The Poltronova Connection
"If the body is a means through which we experiment the world, why not stimulate it?", asks English designer and architect Nigel Coates, who indeed stirs our imagination with the latest two families of products for Poltronova, the company in Agliana that has made Italian design history.
They’re called "Domo", limited edition pieces, and "Plasma", a seat for indoors or outdoors. After having presented them at London Design Festival in 2011 with the title "A family affair – The Poltronova Connection", we also involve Roberta Meloni, owner of the company, in this interview, to investigate how this elective affinity that’s been lasting 20 years was born.
You first collaborated with Poltronova on the "Gallo Collection" in 1989 and then again in 2008 with "Hypnerotosphere". How was the connection with Poltronova born?
Nigel Coates: I had worked in Japan unexpectedly in 1984, through to the early 90s and it gave me a certain kudos. A friend of mine in Florence, professor Gianni Pettena, asked me if I would like to design some chairs for Poltronova, which was a great honour so I put my best efforts into designing pieces that had a very experimental character.
Those pieces were inspired by the culture of the farmyard. I wanted to bring workmanship together with the idea of the industrial product. I was interested in giving them spirit through the process of making.
In these early objects that Poltronova produced, craftsmanship was not necessarily one of their values. They were meant to look industrial in the sense that Andy Warhol mimicked repetition. Perhaps they had a certain critical content – but nevertheless they were meant to look as if they were produced by a big serious company. My pieces had lots of difficult stitching and were experimental. I guess my artistry was given space in this first collection, as Sottsass' artistry had been given space by Poltronova in the formative years in the 1960s.
Much later I asked the new head of the company, Roberta Meloni, to help me repeat the "Genie Stool" design, which had actually been done before the work with Poltronova. I knew the company could work with wood in a sculptural way so she made a couple of these for me that were asked for by museums.
The personal contact between myself and Meloni, who had been an associate of the company since the mid-90s, but eventually became the new owner in 2000, was something else that linked me to Poltronova. With Meloni there was an understanding and a transparency between the way she was making things with a variety of artists around the factory and my own ambition in design.
We began to do more limited artistic pieces, such as the "Hypnerotosphere" pieces that were exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2008. These reflected our combined courage to try to do something new.
Poltronova has always encouraged experimentation and different languages, making design history. What are the aspects of Nigel’s poetic and method that impressed you most and that are in tune with your values?
Roberta Meloni: I think Nigel is a radical, not only because of the final object he produces, but also because of the curious spirit that animates him and his way of interpreting the world that surrounds him. He has great introspective capabilities, dynamism and his own cultural references. Nigel’s projects are always immediately recognizable. It’s his language, laden with meaning, attention to current social change and an affection towards mankind, which is at the center of a world he himself elaborates and narrates. In each of his design pieces or in his every architecture one can recognize an entire planned path, and this is quite rare.
What are the narrative aspects that you would like to convey with these new pieces?
NC: I was inspired once more by my country house in Italy, the equipment and tools that were lying around the house when I bought it and the wood that had been worn by everyday usage over hundreds of years. All of this was very inspiring, so the story was about animals, the landscape and the culture of rural life, but brought into a more sophisticated setting.
The rural culture is in the anthropomorphic quality of the "Domo" table, of the legs, which have the elegance of the deer, of the antelope or of a beautiful pedigree dog. They’ve got a certain spirit, form and elegance which is derived from observation of nature, not far from Carlo Mollino and some Giò Ponti pieces, which have a very refined art line. My narrative invests the object with a coherent language expressing an "anima" that I have scooped up from my own experiences of the Italian countryside.
What interested you most in Poltronova's know-how and why did you state the company is your ideal partner?
NC: Like many small Italians companies, Poltronova has an industrial façade but the reality is that things are made one by one and by people who are not necessarily in the factory. Some processes are done in house, but most of them depend on a network of small artisans. A great strength of Italian industry is that it is able to combine outsourcing with an industrial ethos.
One of the reasons I love working with Poltronova is the fact that within a 5 Km radius there is everything you could possibly want, every material, every finish, every capability, even digital modeling. There is also a special understanding with them that makes it possible for me to go into the "laboratory" where I can experiment directly with the people there.
How did the idea come about for the two families of products "Domo" and "Plasma", created with Coates?
