Designers, increasingly sought-after figures

While the figure of the interior designer is increasingly popular, a professional who designs interiors, i.e. the choice, combination and arrangement of furniture, lighting and decorative elements, combining architectural and design skills, every style and every culture has its own characteristics. Prominent among many, and it could not be otherwise (think for example of leading figures such as Paola Navone, Paola Lenti, Piero Lissoni) is luxury Italian interior design.

Some names in luxury Italian interior design

Staying with the names mentioned, for example, Lissoni is known for his contemporary furniture, to which he leaves an inimitable and unmistakable mark: a mistake, a wrong height or a way of making his pieces unique and iconic.

Paola Navone’s style is also very special, combining western visions with oriental ones, with a continuous search for new materials and a glance towards the past and one towards the future. She calls her luxury Italian interior design ‘tham ma da’, which means ‘every day’ in Thai, because inspiration comes from everyday life.

Like her colleagues, Paola Lenti spans many different fields: she started with carpets, then developed a popular line of outdoor furniture. What unites the different experiences is the desire to experiment with materials (with a keen eye on recycled ones), colours and shapes.

Companies that combine tradition and modernity

But in general, apart from the names, what characteristics can be seen in luxury Italian interior design? It is not easy to discern common traits, but first we can mention the exaltation of local craftsmanship. Italian companies stand out in many fields for the quality of the furniture they produce, from Soviet Italia, which works a lot with glass, to Porro with its wardrobes, from Glas Italia and its crystal tables, to Baxter up to Zanotta and Gervasoni: realities that often operate in many different fields, exalting traditional craftsmanship combined with the skilful use of technological innovation. Italian production is recognised for the unmistakable quality of its furniture and attention to refined details.

In recent years, the trend that exalts the use of natural materials, above all wood and stone, has been very popular.

Home automation, hi-tech and shapes in Italian design culture

Italian luxury interior design, as mentioned, combines tradition and modernity: there is no shortage of state-of-the-art appliances. Homes furnished by Italian designers are highly domotic, with hi-tech devices that not only make life easier for their inhabitants but often become true design elements, integrating with the furnishings in a skilful manner.

If in recent years square shapes, fashionable thanks to the spread of minimalism, had often been favoured, Italian designers designing luxury homes have now returned to resorting to the rounded, to give fluidity to the lines. Thus, for example, we have sofas, tables and chairs with rounded, enveloping shapes that can form striking contrasts with other rectangular or square furniture.

Eco-sustainability, decorated bathrooms, attention to the outdoors and a touch of tradition in luxury Italian interior design

Italy, like many cultures, also places a careful eye on the eco-sustainability of products used in luxury interior design. This means exalting natural materials, such as the already mentioned wood and stone, but also recycling and reuse, always in the context of the search for innovative and fascinating furnishing solutions.

Other characteristics of luxury Italian interior design can be seen in the bathrooms. They are in fact considered an important room, to be exalted like any other. So, green light to refined decorations, starting with mosaics, worked tiles and wallpapers. Even outdoor spaces, from terraces to gardens, are taken care of as if they were part of the interior.

There is often a touch of the rustic in the work of Italian designers, recalling realities such as the Tuscan villas of the time, for example. The use of marble grit flooring typical of 16th century Venetian houses is also popular.

Il Piccolo, a second-generation family-run joinery, opens its own showroom in Lugano. With over 50 years of experience, Il Piccolo brings with it a wealth of technical and design knowledge of the highest level, thanks to the numerous interiors designed and furnished throughout the world. In addition, Il Piccolo represents the most prestigious brands of furniture worldwide. Il Piccolo designs, produces and sells the best of the interior design made in Italy, following the customer from the design to the realization, delivery and installation of the work, integrating the process with a precise and professional assistance service. CONTACT US!  

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Mario Botta is the best-known architect in Ticino

If you say Mario Botta, you say architecture in Ticino. Mario Botta is undoubtedly the best known and one of the most prestigious architects in Italian-speaking Switzerland, known the world over for his works, executed near and far from home, from the corners of Ticino to China.

Mario Botta’s sixteen churches, from Vallemaggia to the Chinese mosque

Mario Botta likes to think and design different buildings. His curriculum vitae includes sixteen churches, scattered throughout Europe, born of his ingenuity, from France to his native Ticino, from a Chinese mosque to a synagogue in Tel Aviv. One of the most recent and best known at our latitudes is the Fiore di Pietra on Monte Generoso, for which he also designed the main building.

Mario Botta’s favourite material is stone, and the Fiore di Pietra fits perfectly into this tradition. For example, the first church he created, San Giovanni a Mogno in Vallemaggia, was already made of stone, and Mario Botta chose the same material for the Austrian Cappella Granato, which takes its name from the particular stone that covers it.

Mario Botta’s beginnings and awards

Mario Botta was born in Mendrisio in 1943 and graduated in Venice. His first studio was in Lugano, then he moved it to Mendrisio, where he currently lives and works. His beginnings were characterised by references to Le Corbusier, Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi and Luis Kahn, and he then developed his inimitable and characteristic style that plays with pure volumes often interlocked with each other. He has won numerous awards in his career, including the European Prize for Culture in 1995, the Merit Award for Excellence in Design by the AIA and the Legion of Honour of the French Republic.

