86 CASA VOGUE INDIA 2016 www.vogue.in

MAR

CO C

RAIG1MMid-April this year, when I meet Spanish de-

signer Patricia Urquiola, 55, for the fi rst time, she’s beleaguered by a fl urry of fans at the fa-mous Spazio Pontaccio in Milan’s Design dis-trict, Brera. She’s there to launch a new capsule collection, Credenza, a collaboration with the graphic designer Federico Pepe.

Architect and product designer, Urquiola is a name associated with some of the best brands in the world—Georg Jensen, Louis Vuitton, Pan-erai, Gianvito Rossi. Now, as the art director of Italian furniture brand Cassina, she is presiding upon objects that celebrate her love for elegant functionality. After designing Lodha Group’s premier property in London, she is pegged to design their new apartment block in Mumbai.

Ask her for her opinion on trends for this year and you realise you’ve stepped on a conversa-tional landmine. She dismisses the idea of ‘trends’ as just a tool to communicate with—something that doesn’t exist in reality. “When you are designing something you never think about whether your work fi ts in with a trend. With Molteni a few years ago, we realised that society is moving in a particular direction, and that is what informs the design. It is not the other way around.” The ‘anti-trend’

Urquiola shares with Casa Vogue the rules she follows:

Mistress of design PATRICIA

URQUIOLA may be

vociferously averse to predicting trends, but

there are some that never go out of style.

She tells RUE KOTHARI her four golden

rules of design

I N S P I R E

It’s all about simplicity: Tuning into the growing movement for what has been termed New Simplicity, Urquiola acknowledges that this is possibly the biggest challenge for all designers —a purity of approach. “At Cassina, we wanted to take traditional pieces and simplify them, using dif-ferent moulds and mate-rials. It’s so delicate that it wasn’t easy. When I was working with Georg Jensen,” she says of the deco-in-spired desk accessories she made for the Danish brand early this year, “we were given the space to play with porcelain, evolving the way we built the mould. They had spent decades learning how to work with steel. We simply wanted to coat it in copper, but the whole idea was so com-plex that we had to re-think the entire process—rebuild the machine.”

‘Antibodi’ lounge chair, Moroso

‘Credenza’ room divider, Spazio

Pontaccio

Patricia Urquiola, at her studio, is

currently the art director of Cassina

3

in designcasa

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Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate—for a richer

approach: Urquiola is enthused by all the pos-sibilities. “Art direction requires you to be more generous; you have to go deep inside the com-pany to understand it fi rst, before you can im-prove, change the rules and grow,” she says. She’s all about the collaboration—and the ros-ter of brands who’ve enlisted her reads like a who’s who in contemporary design. “Yes, I partner with a lot of different companies. I’m very easy to collaborate with,” she laughs.

“For Cassina, we dug into their heritage to rediscover the Utrecht chair,” she says of the iconic piece design by Gerrit Rietveld in 1935. This revival, in collaboration with Bertjan Pot, recovered in sculptural block print, is part of Urquiola’s fi rst collection with Cassina, which also includes pieces by Ora Ito, Philippe Starck and the late Zaha Hadid. “Bringing together the

historic piece with a new designer and understanding that we can create

new value in a humble and hu-man way is the future of cre-

ativity. It’s all about a global market with local values, or a local market with global values.”

Let the past dictate the present: After more than

two decades in the industry, Urquiola has formed a way of working that resonates with her emotionally. Drawing deeply from

her personal heritage, the Spaniard is inspired by memories of growing up as part of a large

family, little vignettes like her mother’s love of English designer David Hicks. Her formal design education at the hands of Achille Castiglione and godfather of modern Italian design

Vico Magistretti honed her vision and her skills. “There needs to be a good bal-

ance in what you do—in your research,

attitude, values. And if this is well melded with the possibilities that so-ciety and technology offer you—you can make a project with real soul,” she says.

Embrace technology to bring democracy in design: As an architect too, Urquiola is fascinated by the way spaces are evolving—how offi ces are no longer the prisons of the past, but instead better organised, to allow workers to thrive. “If you want to play with an old item and reimagine it with new materials, technology allows you to do this, to make it better, more sustainable.”

“All of this helps me to grow,” she says, of the search for design’s next revolution. “What you do today is the beginning of something new,” she says. With her upcoming projects for Mo-roso, and a new mid-range Giulia hotel in Mi-lan, she’s advocating for more democracy in de-sign, building projects that are not just for the luxury consumer.

Her Bandas collection for Italian brand Gan in 2015 took her to a village in south India, where craftspeople have perfected a unique kind of needlework. Inspired by the embellished fabric, she created cus-tomisable runners fi tted with Velcro, that could be added to any upholstery. It was in-

novation employed for the best means: to update the modern home and bring commerce to the less fortunate. ■

PLANET URQUIOLA

Playful and poetic, Urquiola’s signature

style is also pragmatic and functional. We

look at few trends that have dominated her

repertoire

PLAYING WITH SHAPE Sinuous and at times whimsical

shapes dominate her designs. It

was her sculptural ‘Fjord’ chair for

Moroso in 2002, now included in

MoMA’s permanent collection, that made

her a big-league designer. Later, her ‘Fat-Fat’ collection for B&B Italia brought out the

voluptuousness in design.

BOLD APPROACH Away from the

monotony of greys, she’s known for her

generous use of bright colours, prints and textures. Her Lana

Manga collection for Gan Rugs exemplifi es this in a riot of colours

and sizes.

EMBRACING TRADITION

Her penchant for patchwork and weaves often shows up in her work. From macramé chairs to crochet rugs,

her love for woven craft has stuck with her since

her 2004 ‘Flo’ chairs for Driade.

Urquiola collaborated with Bertjan Pot in reviving the ‘Utrecht’ chair for Cassina

Emu’s ‘Re-Trouvè’ chairs combine ’50s curvy design with modern production

The ‘Bandas’ chair modules by Gan Rugs were handcrafted in India

‘Tropicalia’ armchair, Moroso