B & B ITALIA BEND
SOFA DESIGN BY PATRICIA URQUIOLA
Patricia
Urquiola has designed a surprising series of seats that transforms
the tradition concept of the sofa. She has entitled the product Bend – Sofa due
to its curvaceous albeit monolithic form. It gives the appearance of being
manually moulded from a supple material . In practice, it issues from a study
of 3- D models and digital research. Bend sofa effectively conveys the idea of
motion by alternating full and empty spaces. Contrasting seams add to the
intrinsic design on the surface. The backrest is irregulary shaped, but without
compromising comfort. Curved modules – assembled starting with the seats,
ottoman and corner elements – form a sofa that breaks out of the usual visual
schemes and differentiates from other contemporary pieces on account of its
calculated eccentricity. Bend – sofa offers flexible composition solution,
including small linear versions, corner solutions or a spectacular ( non
necessarily domestic) version that can fill a space with doubles sided seating
arrangements, becoming the absolute centre of attention with its iconic
presence.
B & B ITALIA
B&B Italia has been
an international leader in the field of contemporary furnishings since
1966. Since then, its collection has progressively acquired new
products that are acknowledged and recognised worldwide, to fill the ranks
alongside evergreen products like Serie Up, Le Bambole and Diesis, now
seen as icons of design history. Through its product range, B&B Italia
has shown that it can offer a meaningful contribution to the culture of
design by perceiving and anticipating trends and responding to changing
tastes and living needs.
Antonio Citterio,
Patricia Urquiola, Naoto Fukasawa, Gaetano Pesce, Studio Kairos, Paolo
Piva, Mario Bellini, Jeffrey Bernett, Zaha Hadid and many others are
the winning team that, along with the company’s internal Research and
Development Centre, has contributed to the international success of
B&B Italia.
The vocation to
innovation and technological experimentation in addition to aesthetics
research, are the strenghts and strategic elements for the
company’s development policy. In fact, B&B Italia was the first
company in the world to perfect the technique of cold polyurethane foam
mouldings, which radically changed the way upholstered furnishings were
built.
These strategic elements
has brought about many awards both in Italy and abroad,
among them four “Compasso d’Oro” awards.
STUDIO
URQUIOLA
Studio Urquiola was
founded in 2001 by Patricia Urquiola and her partner, Alberto Zontone, and it
operates in the fields of Industrial Product Design, Architecture (hotels,
retail spaces, residences, exhibitions and installations), Art Direction and
Strategy consulting.
PATRICIA URQUIOLA,1961
Originally from Oviedo,
Spain, Patricia Urquiola studied architecture and design at the Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid and completed her studies at the Politecnico di Milano
where she graduated under the mentorship of Achille Castiglioni. Her career
highlights include: Assistant lecturer to Achille Castiglioni and Eugenio
Bettinelli in Milan and Paris, responsible for the new product development
office of De Padova, working with Vico Magistretti. In 1996 she became head of
the Lissoni Associati design group.
WORK AND CLIENTS
Patricia Urquiola starts
each project by building an empathic connection with the user that will
eventually interact with her designs, something she learned from Achille
Castiglioni, establishing the “fundamental element” as he used to call, the
basis of each project which always keeps her on track and accompanies her whole
design process: thinking spaces or objects in relation to people. Pushing the
limits of research and technology, Patricia Urquiola constantly experiments and
dares to move towards better design and architecture, following her earlier
mentors’ teachings such as Vico Magistretti and Maddalena de Padova. Used to
confront complex processes, working with scales from micro to macro, she works
with the available technology to go beyond the limits of what has been already
experimented.
Studio Urquiola is
frequently asked to design not only objects and architectures but also to think
about the future of mobility, workplace and production cycles. Creating links
between craftsmanship and industrial research, the heritage together with
innovation and technology, Patricia Urquiola also drives companies she works
with to upcycle once-waste material and tries to re-image entire processes leading
them to change, evolution and innovation.
Patricia Urquiola
believes in an original design point of view merging humanistic, technological
and social approaches. Her design thinking is the intersection of challenges
and breaking prejudices, finding unexpected connections between the familiar
and the unexplored.
