Exhibition Archives

Experience the fusion of craftsmanship and creativity at Foscarini setup during 3 Days of Design Copenhagen, Northern Europe’s premier design festival. Our exhibit takes you on a journey through the workshops of master craftsmen who, in collaboration with Foscarini, transform tradition into experimentation, embodying the essence of Italian design.

Nestled in the esteemed Frederiksgade 1 in the Marmorkirken district, Foscarini’s setup, curated by Ferruccio Laviani, celebrates 40 years of craftsmanship and experimental design. It features recent product introductions by designers Andrea Anastasio, Rodolfo Dordoni, Ludovica Serafini + Roberto Palomba, and Danish designer Felicia Arvid, making her debut in the world of lighting.

This setting offers a local window to a global audience, showcasing Foscarini’s approach to design. Throughout our history, we have consistently challenged the limits of materials and technologies, aiming to make people feel at home in any space and contributing to design history with decorative lamps that are universally recognized as icons.

Visitors at Foscarini’s space in Frederiksgade 1 will have the opportunity to view the new Hoba collection, designed by Ludovica Serafini + Roberto Palomba, with its unexpected irregular shape in hand-blown glass. Also on display is the highly decorative Fregio suspension lamp, made with ceramic bas-reliefs and designed by Andrea Anastasio, crafted in collaboration with the historical Gatti workshop in Faenza. Additionally, guests can explore Pli, the sinuous suspension lamp crafted in paper or wood by Danish designer Felicia Arvid.

Alongside these new releases are best-selling pieces like the Aplomb lamp, made of concrete and designed by Lucidi Pevere. Visitors will also appreciate the timeless beauty of the blown glass pieces designed by the Italian master Rodolfo Dordoni, including the beloved Buds and Nile table lamps, as well as the new portable lamp Fleur and the elegant table lamp Chapeaux.

Join us at Frederiksgade 1 from June 12-14.

Design, art and experiments with craftsmanship: Foscarini presents HABITUS, a new research project that takes shape in an exhibition and talks about the privilege of absolute creative freedom.

At Foscarini Spazio Monforte during Milan Design Week 2024, Foscarini presents a new research project blending art, design, and lighting. Along the lines of the Battiti initiative in 2022, HABITUS is a work of pure research: a project that moves in the space of possibilities between the idea and the product, in which Foscarini freely comes to terms with creativity, granting itself the possibility of exploring different directions in the world of lighting, without heeding the limits logically imposed by serial production.

The experimental project HABITUS, in collaboration with the artist and designer Andrea Anastasio, ventures into the territories of fine tailoring and embroidery of Arun Jothi and Natalie Frost, the creative talents of Amal, who develop the refined and often daring decorations on haute couture garments, in India and Rome. Beads, sequins and strips of laser-cut PET are the materials with which Foscarini has come to grips, to observe the reactions of light when the curiosity of Anastasio associates it with their iridescent and unpredictable textures.

“For a company, it is a true privilege to be able to take the time to reflect, to weave connections and attempt creative incursions into other worlds. It is also a natural choice, for us: getting out of our comfort zone is a part of who we are.”

CARLO URBINATI
/ PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER OF FOSCARINI

The pieces that compose the HABITUS exhibition, which can be visited at Foscarini Spazio Monforte from April 16th to 30th, 2024, are not lamps; they are made by an artist by combining the know-how of a company with the refined skills of an atelier.

E-BOOK

HABITUS —
Foscarini Artbook series #2
Research & Developement

Download the exclusive e-book ‘Foscarini Artbook series — Habitus’ to delve deeper into this free exploration that combines the know-how of a company and the craftsmanship of an atelier, to imagine new expressive languages, meanings, and ways of experiencing light. Critical insights by Carlo Urbinati, Andrea Anastasio, and Kassia St. Clair. Photographs by Massimo Gardone and Karan Kumar Sachdev.