In addition to stone, Mario Botta often uses terracotta and many of his buildings of all kinds are red.

Mario Botta’s museums: square and imposing, they stand out

The choice of clear, square volumes and imposing dimensions can be seen in many of his most important creations, which also span the world of culture. Botta designed the prestigious MOMA in San Francisco (for which he won the Merit Award). It is a building with imposing brick steps, which gives a deep feeling of anchorage to the ground, in an environment where there are many skyscrapers. The special feature is the cylinder-shaped skylight, which faces the city. Mario Botta has also worked on the museum in Charlotte, which looks like a monolith in which the empty spaces become urban spaces, created by the cylinder-shaped volume, and on the one in Beijing, which uses pink granite and is formed by an elongated parallelepiped.

Mario Botta’s role at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio

In addition to his copious and prestigious production, Mario Botta has made a name for himself for the research that has accompanied his work from the very beginning and which, as his fame has grown, has led him to hold lectures and conferences everywhere. He is also a lecturer at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, a project he helped to found. But he has also taught for many years at the Lausanne Polytechnic and at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, as well as being a full professor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne in Switzerland. Mario Botta is a member of the Swiss Federal Commission of Fine Arts.

In short, when one speaks of Mario Botta, one is dealing with an architect who lends value to Ticino and who has certainly made an important contribution to the development of the Academy of Architecture with his fame and skills.

Il Piccolo, a second-generation family-run joinery, opens its own showroom in Lugano. With over 50 years of experience, Il Piccolo brings with it a wealth of technical and design knowledge of the highest level, thanks to the numerous interiors designed and furnished throughout the world. In addition, Il Piccolo represents the most prestigious brands of furniture worldwide. Il Piccolo designs, produces and sells the best of the interior design made in Italy, following the customer from the design to the realization, delivery and installation of the work, integrating the process with a precise and professional assistance service. CONTACT US!  

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Herzog & De Meuron, two names, two architects, two artists, probably the most famous architectural firm in the world. It was founded by Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron, two architects whose genius and shared vision of architecture and the way they conceive buildings and structures are also united by their year of birth, 1950.

The Herzog & De Meuron studio is located in Basel, which makes it Swiss excellence (they both are) in the field of architecture, and was founded in 1978. They graduated three years earlier, Jacques Herzog from ETH Zurich and Pierre De Meuron from Haward.

From the Allianz Arena to museums, the works of Herzog and De Meuron

Since then Herzog and De Meuron have worked on legendary projects, including the Allianz Arena, the stadium in Munich with a huge underground car park and a façade roof made of recyclable material, and the Olympic Stadium in Beijing. What made them famous to the general public was the conversion of the Bankside power station in London into the Tate Modern. In short, Herzog and De Meuron’s works are all of great calibre and of different types, even though their architectural philosophy is the common thread linking buildings and structures which are very different from one another, especially in terms of their functions. Herzog and De Meuron are even considered masters of museum design: they have designed many of the world’s most prestigious museums, from the Goetz Collection in Munich to the Tate Modern in London; from the Museu Blau in Barcelona to the Unterlinden museum in Colmar.

In 2001, therefore before the Allianz Arena project, Herzog and De Meuron were awarded the Pritzker Prize, a sort of Nobel Prize for architecture, followed by the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the Praemium Imperiale in Japan. Their first work in chronological terms, the Blue House in Oberwil, already shows what will be their hallmark. They deliberately gave the building a sense of fragility, with a construction joint on the street façade, whose precast concrete window opening is eccentrically positioned. Herzog and De Meuron opted for a loggia-like balcony open to the garden, with a filigree, curved metal staircase leading to the attic. It is easy to see how Herzog and De Meuron’s architecture is ingenious and unusual, combining references to specific architectural cultures and innovations. For example, the theme of the enclosed garden seen in the Blue House will be taken up by the two architects in other works.

Herzog and De Meuron, innovation and an eye on the tradition of Central Europe

Herzog and De Meuron’s style is innovative and unique but at the same time winks at the Central European tradition. The outer shell often plays a key role in their buildings, an element from which they often determine their forms. It is separated from the cubature of the buildings, the surfaces of which are used for certain autonomous messages. Examples of this are the eucalyptus leaves printed on the facades of the Ricola Pavilion in Mulhouse or silk-screen prints on glass and concrete in the Library of the Technical School in Eberswalde.

At least in the initial phase Herzog and De Meuron were inspired by Donald Judd’s minimalism, then everything evolved towards a unique and distinctive style. A great deal of attention is paid to detail, materials and textures in an almost maniacal way.

With the parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami, Herzog and De Meuron have also revolutionised the concept of the garage. Their work, like all others, is embedded in the environment and has a strong impact on the design of the area, on the borderline between archaeology and art.

Il Piccolo, a second-generation family-run joinery, opens its own showroom in Lugano. With over 50 years of experience, Il Piccolo brings with it a wealth of technical and design knowledge of the highest level, thanks to the numerous interiors designed and furnished throughout the world. In addition, Il Piccolo represents the most prestigious brands of furniture worldwide. Il Piccolo designs, produces and sells the best of the interior design made in Italy, following the customer from the design to the realization, delivery and installation of the work, integrating the process with a precise and professional assistance service. CONTACT US!  

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