50 YEARS OF DESIGN, at Peres Projects Milan
Bringing life to ideas and developing drawings into tangible objects, BD Barcelona literally elevated its repertoire and exhibited its design prowess with a palpable strength. 50 Years of Design at Peres Projects Milan ran from 17-22 April 2023, and it was no ordinary furniture showroom inside. As it has done since its conception at Club Boccaccio in 1972, BD Barcelona has taken influences from Milanese architects, artists, and Italian design as a whole. They stimulate a see-saw effect, their designs held in motion by a pendulum of practical necessity and aesthetic sensibility.
Bouncing between these planes is no easy feat, and thanks to the founders (Pep Bonet, Cristian Cirici, Lluis Clotet, Mireia Riera and Oscar Tusquets), their personal influence and architectural backgrounds have seeped into sofas and showrooms with a visual and tactile intensity that has kept them going for half a century. Last year, the brand grew, and its doors opened to fresh ideas and new people. BD Barcelona continued its story with a brilliant example of how the collective is both contemporary and deferential to its history.
They exhibited the tangible in an unimaginably close, frenetically desirable, yet accessible space. They showed off, but they didn’t boast. Curated by Apartamento Studios (who were a part of last year’s refresh), the collection featured an extensive list of BD’s most significant works — but they were mounted upon something new.
Designed by the member Igor Urdampilleta’s studio, Arquitectura-G, aluminium beams ran across and below the furniture like bands of skeletal limbs under muscles. The streaks rose, and pieces such as Konstantin Grcic’s ‘Chair B’ peeped over ‘Dalílips’ (designed by Salvador Dalí and Tusquets). Jaime Hayon’s iconic ‘Multileg’ rested upon thin rectangular bars, its solid alder limbs all modular and rippling, finished in a glossy, lacquered blue. The steel grasped the pieces into place like industrial prototypes. They echoed the analogue machine, playing the part of rigid grammar in the creative language of furniture design.
The chairs (or ‘artworks’ depending on your perspective) sit upon contemporary creativity and insist upon a precision that works excellently with its location at the Peres Projects’ art gallery in Palazzo Beligioioso. The nonconformist structures float between the painted backdrops of colour and abstract shapes created by Beth Letain, whose vivid palette adds to the harmony of the space with unintrusive lines and flat blocks of reds, greens and blues. Standing out against the red forms in Letain’s Obstacle (2023) is Ettore Sottsass’ table, ‘Mettass’, created the same year as BD and reintroduced in 2012 at Salone del Mobile during Milan Design Week 11 years ago. The bulging tables, stools, lights and couches punch through the centre of the space, pumping three-dimensional awe into the room. As much as they are inspiring, the furniture is still highly functional, and this combination supports the critical balance required for Design Week.
Of course, they still pertain to the artistic realm of design. However, the authenticity of its designers and the uniqueness of its products cements the eclectic into the now and the visible into the desirable. Beyond all the armchairs, beams and decorative infrastructure, BD showed Milan and the design sector its true refinement of ideas and functions.
The forms that follow such functions may vary, but the quality is premium. Their work has a curated rhythm with undertones of the modern world. Their showcase last week turns the page and continues the story: now it’s the world of tomorrow, and with these examples, Design Week shoppers are probably going to buy a couch before a home.
Just maybe more down-to-earth.