Download the booklet

Location
Foscarini Spazio Monforte
Corso Monforte 19 – Milan

Opening hours
16 – 21 April
10:00 – 20:00

Chiaroscura takes center stage in the site-specific installation “Luce Scalare” on the grand staircase of Triennale Milano, leading to the exhibition ‘Alberto Meda: Tension and Lightness’ that explores some of the compositional and methodological characteristics of the Italian maestro.

Discover Chiaroscura

For the exhibition “Alberto Meda: Tension and Lightness”, held at Triennale Milano as a tribute to the great Italian engineer and designer, on view from October 6, 2023 to March 24, 2024, Foscarini has produced – based on a project by Meda himself – a site-specific installation for the grand staircase of the Triennale, featuring 34 CHIAROSCURA lamps – 17 on each side of the steps – all made to measure, from the largest with a height of over five metres (552 cm), to the smallest with a height of just 57 centimetres. A luminous set with differentiated dimming to create a choreography.

“When the curator Marco Sammicheli asked me to think about an on-site installation for the Scalone d’Onore of Triennale Milano, as part of my solo exhibition, I made a quick visit to the location and discovered that the lateral walls of the staircase are not continuous, but are made with marble columns having a triangular section, separated at a distance of 10 cm. The spaces between one column and the next have different heights, from a level of about 5 metres at the start of the staircase, and of about 50 cm at the last step, before reaching the mezzanine. I liked the idea of an intervention that would respect the architecture, inserted in a discreet way to enhance it, so I thought light might be the solution. Hiding the luminous parts in the gaps between the columns seemed like a plausible idea. So I thought about Chiaroscura, the luminator with a triangular section, like the columns, which I designed for Foscarini with my son Francesco, and about its characteristic construction, made by using extrusions of aluminium and methacrylate, thus permitting different lengths, even to a maximum of 6 metres. The technology of extrusion and its intrinsic freedom of sizing suggested the idea of making a ‘scalar’ set that emits light from its three faces, on the staircase but also on the two steps that lead down to the theatre. It seemed interesting to give the set another dimension as well, a dynamic luminous dimension, so with Foscarini we have formulated an electronic solution to achieve this effect”.

ALBERTO MEDA
/ engineer, designer and planner

An example of Foscarini’s ability to respond to the specific needs of architects and interior designers, CHIAROSCURA embodies the innovative character of the brand. A light that stems from the contemporary world, with a distinctive personality relying on the particular luminous effect, and the original rapport between form and function.

Designed by Alberto with his son Francesco, CHIAROSCURA is the contemporary reinterpretation of the classic luminator. Striking in its simple presence and capable of emitting light at 360°, CHIAROSCURA is the result of a design challenge: to explore the possibility of boosting the functionality of the classic luminator, which emits only upward indirect light. The elegant and light body, totally lit and no longer simply producing light, was the goal that guided the definition of the form, the choice of the materials and the production technologies.

Together with Foscarini, the Medas have expanded the lamp’s functioning, creating a triangular structure in extruded aluminium, equipped with LEDs: a “cage” inside which an extrusion in opaline plastic has been placed to spread the light. Unlike classic luminators, CHIAROSCURA thus offers ambient lighting at the sides and an indirect glow on the ceiling.
The slender and visually light body of CHIAROSCURA and its warm, welcoming light make the lamp versatile, ready to bring its own discreet personality, enhancing different settings, from residences to contract projects and offices.

For special design needs and upon request, Chiaroscura is a lamp which can be realised at different heights compared to the standard version available in the catalogue.

On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2023, Foscarini presents VITE 2, the second chapter of the project created in 2018 together with artist and photographer Gianluca Vassallo, which, by staging Lives (Vite) of people told through the houses they inhabit, marked a change of direction in the storytelling of the Foscarini collections.

Discover VITE

VITE represents a new perspective, a change of focus, an evolution in the way the brand positions itself with respect to its products. The desire to talk about light starting not from the lamps – those who design, develop, or produce them – but from the people who live in the spaces that the lamps illuminate. With VITE – from 2022 also a volume published and distributed in bookshops by Corraini publishing house – in fact, the product is no longer at the centre of the scene, because people are at the centre.

