JAY VOSOGHI
FUNCTIONAL, RATIONALIST AND ELEGANT
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Advertorial story about R+D.LAB novelties.
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Photos by Ana Cuba and Martino di Napoli Rampolla
https://anacuba.com
https://www.instagram.com/martinodinapolirampolla -
To the rhythm set by R+D.LAB's founder, Jay Vosoghi, the glass performs a hypnotic dance in the hands of expert artisans, precipitated by a combination of fire and air and finalizing in the creation of an object filled with colour, sensuality, and design appeal. These are the first steps by Research and Design Lab, a design lab founded in 2006 with an aesthete's reverence for contours and colour.
Colour, which suffuses each of the collections and fills them with life, is another contrast between R+D.LAB and current trends. “Maybe it stems from my experience in the fashion world,” Jay explains. “Colour is life and emotion. When we were doing the photo session with Martino Di Napoli Rampolla, he came up to me and said, ‘These colours are beautiful. They remind me of something’, to which I replied, ‘Of course there is a sense of familiarity, they remind you of items that have been in your family kitchen always. The shapes and colours have a connection with the past and that gives you a feeling of comfort.’ And they indeed reassert the vernacular of historical forms and colours as a source of inspiration”.
The glassware blown by specialist craftsmen using high-resistance borosilicate glass, the handmade crockery glazed using historial techniques, and the select noble fibres of the shuttle-loom woven blankets all reflect the company's deep respect for traditional Italian manufacturing processes.
The Milan-based design firm upholds a chic sense of aesthetics, whose high standards can only be achieved through craftsmanship and top-quality materials. 'Research and design are a core component of our projects. We work with artisans and small traditional manufacturers, creating highly distinctive products conspicuous for their functionality, sustainability and meaningful role in modern life,' Jay explains.
“We live and work in a city that became what it is today after the war, when a group of architects and designers from different parts of the world came here to rebuild it. Milan is different. It’s an austere city of hidden beauty.”
Contrary to the design sector's current voracious consumer trends, R+D.LAB advocates select sober looks, with no unnecessary frills, focusing instead on functional, rationalist, elegant designs. Its work is inspired by an ethical vision, where objects can and should be used, enjoyed and experienced. They are not works of art to admire but tools with a function, designed to last. In Jay's words, 'What's happening in the fashion world is also occurring in design. It's what I call fast design. Our philosophy is just the opposite. We want our products to be handed down from generation to generation.'
Cross-cutting dialogue, with no impositions on the artisans, defines the work system used by R+D.LAB: 'We let ourselves be guided by artisans who are experts in the production process. We collaborate with them and involve them, because they are the ones who really know the potential for bringing our designs to life.'
The strong presence of colour is inspired by the neo-Rationalist Milan of the 1960s and 70s. The paradigm of an austere beauty whose attractions gradually make themselves felt, the city has a huge significance for R+D.LAB: “It's in our DNA, it's our source of inspiration. We live and work in a city that became what it is today after the war, when a group of architects and designers from different parts of the world came here to rebuild it. Milan is different. It's an austere city of hidden beauty, and it's precisely this balance between luxury and frugality that we want to get across in the photos of the new collection taken by Martino.”
LAPALA by MANEL MOLINA
WITH THE WIND IN YOUR SAILS
WITH THE WIND
IN YOUR SAILS
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Advertorial about Lapala by Manel Molina for Expormim.
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“The sea can be choppy or calm, it can carry you safely home or sweep you straight into the eye of a hurricane.”
The sea can be choppy or calm, it can carry you safely home or sweep you straight into the eye of a hurricane. When the wind is in your sails, everything seems possible and, with the helm in your hands, you believe that you steer your destiny.
Lapala was one of the first chairs to be designed by Manel Molina. The main challenge in its creation was to combine ergonomics with a chair made of wickerwork. Back then, this raw material was only used in combinations of straight wickerwork panels, with little room for further potential. However, design is all about finding solutions, and Manel Molina was so successful in overcoming this problem that Lapala’s ergonomic design served as a reference point for several subsequent models by Lievore Altherr Molina, the studio founded by Manel and his colleagues, Alberto Lievore and Jeannette Altherr, in 1991.
