One of the most significant companies in the recent history of Italian design took shape and evolved here during the epochal turning point of the '80s: Moroso. The firm has many characteristics in common with the most hallowed and classic Italian business models of the design sector: the use of a workshop for handcrafted parts and finishes, family-run, local roots, a pioneering spirit, a passion for research, focus on quality, and experience in large custom-made projects. In Moroso's evolution there are also new elements that have been affixed to the DNA of the "Italian way" of making design, and they reflect changes that came about in the '80s: a modernised approach to management and communications; an international and global vision of the culture of home living (not only aesthetically, but also in terms of distribution, turning their location – peripheral compared to the suffocating centrality of the Milan-Brianza district – into an advantage); the investment in technological innovations of the production process; uninhibited curiosity for new types of decorative and artistic (usually connected) projects; and the pursuit of new visual languages and the latest fashions which are increasingly light and fleeting.
This hybridisation and cross-pollination between values originating in a meaningful past combined with contemporary experiences (many of which are also loaded with values) has definitely borne good fruit. Maybe not all were equally appealing, but as long as the disappointments are few and far between, as is the case with Moroso, we can consider them the inevitable price to pay for a trial-and-error approach. The reviewing of a manufacturing company calls for a historical evaluation of its growth phases and the evolution of its vision as applied to the uses and shapes of the things humans need at that point in time: for daily life, home living, communicating, personal expression and, of course, for producing and selling. These accounts and visions are found in the work of entrepreneurs, designers and production managers, and they become concrete in the produced pieces. They need to be read carefully in order to recognise the distinctive qualities that constitute the spirit of that particular and original outlook on the world.
But the aim here is not to analyse the last 30 years of Moroso's output. It is enough to focus on the state of the art, in this case represented by the firm's production from 2008 to 2010. Formulating a comprehensive overview is no easy task. It arguably has the typical composition of a post-modern novel, a hypertext that mixes classic with exotic, poetic with kitschy, minimal with romantic and decorative. Of course, the idea of having a product range made up of collections of objects designed by different designers who express a highly diversified creative approach is not new. It is an invention of Italian design manufacturers, and goes all the way back to Cassina with Ponti, Magistretti, Bellini and Pesce. Back then, however, such designers interpreted a world that was in the process of being shaped. They made their evocative representation of it, which, although it changed over time, remained recognisable – more for the way they formulated it than for its style.
Maybe today's excessively fast-moving times, much like the speed dictated by the fashion world, are what bestow an almost stroboscopic appearance to the dizzying succession of vast yearly collections. Luckily, the single products can be read separately, making interpretation more orderly and specific.
The house designer at Moroso is Patricia Urquiola, who began her very successful career right here. Indeed, her work covers 50 per cent of the company's entire range from the past years. Although she is not lacking in talent or experience, the undoubted ability to take on every single type of project sometimes results in an emotionless academic exercise that is a far cry from her more in-depth and innovative work. The evolution of the attractive Antibodi structure for the Tropicalia Collection is a convincing example, while her upholstered furniture (the models Bohemian, Field, Fergana, Spring or Rift), although highly dignified, should have looked more carefully at Achille Castiglioni's Hilly sofas for Cassina. Naturally, we fully appreciate that in order to keep afloat nowadays, companies need to include products with easy appeal for the mass market. In this sense, hats off to Urquiola, who takes care of this important task. Inevitably, even the sharpest pencil becomes blunt, or worse, settles into the rut of stylistic complacency.
Something analogue happened with Ron Arad, who, after the triumphant Misfits series of upholstered seating, and the fascinating Wavy chair (2007), tried his hand at the orthogonal-geometric- pixellated approach with Do- Lo-Rez. In doing so, he seemed to get lost in a typically 1970s' compositional exercise, without injecting the project with the necessary punch. More balanced, yet somehow dangling in midair, is the obvious collaboration with Tokujin Yoshioka, who designed the handsome Panna Chair, but also the perhaps less accomplished Paper Cloud and Bouquet, which are ethereal in a fussy way.
Nevertheless, Moroso's unfailing forte over the years remains its willingness to open up research and product development to young, unknown designers who speak new visual languages, even if this has not always resulted in new contents for home living. Undoubtedly captivating, especially for their use of material, are the pieces designed by the Indo-Scottish couple Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien: My Beautiful Backside (sofas), Paper Planes (chairs) and Principessa (a daybed). Tord Boontje sourced an interesting African technique for his lively Shadowy chairs: hand-woven plastic cording, traditionally used for fishing nets. It is also used by the designer-duo Bibi Seck and Ayse Birsel from New York for their exotic Madame Dakar outdoor armchair-cum-hammock feel, which looks like an homage to the Africa-inspired furniture (1923) by Pierre Legrain. Madame Dakar is part of Moroso's extensive M'Afrique Collection, which includes rationalist armchairs and rocking chairs that represent a graceful version of chaises longues designed in the 1930s by Jean Burkhalter and Erich Dieckmann.
We appreciate the poetic elegance in Boontje's redesign of the chairs and tables belonging to the Rain Collection, based on the lacquered steel version found in French parks, and the metaphysical/surreal Black Stone tables by Luca Nichetto, from Venice, who uses floral photographs by his friend Massimo Gardone to print the tops. The relationship between shape and technology is exalted in the Tennis chair by young Polish designer Tomek Rygalik, the Nanook chair by Swiss designer Philippe Bestenheider, and the Twist Again stool by Karmelina Martina from Sarajevo.
A final small note of merit goes out to the Diesel Collection (excluding the cabinets), which officially does not carry the name of its designer. So we imagine that it is designed, like used to happen in the old days, by the "product development department". Knowing them, they possess enough understanding and expertise of good design to make things work.