VITE is not a stylistic exercise, but a project desired by Foscarini to invite people to grasp the true power of design: the emotion and atmosphere that a lamp can give to a real home, inhabited by real people, eager to take care of things to feel good about themselves and their living spaces. The beauty and emotion that Vassallo captures is the same that Foscarini aspires to create with its lamps: made to shed light, but above all to be lifelong companions.

On the website, images from the First and Second Book are clearly arranged to suit your needs for inspiration. Explore the different rooms of the house or browse the images by product or by function of use. Discover how Foscarini lamps transform and characterize spaces.

“At the end of 2018, while we were thinking about updating our sales literature, we found ourselves at a crossroads. As fortunate participants in the world of Light, offering products differing when on or off and capable of insertion in many vividly different contexts, it is always hard to find individual responses that can represent so much versatility and expressive variety. Is it better to show the design piece itself, or should we surround it with a setting, a context? It is difficult to choose either option since they both have their positive aspects and intrinsic limits. But then we began to imagine a new, different path. A story in which our lamps would enter and become part of real homes, taking part in life experiences. Displaying their ability to bring character, but also to adapt. Not demanding a setting but contributing to creating a scene, becoming part of real LIVES (VITE)”

CARLO URBINATI,
/ PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER OF FOSCARINI

A tale in images, video, and words, VITE is a journey through cities of the North, South, East and West. An itinerary within real environments, meeting real people. People are at the centre of the lens and the narrative, while the gaze is left free to wander in personal, real and therefore also imperfect environments, inevitably far from the typical communication of the design world in which Foscarini operates, which often fears imperfection, that which characterises life. With the VITE project we no longer see photographic sets, but lived-in, everyday houses, which tell us the stories of the people who live in them.

Three continents, 13 cities, 25 homes later, the second chapter – VITE 2, in fact – is added to the first. It expands the approach, exploring new latitudes in pursuit of a different Light, and a different culture of living.

With VITE Foscarini illustrates design in its most human dimension. That design which reveals its qualities in the dwellings of people, who experience their homes as if they were mirrors: to see yourself, not to display yourself. To know yourself – not to show off.

A project to discover Foscarini lights in the homes of others. A story to imagine those lights in ours.

Discover VITE

There are many ways to celebrate a collaboration that has been lasting for 30 years. We have chosen to do so by fueling the creativity fire: with the gaze of Gianluca Vassallo, artist-photographer, on Ferruccio Laviani’s sculptural lamps.

With Notturno Laviani, Gianluca Vassallo interprets the lamps that Ferruccio Laviani has been designing for Foscarini since 1992. The project is built on an idea of light that the artist imagined while listening to a song: a very Italian light that he featured in its dual intimate and public guise.

Notturno Laviani is a tale organized in episodes. Fourteen shots where lamps inhabit alien spaces: significant environments where the distance between objects and context multiplies meanings. The viewer is thus brought to seek personal interpretations around an imaginary of light that belongs to all of us but that we all see with our personal sensibility.

E-Book

30 Years of Orbital
— Foscarini Design stories
Creativity & Freedom

Download the exclusive e-book Foscarini Design stories — 30 years of Orbital and learn more about the collaboration between Foscarini and Laviani.
A fertile interchange, based on elective affinities, extending across three decades as a pathway of mutual growth.

Download the book

Do you want to take a peek?

There’s a new skyscraper in town: the light. For NYCxDESIGN Festival 2022 Foscarini pays homage to the Big Apple and its unmistakable skyline with the photography project “The City of Light”.

Once again Foscarini chooses the art of photography to narrate its evolution and its products. During Design Week 2022 in New York Foscarini presents “The City of Light”, an original photography project by Gianluca Vassallo and Francesco Mannironi where the protagonist is UpTown, the sculptural floor lamp by Ferruccio Laviani that pays homage – starting with the name – to the most inimitable skyline in the world: that of Manhattan.