RM: The "Domo" series came about due to the desire to work again with the language of the first collection, that to this day holds a special place in the heart of the company, perhaps because it was not as expressive as Nigel would have wanted at the time. This time we tried to let him express himself in a more pure, strong, characteristic manner. That’s how these objects were born, like characters acting out a scene that is given by his language.
"Domo" features sandblasted and sculpted oak with distinct anthropomorphic features. The "Easy chair" and the "Foot Stool" seem to resemble a totally relaxed body. What is your idea of body in these designs?
NC: The body has been very important in my work for a long time. I suppose I realized that in the early 90s with my exhibition called "Ecstacity". Some years later and to my surprise I was asked to make the giant body for the Millennium Dome, which measured 23 m high and 67 m long. This architectural body was meant as a bridge between the city and the individual, so it was monumentalized, as if an alter ego.
I believe the body is a means of sensing the world and not just a unit of measure as Le Corbusier saw it. The sensibility of the body encompasses sensuality and sexuality. I don't believe in a world around you that is neutral and immobile. I try to give the world I'm making a sense of evolution, movement and experience and it’s difficult to put this into an object: a classical design tends to be very stable, composed and symmetrical. Whereas the things I make are unstable in their geometry. Your eyes move around them and explore them; they look different from every angle. That's the philosophy I'm trying to put into all of these pieces. I want to capture the forces of nature and how we experience them.
Yours is not just a professional relationship…
RM: I’ve known Nigel for 20 years, our relationship is one of friendship and reciprocal esteem. He often tells me fascinating stories that he illustrates through sketches in his magic notebook. I then fall in love with his ideas and decide to 'marry' them.
They are enlightening stories and I am in awe when he shows them to me because I am allowed to enter an intimate sphere that is full of personal meaning.
When I saw the sketch and the project for "Plasma", it immediately appealed to me because it speaks with Nigel’s typical voice, in a language that has not yet been used.
"Plasma" combines technological prowess with sleek steel and plump leather upholstery. Is there a reference to our contemporary ability to easily switch between the real and the virtual world?
NC: Nowadays we communicate through the Internet on so many different levels. The illusion of presence of the distant correspondent is ever more real. We seem to trust the digital world virtually as much as we trust face to face contact. For a child the virtual world is possibly more real than the real world.
In a way we are exploring this phenomena through the objects themselves, in how they are conceived and designed through various forms of contact and dialogue. The original Poltronova pieces were done with conventional blueprints, which were almost impossible to draw because their complex forms were in our head.
I think that now the real and the virtual inform one another to create a new kind of space that involves both. I've always been interested in artificial spaces and how they enhance our senses. I first became aware of virtual space on the dance floor. In the 1960s the discotheque contextualized a new trend of interactive behavior. I consider nightclubs to be the original virtual space in which there is a sense of separation from reality. In them you could behave in a more animal, instinctual or gratifying way protected by the container of the nightclub as a context, just like the TV screen on the PC screen. That's a whole big subject in its own right, the way one can access virtual situations in order to be gratified by a synthetic reality.
How do you build a collaboration with an artist?
RM: With the search for authentic authorial voices and by taking the necessary time.
At Poltronova we always work together with our artists. It may be an ancient way of working, but the exchange of ideas, trial and error, and the sharing of doubts is fundamental in this company. We take the time to pose ourselves questions, because that time then translates into credibility.
We often say: "off to the workshop". Perhaps it’s a countertrend with respect to some of today’s market rules, but I believe it’s important to pursue this path: collaboration. It’s how we worked on "Domo" and "Plasma": during the design phase Nigel asked all our collaborators their opinions, from the tailor to the upholsterer. Not because he doesn’t have a clear idea, but so that the final product can be narrated in the best possible way.
There seems to be a special relationship between you and important Italian design brands. Why is this so?
NC: I have invested a lot of my efforts in working in Italy because I enjoy it. I think I can make the best of my abilities by connecting things in London with things in Italy. Generally speaking I believe what we are attempting in design is easier to realize in Italy than in the UK. We don't have either a furniture industry or a lighting industry to speak of. In England we do have very technically-driven products, but I'm looking for a combination of art form, exploration and meaning. I want to make pieces that can be friendly newcomers to the home. In my experience that objective seems to be more realizable with the Italian companies.
We are always looking for new relationships with companies that are in different parts of Italy or with materials that are new to us. I'm working with a lighting company in Florence called Terzani. We are discussing things with FIAM. We keep it moving, even if today everybody is being extra careful about how they invest their money.
