After the numerous selections that have led to the two Compasso d’Oro awards over the years, the Permanent Design Observatory has once again chosen Foscarini for the design care and its innovative character. The lamps Tobia and Sun-Light of Love have been selected together with the multimedia communication project VITE.
In the year in which the twentieth anniversary of the Compasso d’Oro of MITE is celebrated with the new Anniversary version, Foscarini stands out for the triple selection for the ADI Design Index 2021, a publication that identifies the best Italian design put into production each year. An important recognition that opens up participation in the Compasso d’Oro ADI, the most authoritative award in the world of design now in its twenty-seventh edition.
After the numerous selections that have led to the two Compasso d’Oro awards over the years, for Mite by Marc Sadler in 2001 and for the editorial project Inventario in 2014, the Permanent Design Observatory has once again chosen Foscarini for the design care and its innovative character. To represent these peculiarities of the brand this year are the lights Tobia and Sun-Light of Love selected for the Design for the Living category and VITE for the Design for the Communication category.
Two lamps that are very different one from the other – the first discreet in its essential form, the second highly scenographic and decorative – together with VITE, a creative project and a cultural operation with different levels of interpretation, which marks a radical change of perspective for Foscarini where the collections are presented in lived-in, daily homes, through the stories of the people who live there. VITE uses multiple media forms and draws inspiration from a wide range of sources. The project first and foremost offers a point of view — it represents Foscarini’s desire to focus on people to showcase light, rather than the products themselves − that is, from the perspective of the people who experience light in their personal space, inner sanctuary, and home rather than from the perspective of those who design, develop, and create it.
Presented to the press on October 27th, the ADI Design Index 2021 is a real communication path that is divided into a yearbook, a dedicated website and a series of exhibitions that will also see the selected Foscarini proposals exhibited in the coming weeks in Milan, at the ADI Design Museum and later in Rome.
Below a presentation of the Foscarini projects selected for the ADI Design Index 2021:
TOBIA
Floor and wall lamp – designed by Ferruccio Laviani
In the floor version, Tobia is a portable luminator that projects powerful light upward. Slender, compact, easy to move, this lamp finds a place in any space: a concentrate of possibilities, packed into a simple sign.
Flexibility and functional quality are the strong points of Tobia. The central node is not just a graphic gesture, but also an invitation to grip: the lamp becomes nomadic. By lightly touching the node it is also possible to easily switch the lamp on and off and to dim it with three different levels. Tobia is a high-performance light point, where colour underscores or attenuates its presence, available in five different colour variants: white, black, fluo yellow, fluo orange and a very refined gold version.
In the wall version Tobia is available with cable and plug or with a special element that allows easy fixing to the wall. Light is emitted upward and downward from the two extremities of the lamp.
Versatile and perfect in smaller environments, with its personality Tobia adapts to different uses, both in domestic and public spaces, where it brings light and character.
SUN-LIGHT OF LOVE
Suspension lamp – designed by Tord Boontje
As many as 390 steel rays, separated from each other and grafted onto the central body, give life to an extremely scenographic suspension lamp with great presence and personality.
To design Sun-Light of Love Tord Boontje was inspired by the incandescent and elusive contours of the sun and by the photos taken by satellites, but also by the powerful light effects in Baroque sculpture and architecture – from the “Estasi di Santa Teresa” by Gian Lorenzo Bernini to the Karlskirche apse in Vienna.
Sun–Light of Love is a lamp of high decorative impact, but without ostentation. It has a double light source – a precise beam directed downward, and indirect, diffused lighting aimed upward – making it ideal to light a room, or to create a cosy atmosphere around a table.
The two colour finishes characterize the lamp in a different way and set the tone. The white brings thoughts of Scandinavia and harmonizes with more nuanced and minimalist contexts. The gold enhances its preciousness and expresses all its “solar” power.
With its sculptural presence and strong impact, Sun-Light of Love stands out in space and adds vivid personality and charisma to any setting, making the lamp ideal in the home, but also in reception areas and high-image zones, such as the entrance to a large hotel, or in retail facilities where it becomes a “signal” that boosts recognition of otherwise neutral contexts.
VITE
The VITE project is a voyage that takes us into real homes in different parts of the world, guided by artist, photographer and videomaker Gianluca Vassallo and writer Flavio Soriga. In the photo and video series, people are at the center of the visuals and the narration, allowing viewers the freedom to roam vicariously inside personal spaces, real spaces that are approachable and imperfect. This time, Foscarini no longer looks at carefully controlled environments, “aspirational” images of photographic sets, but rather at homes that are lived in on an everyday basis, and close ups of people who dwell in them.
“With this project the product is no longer the central focus because people are at the centre. A change of perspective, a statement of principle. People make the choices, and we want to be part of their emotional panorama, their domestic panorama.” Says Carlo Urbinati, President of Foscarini.
With VITE Foscarini moves into real environments, within which Foscarini lamps produce the magic of characterizing and transforming the space, becoming part of the experience of those who live in their own home. A project that will continue to grow and that in the first edition, whose production lasted almost two years, saw seventeen houses and the people who live in them portrayed by Gianluca Vassallo and narrated by the writer Flavio Soriga, 5 different cities on 3 continents.
Fundamental is the authentic relationship that was created first between Vassallo and the protagonists of VITE and then between them and Soriga, who returned to those places to collect with a very personal writing the different sense of home, their relationship with the city in which they inhabit, each with a different light: the light of the North, South, East and West.
A volume that develops into a story through images, videos and words, which explored the sense of home, of light, the relationship between the inside and the outside, the relationship between life at home and the outside space, with the city and with its human, architectural, atmosphere and history, personal and public, singular and plural characteristics. A story with which Foscarini, with pride and conviction, evolves his point of view in a more authentic key.
