Hasta La Ideas

Our second story today featuring products presented like model kits is Italian designer Fabio Novembre‘s window installation for Tommy Hilfiger at La Rinascente department stores.

I Have a Lifestyle included Fabio Novembre‘s interpretation of a man’s wardrobe, with items from the autumn 2013 Tommy Hilfiger Tailored campaign displayed alongside items including a champagne bottle, headphones and a bicycle to create a men’s lifestyle kit.

The kit of parts was split into sections, with a mannequin and small accessories on one side, clothing and larger accessories in the centre, then sports equipment at the other end.

“The final result was a still-life composite of the essential items a man should have in his wardrobe inspired by Tommy Hilfiger’s quintessentially all-American aesthetic,” said Novembre.

Pieces were held in place by interlocking metal tubes and the whole installation was painted blue.

The display was installed at La Rinascente in Rome in September, before it was moved to the Milan store for October.

Fabio Novembre is pleased to announce a collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger for its Fall 2013 Tommy Hilfiger Tailored campaign to create an artistic window display. The unique installation will be revealed in the windows of La Rinascente in Rome from 10 to 23 September 2013, and then in La Rinascente in Milan from 8 to 14 October.

Titled “I Have a Lifestyle”, the installation is Novembre’s creative interpretation of a man’s wardrobe, incorporating pieces from the Tommy Hilfiger Tailored collection. The piece features metal tubing with interlocking pipes running throughout, each coated with navy blue nitro and acrylic paint.

An expression of men’s lifestyle, the final result is a still-life composite of the essential items a man should have in his wardrobe inspired by Tommy Hilfiger’s quintessentially all-American aesthetic. Novembre’s “I Have a Lifestyle” installation will appear in the windows of La Rinascente, Italy’s most renowned department store, in both Rome and Milan.

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by Fabio Novembre for Tommy Hilfiger appeared first on Dezeen.

Milan 2013: Fabio Novembre presented these giant skull-shaped chairs for Italian brand Gufram at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile last week.

Jolly Roger by Fabio Novembre for Gufram comes in black and white and is made from rotationally moulded polyethylene.

“When people ask me why I wear a skull on my finger, I always answer that it belonged to my grand-father, who was a pirate, and I think I came to believe it myself,” says Novembre. “Everybody should have at least one pirate grand-father in their family tree: it would represent a strong branch to cling to.”

This isn’t the first time Novembre has sculpted giant body parts to form furniture: two years ago in Milan he presented huge faces for sitting in and prior to that he launched a pair of chairs that look like kneeling naked figures.

Fabio Novembre gave us a tour of his home city to kick off the Milan leg of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour. Watch the movie »

See all our stories about Fabio Novembre »
See all our stories about design at Milan 2013 »

Here’s some more information about Jolly Roger:

The product is a demand for freedom; a synonym of intellectual independence that follows a brave path, by keeping away from the standardized typological doldrums of the interior design project, and marks a new planning horizon.

And here is the homage; the scornful tribute to these unwritten codes of audacity and derring- do: Jolly Roger. A chair that formally hints to the skull – the symbol of swagger painted on the red standard of French and then English corsairs and freebooters, terror of the seven seas.

And it is the globe itself to remain suspended in the internal frame – a map surrounded by the oceans; the desire for insatiable conquest; almost an exhortation not to keep still; a warning: never forget you are sitting on the world.

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for Gufram appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: designers including Marcel Wanders, Yves Behar, Tom Dixon and Konstantin Grcic discuss the importance of Milan design week, which ended in the city yesterday, and whether it can retain its title as the world’s leading event.

Each April, the world’s leading designers descend on the city for the fair still regarded as the most important in the world. “I come to Milan every year,” says Yves Behar. “It’s the obligatory stop.”

“It’s a moment I can’t miss,” agrees Stephen Burks. “It’s the most important week in the design calendar.”

They are joined by hundreds of thousands of international visitors including students, journalists, buyers and younger designers trying to get their work noticed.

“It gives lots of young designers a great thrill to come here and get discovered,” says Ron Arad. “My entire design team comes here to suck up new ideas and ensure they’re seeing the latest and the greatest,” says Anders Warming, head of design at MINI.

The fair owes its importance to the emergence of Milan as the world’s key centre for the design and manufacture of both furniture and products after the devastation of the Second World War, playing a key role in Italy’s economic recovery. “All of the important history of post-war furniture design happened here,” says Konstantin Grcic.

The official fair, the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, as well as the Fuori Salone events around the city, grew over the years into the sprawling citywide festival it is today. “There was a lot of excitement around [the fair], starting in the early eighties with Memphis and [Studio] Alchimia,” says Arad, citing two of the most influential Milanese design studios of the last century.

However the economic crisis of recent years and the emergence of rival design centres combined to make this year’s fair a more sober affair than recent years. “I feel like there’s a return to the reason why we are all here, which is the actual commerce of the fair,” says Johanna Agerman Ross, editor-in-chief of Disegno magazine.

“It’s certainly got much, much more competition these days,” says journalist and curator Henrietta Thompson. “The London Design Festival is fantastic these days but also Stockholm and Paris.”

