Curious Cabinets
Why settle for ordinary storage solutions when you can choose from quirky, out of this world options that are truly works of art. Available through Matisse, these sideboards, screens, shelves and cabinets explore materiality in cleverly-crafted designs to make a stunning statement that commands our attention.
We know you will fall in love with these, just like we have.
Shanty from Barcelona Design is inspired by the patchwork of corrugated steel sheets which are used to construct many temporary or provisional homes, which exist all over the world. Its beauty lies in imperfection. This spontaneous composition of superimposed surfaces in different colours is recreated with a wavy front. Its body has an assymetrical volume and each door opens differently.
Martí Guixé is an atypical creator. And this is why he rejects any labelling or attempt to classify him as a designer. In this profession he has been able to find his own space for expression in which he can develop naturally and with surprising liberty. His territory is that of ideas and his great merit is the ability to carry them out. He handles abstract concepts to find solutions to specific problems. If someone asks him to design a chair, Guixé will offer him an idea for sitting down. It seems easy but the fact is that there is no one else quite like him. He arrived in society in 1997 with an inverted version of the traditional Catalan bread with tomato —SPAMT— and since then has not failed to surprise us with every new project. He likes to turn things round and he continues doing so.
BD invited him to plan a new cabinet to form part of the collection which includes such individual pieces as the elegant Multileg by Jaime Hayon and the spectacular Tout va bien by the French graphic artists Antoine et Manuel. His proposal is called Free Port. “It is a modular piece of furniture made of container cubes, with various functions. They have a dynamic both in their volume and in their position and finish. The woods, all different and all synthetic, are always on the inside.”
It is multifunctional; perfect as a centrepiece. It allows for different configurations, and can also work as an island piece. And if we ask Guixé to do a double version in a larger size, he turns it over again —literally— and builds it with simple superposition.
Rarely does a graphic designer (two, in this case) go into the field of furniture design. We have to go far back in time to find them, to the times of the high and low reliefs. This is exactly what Antoine Audiau and Manuel Warosz have done, a couple of extraordinary Parisian graphic artists who sign their works as Antoine+Manuel.
The cabinet they have designed for this new collection brought out by BD Barcelona Design is a surprising mixture of applied arts, hieroglyphic language, contemporary graphics, fantasy and optimism. It is produced with the quality of yesterday but using today’s technologies.
Body and shelf are made in white or custom color laquered MDF. Doors, plain top and sides are in integral polyurethane injection. Feet are of solid alder wood in one piece, lacquered and micro-textured in the same colour as the doors.
Partition and storage unit by B&B Italia is soft and statuesque, designed to display and hold the items we need only occasionally. A partition wall dedicated to both domestic and professional environments, it is made of felt, comes in two sizes and rests on a steel frame.
Modular in structure, the Kast storage unit by Vitra starts with a sideboard as the base version. For the medium-height version, a second base module is placed on top to create a shelf/wall cabinet combination. In the tallest version, two simple and sturdy wooden elements are added. Maarten Van Severen paid special attention to the colours of the sliding doors, which not only emphasize the proportions of Kast but also give it a fresh and optimistic feeling.
The work of a young designer, Joel Escalona illustrates the effervescence of Latin-American design. Joel works from Mexico City for European and American clients. He directs a professionally multi-disciplined studio completing projects with solvency; from taps and frying pans to extravagant furniture proposals. He has a pragmatic side and yet another artistic, a combination we look for in designers and those collaborating with BD. In this case, we have requested something more, a new cabinet for our collection, representing his roots. Its name is Dalia and is inspired in traditionally forged items, of which the purpose has always been one of protecting and decorating. Condensed into a stripped structure, strident and baroque as in Mexican culture. It’s a functional ornament and the very same author defines it this way: “Its design not only transmits elegance and complexity, but allows you to appreciate the contents inside, placed objects whose voices permeate – telling their story.”
This series of elements designed to fit out the Arne sofas to extend their furnishing qualities: a vertical bookcase, a low swivel bookcase, a horizontal storage unit that can stand alone or be combined with a counter, and which can also be used as a back-sofa because it can follow the sofa’s curves, and a low table. They are all characterised by the use of curved wood and by interplaying full and empty spaces that, associated with steel-rod supports, convey visual lightness.
BD Barcelona presented the first piece of furniture for a Spanish company, authored by Fernando and Humberto Campana at last year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan. It’s a design inspired in an aquarium carrying their special artistical accent. The Brazilian designers like to integrate artisanal processes into industrial production to create hybrids using different materials. Wood and glass in this case. One warm and the other cold. The immateriality of one combined with the physical presence of the other. This furniture project created for BD presents this mixture, colour and creative chaos – so characteristic in works by the Campana brothers. The success for this has encouraged us to develop a second version – Aquario II – which carries the same format as the first, but developed with more restraint and distinct functionality. Its half display and half cabinet. Available in two finishings and colours, natural ash wood with green glass or stained grey pine wood with blue glass.
“I have known Maurizio and Davide Riva for some years now and from our very first meeting a reciprocal understanding developed that went well beyond a simple professional relationship. I am certain that there are moments when people are bound by a shared sensation, even a smell, because the sense of smell brings people together, unites them, cements friendships. In the case of Riva the smell of wood is without doubt the glue of friendship and things are bound to gel when we talk of oak, walnut, cherry, cedar and briccole. What an extraordinary idea to recover the briccole of Venice! The Briccolone is a big briccola made using the original wood of marker posts making out of it a book case. It shows off the beauty of the material (eroded by molluscs, by the water, the salt, by time, by the gondoliers, the tourists, the water rats, the pigeons and all the other forms of life that usually frequent Venice) and keeps its heart pure, healthy, generous, incorruptible and clearly visible beneath its outer crust. I felt I had got it right.”
The bookcase consists of two pillars in ashwood with brass tip ends. 4mm stainless steel tie rods. Anchoring elements of the rods are in burnished iron with the central rods in polished brass. The shelves are made of tempered 3+3 mm stratified safety glass. Shelf supports in ashwood with polished brass ends. Diagonal reinforcing tie rods for the shelves in polished brass. The base is in steel with the covering panels in ashwood.
Unique piece designed by Franco Albini in 1939 for his own house in Milan, it had a highly experimental, a daring challenge to the laws of balance. The name Veliero (Italian for sailboat) alluded to its nautical aspect, and the bookcase has a lightness of touch typical of Albini designs in both its look and physical presence. The reconstruction of this model from the past restores a key design to its place in the annals of design history.