A lamp-sculpture, a skyscraper of light with a presence of great impact, Uptown is a composition of three volumes made with plates of tempered, coloured and screen-printed glass, in the primary colours yellow, red and blue, superimposed to generate intense chromatic effects.
An illustration of Foscarini’s experimental approach, Uptown has been interpreted in a totally off-scale version, inserted at some of the most recognizable locations in the city: Greenpoint, Wall Street, Broadway, Midtown….

The photographs reveal the particular identity of Uptown, based on transparency, a red thread that has guided every choice in the design development, like the 45° ground edges that make the meeting of the glass plates imperceptible. That which goes unseen, and seems to be quite absent, has been hidden intentionally: what remains is an impression of simplicity, for an immediate interpretation of an object of great complexity. Striking even when not in use, Uptown becomes an absolute protagonist of spaces when it is turned on. The LED light source with dimmer is concealed in the base: when the lamp is on, the plates are filled with colour, and the light is projected upward. Uptown is a lamp of vivid personality, a case of extraordinary charisma that defines its surroundings with its forceful presence.

On display at the brand’s New York flagship showroom, Foscarini narrates this human-centric vision by offering a setting to experience the photographic works with accompanying lighting designs.

Discover more about VITE project

VITE represents a change of vision and a shifted perspective for the lighting brand Foscarini – an evolution in the way the company references and visualizes its products. VITE reflects a desire to make people the central focus of the narrative about design. The project discusses light, not from the perspective of the lamp, who designed, developed, and produced it, but from the perspective of those who live with it inside their own spaces, in their homes.

On display at the brand’s New York flagship showroom, Foscarini narrates this human-centric vision by offering a setting to experience the photographic works with accompanying lighting designs.
Products on display include Lumiere by Rodolfo Dordoni, Gregg by Ludovica+Roberto Palomba, MITE Anniversario and Twiggy by Marc Sandler, Plena by Eugenio Gargioni and Guillaume Albouy, Sun – Light of Love by Tord Boontje, Caboche by Patricia Urquiola and Eliana Gerotto, Aplomb by Lucidi Pevere and Spokes by Garcia Cumini.

View gallery

Visitors are taken through the various scenes, as they are transported inside real homes in Copenhagen, New York, Naples, Shanghai and Venice by Gianluca Vassallo (artist, photographer and videographer) and Flavio Soriga (writer). The central focus of the images is not the products but the human beings, leaving viewers to gaze into and roam around the private spaces of the individuals. Not the seemingly unreachable and highly-stylized homes of typical interior shoots, VITE depicts homes that are lived-in in their everyday settings.
The VITE exhibition highlights Foscarini’s shift in viewpoint towards showcasing their lights in a more intimate, private dimension, in spaces where lamps are inserted in a very natural way as part of the experience of real people in their own homes.

“Every time the door opened into one of the lives I photographed in recent months, I pursued a Sunday some forty years ago, that I guard within me. I looked for the wonder of that particular light that I experienced at the age of six, in a brand new house, with the smell of the fresh paint welcoming us and the noise coming from the floor above us. That was simply the light I imagined shone on the life of the people who lived up there.”

GIANLUCA VASSALLO
/ AUTHOR

The VITE project will be on display from now until May 2022 at the Foscarini Spazio Soho Showroom, the brands New York flagship showroom.
You can also visit the Exhibition from anywhere in the world, 24/7 through our special Virtual Tour.

Go to the Virtual Tour

On the occasion of the 2017 edition of Brera Design Days, Foscarini is presenting an installation of MAESTRIE, an extensive project which sheds light on the craftsmanship skills at the heart of the production of some of Foscarini’s iconic products.

At Foscarini Spazio Brera, a large installation designed by Peter Bottazzi – set designer and multi-purpose designer, who has previously partnered up with directors such as Peter Greenaway, Moni Ovadia and Robert Wilson and curator of exhibition set-ups for Steve Mc Curry – with pictures and videos by Gianluca Vassallo aims at recreating in an emotionally-involving way the know-how and craftsmanship work behind some of the brand’s iconic models.

