The New B&B Italia Landscape

The dramatic changes of recent months have required #people worldwide to experience their homes with a different vision; converging new habits and old pleasures, while adopting a new attitude. The home is increasingly becoming a place for reflection and experimentation, careful work, well-deserved relaxation, in addition to being our haven and our landscape.

The new B&B Italia collection starts from the house as an evolving landscape, which can accommodate #design objects with a strong architectural component. Within this space, we discover the works of great masters of Italian #design and international stars, each with powerful and strong products, which can encapsulate city and home, exterior and interior, large scale and domestic dimension.

We first approach Blitz (the large sculptural table by #mariobellini which is reminiscent of a suspension bridge), and then move on to Liagò (a storage unit by #pierolissoni inspired by the Venetian loggias).

We continue our journey to Yabu Pushelberg’s Naviglio (a system of upholstered furniture based on a riverbed’s sinuous movements), and reach the museum, where we are spellbound by the artistic gesture manifested in Cutter (a new chair by #mariobellini, a homage to Lucio Fontana’s works).
The B&B Italia home turns into an innovative landscape enhanced by a beautiful and creative horizon, where meanings evolve; transforming our everyday life and proposing new sites to be explored.

Blitz

A sculptural table, a powerful and unexpected item - Blitz is an amazing new Mario Bellini’s project for B&B Italia.

A flat, slim and geometric external frame finds its natural completion in the curved and sinuous shapes of the interior, aesthetic and constructive solutions reminiscent of a suspension bridge are revealed.

Bamboo was chosen for the frame due to its lightness and rapid growth. It is a versatile wood with intrinsic features which are ennobled by a fine solid wood processing. It is unexpected and unusual for indoor use but one that follows and relaunches the traditional quality of B&B Italia materials; this is for an object which is a unique synthesis of #design, engineering and high-quality cabinetmaking. 

The table’s external parts show the natural bamboo grain, underlining the quality, care, and precision each wood module has been worked. The surface pattern contrasts with the table’s interior, where we discover a soft black finish with shellac effect. It is a solution that generates surprising visual effects of flat surfaces that appear to be floating on curved shadows.

The three-metre-long and 95-centimetre-deep top folds at the ends like origami, becoming a support that tapers and folds again to rest on the ground. The countless technological solutions guarantee extreme solidity despite the apparent lightness. Blitz is not a monolith but is composed of several elements to simplify transport and access any environment. It can be used as a dining table, or a desk for a prestigious office or as a welcome table in a large and majestic space.

Space defined by Blitz resembles a theatre, a place containing a wealth of stories and expectations, a world of applied technology, craftsmanship, rich sensorial perception, and strong emotions. We find ourselves in front of a table with a strong scenic presence while being almost impossibly abstract and yet extremely solid, a highly versatile table with a powerful personality. 

Blitz will be produced in a limited edition of 100 pieces. #mariobellini has imagined a new classic and B&B Italia has made it a reality.

Cutter

Cutter is Mario Bellini’s new chair with strong and decisive aesthetics which create a new type of seating.

The back of the chair is slashed by a cut which is pays homage to the great artist Lucio Fontana. Although evident, Cutter’s nature does not only lie in an aesthetic choice but generates an unprecedented type of seating.

The twin backrest’s ends are functional and comfortable in a frontal position, while moving independently and allowing a lateral position. This gesture is suitable for chatting with the person seated nearby. It is also designed to ensure high comfort seating and casual movements, allowing the user to lean on one side with an arm placed around the backrest.

The seating frame is made of metal and webbing, softened by a classic polyurethane upholstery. To guarantee elasticity and strength to the double backrest, B&B Italia’s Research & Development Centre has opted for a sophisticated harmonic steel core.

The upholstery and cover fully envelop the chair in smooth or grain thick leather, creating an ideal synthesis of softness and rigour, underlined by saddle stitching. 

The central cut reveals an inner part in refined black saffiano thick leather, as if Cutter’s soul peeps out from this dramatic opening.

Liagò

“I tried to freeze some architectural elements by imagining these pieces of furniture as if they were pieces of architecture. Platforms, supporting pylons, containing sides, closed spaces – like buildings, and large terraces that open. In this case there are no #people but, instead, one can place objects.”
     — Piero Lissoni

Piero Lissoni designed Liagò for B&B Italia, a new range of storage units ideal for dining and living areas. The collection consists of two low storage units with doors and drawers and one high storage unit with hinged and flap doors.