Milan-based designer Fabio Novembre touches on the reasons why the city might be losing its edge: “It’s hard to take a group of Italians and make them all go in one direction,” he says. “That explains why we’re in a big crisis and why we are almost losing the importance of Salone del Mobile.”

Joseph Grima, editor-in-chief of Milanese design magazine Domus, agrees. “The city is really in need of someone who’s going to have a vision for the future,” he says.

“Milan remains the only place where you can still see everybody in one go,” says Tom Dixon. “Whether it can maintain that top spot … is hard to tell. It becomes impossible to navigate the city, you can’t get a taxi, you can’t get a hotel room and you can’t afford space to show your goods.”

Look out for more reports from Milan as part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour in the coming days. The car featured in the movie is the MINI Paceman.

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the design calendar” appeared first on Dezeen.

Glass silhouettes of male and female figures reach out to each other across the tiled floor of this Milan fashion boutique by Italian designer Fabio Novembre.

Located on Milan’s Corso Venezia, the new Who*s Who store is dominated by a series of human figures, each striking a different pose.

Fabio Novembre used the glass profiles, which are screen-printed with tiny tessellated shapes, to divide the racks of clothing.

The walls are clad in polished stainless steel and the floor is covered in monochrome ceramic tiles.

The boutique opens on 8 April to coincide with the furniture fair and numerous other design events and exhibitions taking place in the city between 9 and 14 April – see all news about Milan 2013.

We previously featured another boutique interior by the same designer dominated by two giant blue busts and last year we filmed a two-part interview with Novembre in which he talked about the changes taking place in the Italian design scene – see all projects by Fabio Novembre.

Photographs are by Pasquale Formisano.

Here’s some more information from Who’s Who:

The brand that has become a symbol of modernity and femininity, confirms its international vocation and presents the new concept that shall characterise its boutiques. In order to develop the new retail strategy and create an innovative design, Who’s Who engaged Fabio Novembre, an eclectic, imaginative and contemporary architect who, with a surprising project, succeeded in highlighting the company’s DNA with a strong, meaningful and long-sighted concept.

The boutiques become an ideal set for a meeting between a man and a woman, represented by outsized sculpted glass figures, which seem to be walking slowly across space while their hands search for each other until they brush against each other, in a free interpretation that reminds one of Michelangelo.

A surreal scene in which the wrought steel walls reflect a multiple reality, making it fluid; the floor, slowly sloping towards the side walls, is the only hint showing the direction to go, because, as the architect points out, “only the spark of love can light the flame of creation” of any kind. “We like to say that the name Who’s Who refers to the search for an identity, to the constant leaning towards something that is not the self,” says Novembre.

The ideal location for the launch of this ambitious plan is Milan’s “Quadrilatero della Moda” : the first shop opened recently in Corso Venezia 8. This important retail project was strongly supported by Massimiliano Dossi, the head of the company, and the opening of another single-brand boutique, this time in Forte Dei Marmi is scheduled for the end of March, Forte Dei Marmi is a strategic Italian location, given its status of internationally renowned sea town.

In 2013 Who’s Who scheduled the opening of at least four other boutiques in areas in which the brand has been quite successful in the past several years: China, the Middle East and Russia. Finally, the three-year plan, which will come to an end in 2015, includes the opening of at least 22 single-brand shops around the world.

Project name: Who’s Who
Location: Milano, Corso Venezia
Client: Max-Company
Architect: Fabio Novembre
Design team: Dino Cicchetti, Giulio Vescovi
Contractor: Buzzoni
Total area: 85 sqm

Floor covering: Ceramic tiled floor (Mutina Tex)
Furniture: Glass shelves system; polished stainless steel hanging.
Special elements: Male and female silhouette made by structural glass decorated with screen printed asterisks side-illuminated by LED strips; wall covered with Exyd Product Line M (stainless steel)
Ceiling: Barrisol Blanc Vénus
Lighting: Spotlights, LED strips, fluorescent lamp

The post Who*s Who boutique
by Fabio Novembre appeared first on Dezeen.

Two giant blue busts face each other across this Hong Kong boutique by Italian designer Fabio Novembre (+ slideshow).

Novembre designed the interior of the HIT Gallery concept store, a branch of Italian retail group Ittiere, as a contemporary interpretation of a piazza. “The HITGallery stores we plan to open around the globe will capture the essence and spirit of Italy in wonderful new ways,” he explains.

The busts are shaped from perpendicular planes of wood slotted together to create shelves on which accessories are displayed.

The walls are painted with the same light blue as the figures and a monochrome zig-zag pattern covers the floor.

“The colour defining the walls – a neutral shade bordering between green and sky or cerulean blue – defies classification, so becoming the ideal backdrop for all the brands sold in the store,” says Novembre.

The design was inspired by the surrealist paintings of Greek-born Italian artist Giorgio De Chirico, which often feature faceless figures and arched colonnades.

Arched niches line three walls of the store, each containing garments hung from rails or shoes and bags on glass shelves. A curved wall punctured by more arches separates the cash desk from the rest of the shop.

Walls near to the shop window are angled to accommodate a column on one side and distort the perspective created by the entirely symmetrical layout.

The store is located in the Times Square shopping centre on Hong Kong island. Photography is by Dennis Lo.

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by Fabio Novembre appeared first on Dezeen.