“I tried to unravel and stratify materials, pictures, motion, lights, projections, products and noises, laying out thousands of stimuli in a far from orthodox choreography”

PETER BOTTAZZI
/ SET AND PROJECT DESIGNER

View gallery

A large structure measuring 12 metres in length is set to invade the Foscarini Spazio Brera to share suggestions and fragments of truth through pictures of the faces and hands of craftsmen who give rise to ideas and designs, through their work. The photographs were taken by Gianluca Vassallo inside the small craft-based businesses where lamps such as Mite and Twiggy by Marc Sadler, Aplomb by Lucidi and Pevere, Rituals and Tartan by Ludovica and Roberto Palomba, and Lumiere by Rodolfo Dordoni are put together.

Visitors are welcomed by a maxi-screen on which suggestive pictures of the manufacturing process are shown, a mass of stimuli and precious titbits of know-how, in a tale that is at the same time the stage setting and the ritual process to celebrate the wisdom and skill of craftsmen’s hands. The photographer Gianluca Vassallobecame our spokesperson and vehicle, delving into the forges and lobbies packed with life and warmth, amid hands and materials, pots and toils, to illustrate to us how heavy and tiresome the path leading to the transformation and realisation of an idea always is.

“MAESTRIE highlights the craftsmanship skills which lead to so many extraordinary objects of Italian design, and some of our most popular lamps, which make up an essential part of Foscarini’s DNA. For many years, we focused on the end product, on the styling and emotional impact that it could have, while neglecting however ‘HOW’ this result was obtained. I wanted to find a way to convey the emotions I feel every time I visit the craftsmen who actually make our lamps. I am always fascinated by the extraordinary things that can be done and by the fact that often people forget how attractive and important they are”.

CARLO URBINATI
/ FOSCARINI PRESIDENT

Maestrie is a wide-ranging project focusing on a previously hidden dimension: the crafts know-how that lies behind the making of some of Foscarini’s most iconic models.

Discover Maestrie

A photography project by Gianluca Vassallo for Foscarini brings some of the company’s lamps into the streets of Stockholm, Milan, New York.

The photographic project “Postcards of Light” took shape in occasion of 2017 Stockholm Furniture Fair, when Foscarini asked Gianluca Vassallo to take design to the streets: a different way of narrating the company’s presence in the cities of design through some of its most-loved models.
Lamps become protagonists and witnesses of the fragments of life brought by every passer-by.

View gallery

“A postcard to bear witness to the joy of having been there, in the world, of having been there in the heart. Expressing the desire for someone, at any latitude, someone who is sharing the good fortune of being in the world with me now, at this moment, to be able to feel the grace with which I try to cross it, accompanied in each of my voyages by the light of the world and by the light Foscarini attempts to add, the light made by men, the light Foscarini gives to them. With the hope that just one, even, of the many who pass lightly over the present, will feel the desire to write on the back of these images: thanks for having given me light.”

GIANLUCA VASSALLO
/ ARTIST

An art project designed by Gianluca Vassallo that provides photographic documentation of the subtle relationship that can arise between two strangers when they are invited to look one another in the eyes under the arch of Twiggy.

More than 120 shots for more than 120 encounters between people, strangers up to that moment, under the arch of the Twice as Twiggy lamp. The iconic lamp, designed by Marc Sadler and proposed in a giant version, plays the starring role of the public spaces of a black and white New York City with a decidedly timeless charm, defining an appealing area that is at the same time the boundary of a possibility.

The artist Gianluca Vassallo put together and caught on camera small temporary communities, creating art through a social experiment. He invited passers-by, strangers, to look one another in the eye for one minute, under the embrace of light of the Twice as Twiggy between Soho, Central Park, Coney Island and Chelsea, trying to reveal the thin thread that joins two people, albeit strangers to one another until that moment and therefore, metaphorically, to highlight the closeness of each one, to all humanity.