Porro: Home Design at the Milan's design furniture international fair

A bright, transparent box, where the warm tones of wood left in its natural form dissipate the rigour of the total white that pervades the space three-dimensionally with a few well-defined areas of black. For the layout design of the Porro stand at the Milan Furniture Fair 2009, Piero Lissoni opts for a further reduction of his own system of signs and geometries, to achieve - in a process of extreme purification - a space of pure matter and light.

The use in Porro systems of a very pale natural wood rich in grains, hemlock, from the forests of North America, responds to an introspective need for naturalness, simplification, return to the origins. Applied in recent years to the essential and ascetic forms of the Minimo table and the Groove bench, takes on a spatial connotation in System, the modifiable bookcase characterised by the typical open shelving that make it an indispensable furniture item for the home and the work environment: a light wooden cage that modulates the space with its own regular rhythm.

Presented at the entrance to the stand in an imposing two-sided composition of seven modules (L. 950 x D.37 X H. 470 cm) with transparent glass doors sliding on two columns, it acts as a backdrop that visually structures, without separating, the 2 open environments onto which it faces. The 3 new compositions of Modern, the system in continuous evolution to have fun dividing up spaces rationally thanks to the repetition of regular volumes generated by a square on the walls, floor or at the room’s centre, are enchanting with their delicate tone-on-tone approach of white paint and pale wood. Six white vertical wall-mounted storage units are contrasted with a long wall-mounted shelf-bench made of thick natural hemlock. A set of volumes, weights, geometries, directions, that transforms the wall where it is
placed in a three-dimensional picture.

The second new Modern composition, on the other hand, is designed to meet the requirements of storage in a dining room that does not want to forego the purity of Porro design: a succession of white-painted closed storage units on which are superimposed, horizontally and vertically, hemlock boxes left open to house plates, glasses and all the items necessary to prepare the table. For the living area, increasingly characterised by the presence of numerous items of technological equipment, aesthetic research and functionality merge in a composition that combines a new platform with hemlock top and drawers with folding doors - ideal for DVD players, VCRs or decoders - with a TV panel to hang liquid crystal screens. Three Modern wall-mounted storage units made of solid hemlock wood with interiors painted in various colours complete the wall.

On the opposite side of the stand to the entrance, confirmed again for 2009 is the zone devoted to Storage, the Porro system of wardrobes, including open and walk-in wardrobes.
The closed and walk-in wardrobes focus this year in the marked graphic contrast between black and white: the polished chalk white external doors conceal carbone oak interiors with accessories in the same finish, for an even more distinct and orderly visual effect, further accentuated by the choice of black paint for the back wall, where the compositions are placed.

Also renewed are the technologies - such as the new system of coplanar doors - and the internal accessories, to make this system always meet the changing requirements of its users.
For the first time, the Storage area will be perfectly visible from every point of the stand, thanks to the new transparent version of the Pivot screens used to contain it. A breathtaking impact for these great continuous entirely glass surfaces, with the exclusion of lower and upper metal bands to conceal the rotation device and two vertical profiles that act as handles.

If Porro systems find their natural location along the walls or as dividing elements between one space and the next, at the centre of the stand five settings in succession reveal the versatility of the products in the collection, which are capable of ranging from the day and night environments of the home to executive and operational offices (to which the space of the showroom at Via Durini 15 is entirely devoted) to the common areas and bedrooms of hotels, restaurants, luxury resorts that opt for the warm, elegant and strong lines of design labelled Porro.

The first environment proposed freely blends the formats and finishes of the new Fractal modular tables with reduced section designed by Piero Lissoni, with L-shaped angular legs made of brushed, polished or white or black painted aluminium, and tops made of natural or lacquered wood, glass or Pral®, in various dimensions and colours. 2 rectangular models with black structure and black back-painted glass top contrast chromatically with 2 rectangular versions with black structure and transparent glass top. Visual homogeneity, instead, for the 2 square variations with white painted structure and white painted top. Conceived as a
genuine system for which to choose your preferred combination according to your own taste, these products are highly versatile and are capable of fitting perfectly in the home and in the office, such as Como chairs, proposed in the new version with curved wooden back and woven cord seat.

