parts, separated, manufactured and finished. It was a new way of interpreting the industrial approach to manufacture, not just on the factory floor, but also in the design studio, the shipping department and the marketing offices.
In the pioneering Fifties, that was to happen again and again. And it goes on happening today. Some of the models here run against the current fashion for being different. They are designed actively to contribute to the domestic homescape.
The number of designers who contributed to the Arflex range increased steadly: Marco Zanuso, Franco Albini, Carlo Pagani, B.B.P.R., Erberto Carboni, Giancarlo De Carlo, Gustavo F. Pulitzer, Roberto Menghi, Alberto Rosselli, Belgiojoso, Martin Grierson, Carlo Bartoli, Anning Sarian, Joe Colombo, Cini Boeri, Tito Agnoli, Mario Marenco, Antonio A. Colombo, Carla Venosta e Guido Zimmermann, Marcello Cuneo, Carlo Santi, Herbert Ohl, Laura Griziotti, Roberto Pamio e Renato Toso, Burkhard Vogtherr, Isao Hosoe, Paolo Nava, Nilo Gioachini, Yaakov Kaufman, F. Ballardini e Forbicini, Guido Rosati, Oscar Tousquets, Antonello Mosca, Franco Mirenzi, Studio Sigla, Augusto Mandelli & Walter Selva, Stefano Gallizioli.
The cooperation with the big architects or rising designers continued and increased again during these last years: Studio Cerri, Hannes Wettstein, Ettore Sottsass, Marco Piva, Carlo Colombo, Vincent Van Duysen, Christophe Pillet and many others.
On occasion of Milan International Furniture Fair 2007 Arflex restarts producing a range of historical pieces, mirroring the past 60 years of the Italian design story:
By Carlo Colombo design:
The modular Twist bookshelves, the sober and elegant Aura chair, the Everywhere tables in curved plywood, the not modular Femme sofas, the Octopus table and the modular Charmy sofas.
By Christophe Pillet design:
J3 is an essential but special seat, obtained from a single structure of rigid polyurethane available completely covered with elastic fabric or cloth.
Mario Marenco too, with his genius, starting from 1972, he gave his contribution in the identification of Arflex with Marechiaro upholstery and Marenco upholstery: a range of armchairs and sofas made up of wooden structures covered in polyurethane foam and acrylic fibres to create cushions, covered separately and fixed to a metal structure.
By Cini Boeri design:
Bobo sofa is one of the first examples of a single-block bench made exclusively of polyurethane foam without an internal frame. This sofa coming from the predecessor Boborelax, which design was originated by the research of a monobloc plastic form. It's realized with graduated density polyurethane foam, where there is no rigid internal structure. The project plastically expresses the research of synthesis and continuity of the form.
Another historical her realization is the range of Strips, a system of beds, armchairs and sofas, consisting of units of single-block in polyurethane foam, fixed to a wooden base and quilted cover. The beds propose a new way of use: they open and close as sleeping bed, without covers or bedspreads, with a mattress inserted in a sack, realized as all the covers of the units.
Arflex, at the Milan International Furniture Fair 2007, proposed also the Cubotto and Service projects.
By Arflex archive:
A 71 armchair. For this armchair each part does not correspond to the traditional function of seat or back or armrest, as all of these may correspond to these functions alternatively.
By Tito Agnoli design:
The 9000 sofa.
By Marco Zanuso design:
Important examples are represented by the models which have made the Arflex history, as the sofa Square, the Antropus seat, the Lady armchair, the first armchair with removable cover Martingala and the Woodline armchair.
By B.B.P.R. design:
The Elettra chair and Elettra armchair; the first furniture for office and public areas.
By Annig Sarian design:
The Bagutta and Sansiro new tables.
Arflex
viale Monza, 17
20034 Giussano (MI) Italy
Tel. +39.0362.853.043
Fax +39.0362.853.080
www.arflex.it
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