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Bold and Bright

Milan, Italy

Furniture design brand Porro explores the daring aesthetic philosophy of Italian maestro, Alessandro Mendini, in new collection Linea

Describing Porro’s recently launched Linea range as an ‘explosion of colour’ and ‘pure energy’ is hardly overstating reality. The bold pieces, originally designed by Italian maestro Alessandro Mendini, are a study in form and sensory experience. They are everything you might expect from a designer entrenched in the Radical design movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, and who counted Ettore Sotsass and Michele De Lucchi as close collaborators during his career, which extended up until his death in 2019.

Through careful research into the Mendini archives with the help of his daughters, Fulvia and Elisa, Porro unearthed the original designs and have brought them to market. The three limited edition storage pieces, available to view in Porro’s London showroom, are constructed with inlaid surfaces in cellulose acetate. A patchwork of reds, blues, yellows and black eschews minimalism for an exuberant display of craftsmanship and decorative detail.

“Our father has always been fascinated and interested in high craftsmanship: a thing that he found in Porro on the occasion of their first experience together in 2014-15, for the realization of Maggio chest of drawers and Schermo cupboard. There he had played with the absence of color, or actually with the color of the natural wood essences, which was something that he liked so much. This time Lorenzo and Maria Porro wanted to do a tribute to dad, trying to show what was perhaps the most important figure of his work, where color has always been the protagonist,” say Fulvia and Elisa Mendini.

The collection is comprised of a cupboard with a compartment and a drawer, a closed cupboard with 2 hinged doors, and a writing desk with a flap top and internal partitions raised on a dark base – all featuring solid parts with optical geometric motifs in juxtaposition with coloured empty spaces.

“The name Linea was chosen because the composition of the volumes and also of the decoration of these pieces of furniture is based on the intersections of a few precise straight lines, whose play in elevation and plan determines the whole aesthetic, the whole functionality of the product,” said Alessandro Mendini in 2015.

Explore the collection, currently on show at Porro’s London showroom in Coal Drops Yard.