Completing the entrance area is a display of Sidewall, the Porro vertical bookcase designed by Piero Lissoni and consisting of overlapping modules of various heights. Displayed in the floor version on a rotating base, made of wood gloss painted in eight bright colours (fire red, mars orange, spring green, musk green, chalk white, powder blue, storm blue and mustard yellow), is a totemic presence capable in its simplicity of personalising an environment, enriching it with new dynamism.

The layout design continues internally with a space of passage equipped as a study area, thanks to the new version with square finish top of the Join small table by Decoma Design. Also available with circular top and in original new forms exhibited for the first time in Via Durini, it has a drop base characterised by a support leg with an attractive geometrical development. In various sizes with top and structure in different combinations of materials and colours, it is suitable for both public and private environments where minimum space is available.

On the wall, four new forms of Load It, the bookcase by Wolfgang Tolk with wax-treated steel shelves and carbone oak panels. The tall, narrow rectangular format and the full-length shelves accentuate its marked geometricity, reduced to the minimum terms.
The small series of Black&White furnishings by the Swedish group Front, which work on the interaction between two-dimensional decoration and object, are suitable for both the day areas as well as the bedroom, dominated by the broken outline of Lipla bed by Jean Marie Massaud in white leather. Light and poetic signifiers - curtains that quiver as though brushed by a hand, flounce fabrics, regular square areas - cover three-dimensionally the surfaces of 3 furnishing items: a vertical cabinet, a sideboard and a wall-mounted horizontal storage unit with coplanar doors, designed for those who do not forget emotions in furnishing. The optical effect of these detailed designs, applied to fronts, sides and top of 3 Modern modulescreates a trompe l’oeil effect that deceives the gaze and transports us into the world of fairytales, where
square forms are softened by gentle fabrics and threads in movement, for a more intimate and feminine living environment.

The conceptual follow-up to the material research of Material House, the collection
conceived in 2007 by Piero Lissoni, personalising through finishes hand applied to the most representative pieces of the Porro catalogue - exhibited in the stand at the Furniture Fair is the Boxes storage unit with white and mirror polka dot back-painted glass drawers and the Nouvelle Vague chaise longue and pouf with photo transfer designs - this small new collection that confuses appearance and reality has already been identified as among the most interesting proposals for 2009, and will represent the work of the young
designers in the exhibition "Design, your name is woman. Everyday beauty made by female creativity" organised by Donna Moderna in association with Microsoft and devoted to female presences in the world of design, at the location Studio 12 at Via Borsieri 30 from 22 to 27 April 2009.

In the two dining rooms proposed, the H.chair small armchair by Christophe Pillet finds its natural position around Porro tables, from Synapsis, a spider’s web of welded metal pipes that delicately supports an ultrathin top, to Minimo, an elementary project in which the top is resolved through a single horizontal table raised on support bases that are inclined and interlocked. Presented in the new totally black version with leather seat and matt black painted metal structure, for 2009 this family of chairs is enriched with two new types: the revolving chair with four-spoke base, ideal for an operational office or for a more dynamic home
environment, and the model covered in fabric, for a dining room or a meeting room that is more reassuring and informal. New inserts of colour and greater comfort ensure a new range of uses for this chair, created for the home but also effective for contract supplies, as is shown by the recent use of sixty of these items in white leather in the restaurant and breakfast room of the Midland Hotel in Morecambe (United Kingdom), a sophisticated historic building in which the charm of the architecture of the past and more contemporary design elements coexist.

A fertile terrain to contextualize the proposals in the catalogue, to experiment with new variations or create ad hoc solutions, the world of contract supplies increasingly sees the Porro brand among its protagonists, so for 2008 it can count on a long list of references. From the contribution for the resorts, hotels and luxury residences of Turks and Caicos to Dellis Cay (Caribbean) and Island Garden in Miami (USA), both designed by Piero Lissoni, to the supply of furnishings from the catalogue for one of the first lodges of the Corinzia Villa Project in Libya, and finally to the creation of made-to-measure furnishings for the rooms and suites of
the Hotel Split in Spilt (Croatia) and the Elzenduin Hotel in Terheijde An Zee (Holland).

Again on the occasion of the Milan Design Week, Porro furnishings will also be visible in two focal points of the Fuori Salone: the modular Endless Plastic bookcase has been chosen by the eclectic New York interior designer Adam D. Tihany for the bookshop area of the Zona Tortona Design Lounge 2009, whereas the tables Minimo and Join, the bench Groove and the bookshelf Endless will personalize the Elle Decor Caffè in Superstudiopiù.