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Driadeland collection will be presented in Milan from 22 to 27 April 2009. This land is inhabited by knights and troubadours – the designers – each intent on telling their story. In Driadeland these different stories find their space, combining and merging before separating again, creating an intentionally delicate and emotionally engaging equilibrium. These stories tell of different languages, distant roots (from Japan to the USA, from Italy to Belgium and Spain), but together they create a unique epic novel: the Driade novel.

On one hand there is the style of each of the designers, and on the other there are our individual tastes, our ability as inhabitants of houses to find different ways of combining pieces that stand out with their special character. And so the Driade house of 2009 gathers news words by Miki Astori, Giuseppe Chigiotti, Naoto Fukasawa, Laudani&Romanelli, Xavier Lust, Jonathan Olivares, Philippe Starck, Oscar Tusquets and Marco Zanuso jr, and – like pieces in a puzzle – adds them to words that have already been written in the history of “the art of living” and in the Driade catalogue by Antonia Astori, Ron Arad, Mario Bellini, Borek Sipek, Tokujin Yoshioka, Fabio Novembre and Enzo Mari.

Miki Astori: HOTBOX, MEZ
The young Miki Astori is an “old-style” designer, in the sense that he can receive precise and complex design briefs and carefully develop them while avoiding stereotypes.For Driade, in the 2009 collection, Miki Astori responds to two important requirements. On one hand the “single furniture unit”, HOTBOX, and on the other the “small outdoor table”, A TABLE FOR TWO. The single furniture unit HOTBOX is certainly a little used typology, but this does not make it superfluous. Indeed, it can prove to be instrumental in the renovation of large industrial lofts or in the parallel and opposing reuse of historic buildings where the walls are to be left as free as possible. Strengthened by the experience accumulated with Driade in the use of aluminium as a facing material, and supported by some recent work done in the field of office furniture, Miki has opted for a rounded form on the front that in itself states the exceptional nature of the purpose.

The MEZ table is inspired by the oriental culinary tradition, with which he is well acquainted. Characterized by a central rotating plate, it offers a different way of presenting food on the table and thus, for us Westerners, also a different way of approaching conviviality.

Giuseppe Chigiotti: HOFF sofa, HOFF bed, MAK
Of the possible paths open to a designer in search of inspiration, Giuseppe Chigiotti embarks on one that is entirely unusual: instead of looking at the latest technologies or social customs, he engages a process of interior analysis and searching. Presented with the task of designing a sofa (as well as a bed that proceeds from it), Chigiotti cast his mind to the great Vienna of the early 20th century where Wagner and Loos, along with Kokoschka, Klimt and Schiele, listened to Mahler and Schoenberg, and read Schnitzler and Freud. In particular, he thought of Josef Hoffmann (somewhat explicitly, given that the sofa is called Hoff) and his attempts to “geometrize the world”, which he assumed as a rational response to the sensual biomorphism of liberty.

MAK, a small, articulated tall table on castors, destined to be combined with both the sofa and the bed, allowing a “homely” use of the laptop.

Naoto Fukasawa: TAKU, ZAZA
Perhaps you need to come from far away to be able to take a fresh perspective on the most important typologies of European furniture (the table and the chair). Naoto Fukasawa knows how to read the structure, stripping it of every superstructure.
Naoto is able to see beauty where many of us would only see a custom of forms that have already been consumed. The TAKU table (taku means “table” in Japanese) perhaps constitutes the most obvious proof of this. Fukusawa has subjected it to what we would call an operation of “calibre”, adding and especially subtracting centimetres, even millimetres, from the table’s archetypal structure, which has always been the same (in convents, monasteries, dining halls, farmhouses and palaces alike): slight deviations of size in a search for “the idea of the table”.

The same applies to the ZAZA chair (where za in Japanese means “chair” and the repetition of the sound more precisely indicates “the” chair). Naoto picks up on a model that was widespread in the postwar period, identifying the perfect consistency of the parts, highlighting the volumetric value with the material and the colour, and finally re-proposing it to us as a “choice” or luxury object.

Xavier Lust: VIRGO, SOURCE
Xavier Lust expresses this vocation today in VIRGO, a “system in a state of tension” that assumes the appearance of a “centre-room bookcase”, but in reality leads us to think about the relationships between concave and convex surfaces, and the energy of a cord held taught in an arc. VIRGO’s highly distinctive form not only allows it to be placed against a wall, but above all in the centre of a space: bring books into the middle of the room.

This more antique image is portrayed in the base of the small table SOURCE: a flow of lava? Is it an ancient rounded column that has become cone-shaped and shiny?

Philippe Starck: MOOR(e), OSCAR BON
For Philippe Starck the second instance holds true. In the case of the MOOR(e) armchair, the game appears to be more fascinating than ever. Is it a homage to the supreme art of the sculptor Henry Moore? Just as Moore led sculpture from tradition to modernity, Starck manages to reintroduce tradition into modernity.

Extreme lightness (little more than two kilos) is the first quality of OSCAR BON, a chair made entirely of a new material for this application: the carbon fibre usually used in the aviation sector. With Starck’s customary skill and essential forms, the technological innovation is applied to a simple, enveloping and strikingly modern shape. The chair is also suitable for outdoor use.

Oscar Tusquets: SALOMONICA, FLOATING SOFA, LUCAS
By now it is clear that Oscar represents the most genuine spirit of Spanish design. It is not a simple spirit: uncompromising and supported by the versatility of being able to encroach on the bordering territories of art and architecture.

The SALOMONICA table is actually the pretext for designing a base. If on one hand this base draws on the iron and cast-iron structures of popular Mediterranean tradition, on the other it is transformed into an abstract image, a sort of ideogram marked out with a soft brush .

The FLOATING SOFA is a boat, a ship, a nutshell, self-sufficient, marked by the individual headrests, by the button-back design that puffs out like foam held in place by the distinctly geometric edges. LUCAS, which was first launched in 1989 and is re-proposed today with its exuberant and sensual design, is an armchair with a structure in polished cast aluminium, arms in shaped steel covered with red leather, and a padded seat and backrest covered with red wool mohair velvet.

Marco Zanuso: OYSTER I, II, TIGO
It is indisputable that another intermediary dimension exists between design and art. There are products that, while having a function, are also marked by a particularly sophisticated attention to form, helped by a very astute constructive method and a choice of materials that enhances the specificities.

Marco Zanuso jr., with his collection of tables OYSTER I and II, and also with the TIGO dining table, thinks in terms of “artistic design”, but has chosen the second of the two possible routes and entrusted the production of his work to Driade. As a result, objects for daily use are given sophisticated geometries that, particularly with OYSTER I and II, can be traced back to the facets of a diamond and are enhanced by the “precious metal” finish.