In real life, your destiny is not always yours to steer. A raging sea can sweep away everything in its path, casting you adrift. Lapala ran aground in just such a way. It might have remained beached there and gradually fallen into oblivion, but Lievore Altherr Molina was loath to let this happen. The design studio saw its salvation in Expormim. Such was the expertise and creative potential of this company, originally known as La Exportadora de Mimbre, that it was the only one capable of breathing new life into the collection and improving on all its features and different models: its barstool, dining chair, low armchair and footstool.
Expormim’s team played a key role in sourcing just the right material for its curved structure: nautical rope able to lend its delicate discrete elegant design an added sense of resistance, while also reinforcing its robust painted stainless steel structure. The end result is a lightweight design of eye-catching Mediterranean beauty, uniting simplicity and functionality with sobriety and versatility.
Jaime Hayon
A REBELLIOUS SPIRIT
Jaime has never felt identified with any particular label. Philippe Starck’s daring, courage and strength were a huge source of inspiration when he started out at design school: “that rebellious spirit that dares to break the rules”.
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Interview to Jaime Hayon in regards of his collaboration with Expormim.
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Photos by Mari Luz Vidal
mariluzvidal.comExoprmim
expormim.com -
A REBELLIOUS SPIRIT
Chic, inviting, lightweight and dynamic... Defining the Frames collection by Expormim is tantamount to describing the personality of its designer, Jaime Hayon. This professional dreamer—who designs, draws and, above all, creates—transforms the seemingly impossible into a reality.
His indomitable imagination is fuelled by the incessant new challenges that he sets himself, paying no heed to dogmas or limitations. Drawing is as vital to him as the oxygen he breathes and so he can be found doing it at any time of day: at breakfast time with the kids, while out shopping at his favourite market, Mercado Central in Valencia, where he lives, or over a beer or two with friends.
Jaime has never felt identified with any particular label. Philippe Starck’s daring, courage and strength were a huge source of inspiration when he started out at design school: “that rebellious spirit that dares to break the rules”. As a designer, Hayon’s ideas have an intrinsic strong artistic facet. “Art interests me as a powerful highly expressive platform for creative freedom.”
“Art interests me as a powerful highly expressive platform for creative freedom.”
Thanks to Hayon’s distinctive way of combining disciplines, at Fábrica–the prestigious testing ground for creative experimentation in Treviso, Italy, where he went after completing his studies at the Instituto Europeo di Design–he developed a style all of his own. For this tireless globetrotter, travel is an opportunity to discover new ways of doing things and new challenges. “Travel is invigorating. It’s an opportunity to learn. Everywhere I go, I find new sources of inspiration.”
Colour, shape and composition are the starting points for each and every one of his creations. His over two hundred sketchbooks bear witness to all his ideas. They reflect the inner world of this Madrid designer with a Mediterranean soul, from the most oneiric to the most technical of images, in addition to his ideas for future projects.
Expormim’s honesty and dedication were all important factors in his collaborative relationship with the company. “I love the effort they make to revive traditional crafts. I think they do it with extreme elegance and savoir-faire.”
Jaime decided to work with rattan in unconventional fashion, “highlighting its superiority as a material and the art that goes into working with it”. Understandably, one of the stages in the creative process that he most enjoys is working alongside craftsmen: “They bring a high degree of skill and humanity to the process. There are few crafts- men or women still active today in Spain and the sector needs supporting.”
The Frames collection–made up of panels that play a combined structural and ergonomic role–was a hit success from the moment that it was launched in 2014. Two years later, it would receive the 2016 German Design Award and, this year, it has been singled out to receive the 2019 If Design Award.
A collection that is all set to become a contemporary classic, Frames encapsulates the past, present and future of Expormim. Through the collection’s rustic charm and sober distinction, combined with simple yet sophisticated aesthetics, this Valencia firm with a business history of over 60 years has taken yet another step forward in acknowledging not just a craft but a material–rattan, that combination of tradition and contemporary appeal.