Hasta La Ideas

Reporting by Jenny Hsu

Earlier this year, Parsons The New School for Design and storied Italian furniture manufacturer Poltrona Frau presented Wasteless, a competition where students were asked to repurpose leather scraps from the production floor into new and exciting products. This competition culminated with a visit to Poltrona Frau’s factory, museum, and research and development center in Tolentino, Italy, by the three student winners: Yuna Kim, Benjamin Billick and myself. For one week in July, we were immersed in the brand, its history, and its manufacturing and production processes, as we experienced a unique opportunity to further develop and refine our winning designs. Our time in Tolentino was marked by a rich and open exchange with everyone at Frau, from the brand director to the marketing and communications team, the designers, leather technicians and the master artisans.

We began our week at the Poltrona Frau Museum to sharpen our understanding of the company’s century-long history and identity. This was an essential step in further refining our design into the language of Poltrona Frau. We then were introduced to the Poltrona Frau factory and research lab, which was certainly one of the highlights of our trip (well, come to think of it, everything we did while there blew our minds). We were amazed to observe the artisans at work on a range of projects, from iconic furniture models to the interiors of the latest Ferraris and Maseratis. It’s one thing to read about a technique from a book and trying to master it—but utterly fail every time—and another to witness the artisans perform their magic.

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