They’re called "Domo", limited edition pieces, and "Plasma", a seat for indoors or outdoors. After having presented them at London Design Festival in 2011 with the title "A family affair – The Poltronova Connection", we also involve Roberta Meloni, owner of the company, in this interview, to investigate how this elective affinity that’s been lasting 20 years was born.
You first collaborated with Poltronova on the "Gallo Collection" in 1989 and then again in 2008 with "Hypnerotosphere". How was the connection with Poltronova born?
Nigel Coates: I had worked in Japan unexpectedly in 1984, through to the early 90s and it gave me a certain kudos. A friend of mine in Florence, professor Gianni Pettena, asked me if I would like to design some chairs for Poltronova, which was a great honour so I put my best efforts into designing pieces that had a very experimental character.
Those pieces were inspired by the culture of the farmyard. I wanted to bring workmanship together with the idea of the industrial product. I was interested in giving them spirit through the process of making.
In these early objects that Poltronova produced, craftsmanship was not necessarily one of their values. They were meant to look industrial in the sense that Andy Warhol mimicked repetition. Perhaps they had a certain critical content – but nevertheless they were meant to look as if they were produced by a big serious company. My pieces had lots of difficult stitching and were experimental. I guess my artistry was given space in this first collection, as Sottsass' artistry had been given space by Poltronova in the formative years in the 1960s.
Much later I asked the new head of the company, Roberta Meloni, to help me repeat the "Genie Stool" design, which had actually been done before the work with Poltronova. I knew the company could work with wood in a sculptural way so she made a couple of these for me that were asked for by museums.
The personal contact between myself and Meloni, who had been an associate of the company since the mid-90s, but eventually became the new owner in 2000, was something else that linked me to Poltronova. With Meloni there was an understanding and a transparency between the way she was making things with a variety of artists around the factory and my own ambition in design.
We began to do more limited artistic pieces, such as the "Hypnerotosphere" pieces that were exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2008. These reflected our combined courage to try to do something new.
Poltronova has always encouraged experimentation and different languages, making design history. What are the aspects of Nigel’s poetic and method that impressed you most and that are in tune with your values?
Roberta Meloni: I think Nigel is a radical, not only because of the final object he produces, but also because of the curious spirit that animates him and his way of interpreting the world that surrounds him. He has great introspective capabilities, dynamism and his own cultural references. Nigel’s projects are always immediately recognizable. It’s his language, laden with meaning, attention to current social change and an affection towards mankind, which is at the center of a world he himself elaborates and narrates. In each of his design pieces or in his every architecture one can recognize an entire planned path, and this is quite rare.
What are the narrative aspects that you would like to convey with these new pieces?
NC: I was inspired once more by my country house in Italy, the equipment and tools that were lying around the house when I bought it and the wood that had been worn by everyday usage over hundreds of years. All of this was very inspiring, so the story was about animals, the landscape and the culture of rural life, but brought into a more sophisticated setting.
The rural culture is in the anthropomorphic quality of the "Domo" table, of the legs, which have the elegance of the deer, of the antelope or of a beautiful pedigree dog. They’ve got a certain spirit, form and elegance which is derived from observation of nature, not far from Carlo Mollino and some Giò Ponti pieces, which have a very refined art line. My narrative invests the object with a coherent language expressing an "anima" that I have scooped up from my own experiences of the Italian countryside.
What interested you most in Poltronova's know-how and why did you state the company is your ideal partner?
NC: Like many small Italians companies, Poltronova has an industrial façade but the reality is that things are made one by one and by people who are not necessarily in the factory. Some processes are done in house, but most of them depend on a network of small artisans. A great strength of Italian industry is that it is able to combine outsourcing with an industrial ethos.
One of the reasons I love working with Poltronova is the fact that within a 5 Km radius there is everything you could possibly want, every material, every finish, every capability, even digital modeling. There is also a special understanding with them that makes it possible for me to go into the "laboratory" where I can experiment directly with the people there.
How did the idea come about for the two families of products "Domo" and "Plasma", created with Coates?
RM: The "Domo" series came about due to the desire to work again with the language of the first collection, that to this day holds a special place in the heart of the company, perhaps because it was not as expressive as Nigel would have wanted at the time. This time we tried to let him express himself in a more pure, strong, characteristic manner. That’s how these objects were born, like characters acting out a scene that is given by his language.
