Foscarini towards global quality

Foscarini towards global quality: design, research and innovation, communication

The acquisition of the company by Urbinati and Vecchiato in 1988 led to a decisive turnaround in the strategies and business policies, including the use of independent designers for product and communication, and the relentless pursuit of an adequate production, distribution, commercial and service structure.

Rodolfo Dordoni

During these years, the company confirmed an organizational method based on teamwork, where different capabilities concurred towards the definition, discussion and solution of strategic and operative problems. This led to the choice of Rudi von Wedel as a consultant for communication and design; through him Foscarini came into contact with architect Rodolfo Dordoni, who would be their art director from 1988 to 1993, designing several highly successful lamps, rethinking their visual communication with a new logo and catalog, involving a series of young designers and expanding the selection of products. Interpreting the origins and character of Foscarini, Dordoni worked on lamps which were inspired by the idea of “retrieving the forms of memory”, reinterpreting traditional forms in a contemporary spirit, as in Lumiere or in the Buds suspension; they also accepted the arduous challenge of redesigning the classic Murano glass chandelier, as in the Venice Collection by Patrice Butler and the suspensions by Marco Mencacci.

During the Dordoni period, two new models appeared which, each in their own way, would open new horizons for design, as well as market and image: Orbital by Ferruccio Laviani and Havana by Jozeph Forakis.

Orbital floor lamp by Ferruccio Laviani

For the first time, in Orbital, the company’s tradition of using blown glass was abandoned in favor of colored silk-screened glass in a composition with powerful visual and sculptural impact. The lamp-object by Laviani understood and tuned into the changes in the culture of design and consumers, seeking to overcome the rigid correspondence between form and function in search of
new sensorial, emotional and visual qualities.

Havana Suspension, Floorlamp by Jozeph Forakis

Even more radically, Havana adopted polypropylene, which was certainly more economical than glass but used in a product with superior formal and production qualities. This marked the beginning of research into other technologies and materials to complement blown or industrial glass, which would lead in the following decade to acknowledged successes such as Mite by Marc Sadler, in woven glass fiber with carbon or kevlar® threads, awarded the Compasso d’oro-ADI in 2001, the most prestigious recognition for
products of Italian design.

Mite floor lamp by Marc Sadler

In 1993 the collaboration between Dordoni and Foscarini came to an end; the company chose to expand its design horizons, contacting new designers and putting itself on the market with a more ample and diversified production. The Nineties witnessed the international consolidation of minimalism, to use an indicative but limited label. Seen from something of a distance, one may recognize in the simple, essential and minimal lines that characterize a large part of the decade’s products, an answer and reaction above all to the visual, formal and chromatic excesses of the Alchimia-Memphis style of postmodernism.

A return to a correct design of forms and construction solutions based on methods of industrial production, a more serene and reassuring look, in a historical phase marked by profound modifications in the economic, political, social and cultural structures.

The search for a new identity in the second half of the decade led Foscarini to collaborate with architects and designers such as Piero Lissoni, Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba, Giovanni Levanti, Lievore Asociados and Prospero Rasulo. The visual design was entrusted to Claudio Dell’Olio from Box in Milan, who chose Santi Caleca to photograph the lamps for the catalog in furnished or domestic settings suggesting, in a strongly communicative manner, the usage and understanding of the physical and cultural characteristics of the products.

One of the more successful results of the period proved to be, for example, the Dress lamp by Defne Koz, which used blown glass to confer a soft and persuasive line to the table lamp. Attention was also reserved to different design languages, as witnessed by the series of essential and angular chandeliers by Tom Dixon, one of England’s most interesting designers; or Dolmen by Ferruccio Laviani which interpreted the return of the Sixties and pop culture language; or again the attention towards the poetic and illusionistic work of Denis Santachiara, whose little Elfo was an invitation to a curious and interactive approach towards objects.

Dress table lamp by Defne Koz

During the Nineties, the quality of the company processes and the control of service to the final consumer became a matter of specific interest. The company obtained the ISO 9001 certification, attesting to the suitability of the overall configuration of internal operative processes. Increasing and specific attention would also be dedicated to customer satisfaction, a central requirement for the positive performance of a company on the market.

The turn of the century had Foscarini involved in reinforcing its organization and production structure, perceiving the need to consolidate its brand name on the market by expanding and defining the role of communication. Following a phase of transition, in which it sought a dialogue and affinity with the world of fashion and experimented original methods of communication, such as the fascinating “fashion show with lamps” held during the Furniture Fair in 2000, Foscarini identified a precise and confident strategy for its image and market position. This was achieved thanks to sustained research in design, culminating with a number of interesting lighting fixtures and the use of an articulated range of communications tools, developed in collaboration with Artemio Croatto of the Designwork visual design studio in Udine.

The opening of this new phase was marked symbolically and operatively by the new series of lamps Mite, Tite, Lite, Kite by Marc Sadler. They represent the result of a research process lasting several years, and the relationship with one of the most innovative contemporary industrial designers who works globally and in different areas of the design field; in 2001 they won the Compasso d’oro-ADI award, receiving widespread acclaim by critics and the media, as well as the market. This was the culmination of an operative company methodology which encouraged the dialogue between research, innovation and design: new materials, a clean and contemporary composition for a warm, domestic and efficient light.

The lamps created over the past three years seem to fit naturally into the same tendency, involving other designers and experimenting with different solutions in production technology or in the choice or combination of avantgarde materials, frequently derived or borrowed from more advanced fields. This is true, for example, of the futuristic O-space in polyurethane by the young Luca Nichetto and Gianpietro Gai, or Blob, produced in rotomoulding by Karim Rashid, and Bague by Patricia Urquiola and Eliana Gerotto, who combine the visual roughness of metal mesh with the tactile pleasure made possible by a special surface treatment. The search for design-visual productive qualities does not obviously forego the original passion for glass: in Lampoon, just like in the earlier Cocò, both by Aldo Cibic, the traditional glass-blowing technique is deliberately “forced” to adapt and measure itself against the contemporary language of design.

Foscarini’s is therefore a “short” history, which leaves a solid heritage for the present: several classics of Italian light design; a solid, specific business structure, centered on the culture of the design project and the idea of industrial design as a process of research and innovation. An excellent formula for the future.