Patricia Urquiola has
been the Creative Director of Cassina since 2015 and works with important
Italian and international design companies, including Agape, Alessi,
Axor-Hansgrohe, B&B Italia, Baccarat, Boffi, Budri, De Padova, Driade,
Coedition, Ferragamo, Flos, Gan, Georg Jensen, Glas Italia, Haworth, Kartell,
Kettal, Kvadrat, Listone Giordano, Louis Vuitton, Molteni, Moroso, Mutina,
Rosenthal and Verywood…
Amongst her latest projects in architecture are Il Sereno Hotel in Como, the Room Mate Giulia Hotel in Milan, the SD96 yacht for Sanlorenzo, Marienturm and Marienforum towers in Frankfurt, the spa of the Four Seasons Hotel Milan, The Jewellery Museum in Vicenza, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Barcelona, Das Stue Hotel in Berlin; showrooms and installations for Gianvito Rossi, BMW, Cassina, Missoni, Moroso, Molteni, Officine Panerai, H&M, Santoni and the general concept of Pitti Immagine in Florence…
Patricia Urquiola is part of the advisory board of the Politecnico of Milan and the Triennale Milano Museum. She taught the Master’s Degree in Interior Design at the Domus Academy in Milan (2013-2015) and has given lectures at Harvard University, Michigan University, Shenkar School of Engineering and Design in Israel, at the Alvar Aalto Academy in Finland, at the State University and Bocconi University in Milan. She has also given talks at countless cultural events, such as Design Shanghai, Design Week in Istanbul, the Expressive Design conference at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, the Bloomberg Design Conference in San Francisco, Festarch Perugia, the Mind Festival in Sarzana and the Mantova Literature Festival, among other events in Italy. She was an ambassador of the Milan Expo in 2015.
EXHIBITIONS
Patricia Urquiola’s work
is exhibited in many art and design museums across the world, including the
MoMA in New York, the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris, the Design Museum in
Monaco, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, the Victoria & Albert
Museum in London, the Design Museum in Zurich, the Stedelijk Museum of modern
and contemporary art in Amsterdam and the Philadelphia Art Museum.
At Madrid Design
Festival, earlier 2020, an exhibition entitled “Patricia Urquiola. Nature Morte
Vivante” opened to public, focusing on the work at different stages of her
career. The exhibition was laid out in a non-chronological way around five
pillars exploring recurrent themes of Patricia Urquiola’s work and mindset.
“Exploring the mind of Patricia Urquiola offers many surprises, among them, discovering the unexpected themes that feed her voracious curiosity: virtual reality, economy, politics, artificial intelligence, the theory of color, the Anthropocene, robotics, ecology and sustainability, gender issues, man and machines, and so on. They are the foundation of an entire way of thinking that is imperative to the responsibility and coherence of a person that carefully introduces each new object of her creation into this agonizing and ill-treated planet. Patricia Urquiola´s career reveals a “rhizomatic” attitude towards projects, a type of mindset that is also her work method. Thus, all the elements involved have the same importance and influence each other horizontally, without imposing hierarchies.” explains Ana Dominguez Siemens, the curator of the exhibition.
PRIZES AND AWARDS
She has won several
international prizes and awards including the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en las
Bellas Artes (Gold Medal in Fine Arts) awarded by the Spanish Government; Order
of Isabella the Catholic, awarded by His Majesty The King of Spain Juan Carlos
I; “Designer of the decade” for two German magazines, Home and Häuser,
“Designer of the Year” for Wallpaper, Ad Spain, Elle Decor International and
Architektur und Wohnen Magazine. She was the Ambassador of the Milan Expo in
2015. She was nominated Art Director of Cassina in September 2015.
Studio Urquiola
has now a team of around
70, composed of 43 architects and interior designers; 15 product designers,
textile designers and model makers; 12 at financial, administration, PR &
press department. 18 nationalities are represented and 15 foreign languages are
spoken, a very international community with designers and architects
collaborating in the most interrelated possible way.
https://patriciaurquiola.com/studio
You may click below links
to reach Patricia Urquiola’s designs of B & B Italia Tufty Time, and
Design Lana Mangas from My Magical Attic past news.
https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com/2013/11/b-b-italia-tufty-time-design-by.html
https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com/2013/04/patricia-urquiola-s-design-lana-mangas.html
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