"Domo" features sandblasted and sculpted oak with distinct anthropomorphic features. The "Easy chair" and the "Foot Stool" seem to resemble a totally relaxed body. What is your idea of body in these designs?
NC: The body has been very important in my work for a long time. I suppose I realized that in the early 90s with my exhibition called "Ecstacity". Some years later and to my surprise I was asked to make the giant body for the Millennium Dome, which measured 23 m high and 67 m long. This architectural body was meant as a bridge between the city and the individual, so it was monumentalized, as if an alter ego.
I believe the body is a means of sensing the world and not just a unit of measure as Le Corbusier saw it. The sensibility of the body encompasses sensuality and sexuality. I don't believe in a world around you that is neutral and immobile. I try to give the world I'm making a sense of evolution, movement and experience and it’s difficult to put this into an object: a classical design tends to be very stable, composed and symmetrical. Whereas the things I make are unstable in their geometry. Your eyes move around them and explore them; they look different from every angle. That's the philosophy I'm trying to put into all of these pieces. I want to capture the forces of nature and how we experience them.
Yours is not just a professional relationship…
RM: I’ve known Nigel for 20 years, our relationship is one of friendship and reciprocal esteem. He often tells me fascinating stories that he illustrates through sketches in his magic notebook. I then fall in love with his ideas and decide to 'marry' them.
They are enlightening stories and I am in awe when he shows them to me because I am allowed to enter an intimate sphere that is full of personal meaning.
When I saw the sketch and the project for "Plasma", it immediately appealed to me because it speaks with Nigel’s typical voice, in a language that has not yet been used.
"Plasma" combines technological prowess with sleek steel and plump leather upholstery. Is there a reference to our contemporary ability to easily switch between the real and the virtual world?
NC: Nowadays we communicate through the Internet on so many different levels. The illusion of presence of the distant correspondent is ever more real. We seem to trust the digital world virtually as much as we trust face to face contact. For a child the virtual world is possibly more real than the real world.
In a way we are exploring this phenomena through the objects themselves, in how they are conceived and designed through various forms of contact and dialogue. The original Poltronova pieces were done with conventional blueprints, which were almost impossible to draw because their complex forms were in our head.
I think that now the real and the virtual inform one another to create a new kind of space that involves both. I've always been interested in artificial spaces and how they enhance our senses. I first became aware of virtual space on the dance floor. In the 1960s the discotheque contextualized a new trend of interactive behavior. I consider nightclubs to be the original virtual space in which there is a sense of separation from reality. In them you could behave in a more animal, instinctual or gratifying way protected by the container of the nightclub as a context, just like the TV screen on the PC screen. That's a whole big subject in its own right, the way one can access virtual situations in order to be gratified by a synthetic reality.
How do you build a collaboration with an artist?
RM: With the search for authentic authorial voices and by taking the necessary time.
At Poltronova we always work together with our artists. It may be an ancient way of working, but the exchange of ideas, trial and error, and the sharing of doubts is fundamental in this company. We take the time to pose ourselves questions, because that time then translates into credibility.
We often say: "off to the workshop". Perhaps it’s a countertrend with respect to some of today’s market rules, but I believe it’s important to pursue this path: collaboration. It’s how we worked on "Domo" and "Plasma": during the design phase Nigel asked all our collaborators their opinions, from the tailor to the upholsterer. Not because he doesn’t have a clear idea, but so that the final product can be narrated in the best possible way.
There seems to be a special relationship between you and important Italian design brands. Why is this so?
NC: I have invested a lot of my efforts in working in Italy because I enjoy it. I think I can make the best of my abilities by connecting things in London with things in Italy. Generally speaking I believe what we are attempting in design is easier to realize in Italy than in the UK. We don't have either a furniture industry or a lighting industry to speak of. In England we do have very technically-driven products, but I'm looking for a combination of art form, exploration and meaning. I want to make pieces that can be friendly newcomers to the home. In my experience that objective seems to be more realizable with the Italian companies.
We are always looking for new relationships with companies that are in different parts of Italy or with materials that are new to us. I'm working with a lighting company in Florence called Terzani. We are discussing things with FIAM. We keep it moving, even if today everybody is being extra careful about how they invest their money.
17 Febraury 2012
4.6/5
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