Liagò is in the Venetian architectural tradition - an outdoor loggia made of wood, often featuring a marble floor. It is a place suspended in space and time, a precious and rare area that allows lagoon houses to breathe and let the sun in. #pierolissoni starts from this classic and reinterprets it, maintaining its frame and materials, but with a new use and updated role.

The clean lines and impressive thickness define this architecture-inspired collection. Just like a building, the 50mm-thick frame hides a functional soul. Side and back panels are assembled to create a compartment inside them, allowing the passage of electrical cables and other elements.

This means Liagò storage units can accommodate power supply and connections for televisions, monitors, lamps, speakers, amplifiers, weather stations, home voice assistants and other wired devices. This is made possible by “folding”, i.e. the wooden panel cut, which replicates a fold, a construction technique that makes it possible to make the joints between the top and edge invisible, continuing the wood grain throughout the unit and avoiding unsightly interruptions.

The collection’s furniture can be placed directly on the floor or on elegant adjustable steel feet.They are made of light canaletto walnut with raw or grey effect. The range includes lacquered finishes in 16 gloss and satin colours, which can radically transform each piece’s style. The upper tops can be in wood, lacquered, Carrara white marble, and Sahara Noir black marble.

The interiors are covered with a refined silky, anti-scratch, anti-fingerprint, grey, melamine material. The internal shelves are made of smoked grey glass. Drawers have an incredibly thin frame. B&B Italia offers a preview of this innovation.

Liagò can be equipped with an internal lighting system and for the high storage unit open compartment. This solution completes the interior’s extreme elegance and ensures that objects in each compartment have the right space, perhaps with additional elements such as the canaletto walnut removable trays which guarantee additional customisation and versatility, to make the furniture suitable for any environment‘s style and taste.

The project features details such as soft seals applied to the horizontal edges, concealed hinges, flap openings with hinge and hidden mechanism. These are sophisticated but discreet elements for this range of reassuring looking objects which hide high-level technological solutions.

Naviglio

“We aimed to create a collection that was a visual dialogue between structure and form; how shapes interact and may be brought together to create their own unique whole. We began the #design process by taking an assortment of simple organic forms and playing with their interactions. Many resembled a relationship like that of oil and water, while others delivered the sweetness of strawberries and cream.”
              — Glenn Pushelberg

“It was as though we were completing a puzzle with B&B Italia; gathering the pieces, assorting the colours and shapes and fitting them together through trial and error until it was complete. We are passionately proud of Naviglio, our first collection with B&B Italia, and see our first partnership as homage to our shared commitment to craft and creating for the world we want to live in.”              — George Yabu

Yabu Pushelberg’s Naviglio collection is composed of a curved, linear, chaise longue and ottoman elements that together express a visual dialogue between structure and form. The synthesis is the project’s essence and starts from its name. Watercourses are places of meeting and confluence, a synthesis of trade and leisure, human intervention and contact with nature.

This was the starting point for the designers #georgeyabu and #glennpushelberg for their first partnership with B&B Italia. In the Canadian designers’ vision, the seating base is a riverbed that defines the space to accommodate a backrest/armrest which is as sinuous as a watercourse.

Yabu Pushelberg’s #design builds a relationship between organic forms and B&B Italia’s moulding technologies to create a consistent and univocal whole. As a piece of a puzzle, the B&B Italia team has ergonomically designed each shape to achieve a single cohesive unit.

The backrest section and the seating shapes reveal a delicate balance between polygons and curved shapes, where geometry becomes softness and rigour blends with comfort. The backrest originates from a round shape, but it is actually an irregular polygon with rounded edges - both an amazing and reassuring detail.

The upholstery of the different elements is made of differentiated density polyurethane to cosily embrace the body and ensure the most appropriate support. The choice was dictated by the object’s nature - a sofa designed without seat cushions.

Naviglio’s upholstery range comprises leather and fabric, including a new bouclé with a uniform base and multicoloured flames that recall the dynamism of action painting and impressionistic colour combinations. A subtle pictorial interplay between light and shadow that adds five variations of the new fabric to the collection, where white, grey, black and tortora colours interact. 

The rear surface of the backrest presents a continuous tone-on-tone or contrasting profile, creating a linear element that further underscores the shape continuity.

The range complement, the Naviglio service table designed by Yabu Pushelberg studio, presents a transparent glass top to be positioned close to the seat. The slender bronzed nickel vertical axis is supported by a polished marble base, with a river stone-inspired shape.