A new age of design
Welcome to Wallpaper* issue 301. Our tricentenary successfully navigated, it feels a no less auspicious moment to be ushering in a new age of design – just in time to celebrate Salone del Mobile. Why a new age? Because a younger generation at the apex of forward-thinking furniture companies – Giulia Molteni and Maria Porro, for instance, or Carola Bestetti at Living Divani and Eleonore Cavalli at Visionnaire – has resulted in a broader scope being offered to designers commissioned to create work for the leading brands. With this deeper pool of references comes a slew of fresh ideas on how to live, work and play that reflect a wide spectrum of cultural, societal and environmental shifts. In the same questing spirit, we profile a few of those whose work embodies where design is (or should be) going: whether that’s Atelier Biagetti’s concept of nomadism, recast in its collaboration with MCM as a new idea of home that embraces technology, or Faye Toogood, whose repurposing of folk references for Poltrona Frau breaks with the contemporary concept of the ‘luxury furniture designer’.
As well as documenting those currently disrupting the established houses, we examine the roles of three emerging design studios in exploring new ways of working in furniture and design, whether through collaboration, performance or the repurposing of industrial materials and processes. We also revisit the lives and careers of two pioneering figures in the design world – Ingo Maurer and Louis Kahn, the latter being recognised at Salone. And we feature two ‘revivals’: one the simulacrum of an unbuilt, site-specific Frank Lloyd Wright house, the other a rebuild of a novel aluminium-clad home that has moved from New York to its present resting place in Palm Springs. And capturing the spirit of the present, we bring you a working wardrobe that, well, works, read the runes around outdoor furniture, and feature nine watches united in their dramatic use of dark hues.
Finally, and by way of a hello, it gives me great pleasure to be rejoining Wallpaper* as Editor-in-chief. I’d like to thank Sarah Douglas for handing on a title in such spectacular health – testament to her seven years of exemplary stewardship. The eagle-eyed among you will notice some further changes to the editorial masthead. These new positions are richly deserved; harbingers, too, of a new age for Wallpaper* as it heads towards its quadricentennial. Enjoy the issue.