Hasta La Ideas

This is easily one of my favorite shots from Salone 2012…

At over six months out, we’re closer to the next Salone than the last one, but seeing as many of the projects we saw in April are worthy of closer examination, we were glad to see the “Sgabellissimo” stool turn up in the inbox last month. We got a first glimpse of the unorthodox two-legged stool (the pictures say it all) in Ventura Lambrate, where architect Claudio Larcher had co-curated the University of Bolzano’s excellent group exhibition “Vertigini.” (In addition to his faculty position at the University, Larcher is a principal of Milan’s Modoloco architecture & design studio, which is producing “Sgabellissimo.”)

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the stool can be inverted as a cartoonishly short ladder, like something out of, say, Super Mario Bros.

Incidentally, “Sgabellissimo” echoes the concept of another stool, submitted by designer Moritz Marder, which similarly requires balance… though it has a radically different form factor.

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