While the 1980s are back in a big way in the fashion houses of Paris and Milan, the furniture industry is also having a revival – or in this case a re-launch – of one Austro-Italian designer Paolo Piva, and his most famous design, the Alanda.
During Milan Design Week in 2018, B&B Italia featured the work of a number of architects and designers – Antonio Citterio, Naoto Fukasawa and Piero Lissoni, but it was Paolo Piva, synonymous with the innovation-led journey of Italy’s furniture industry, who stood out.
Paolo Piva studied architecture under the guidance of celebrated architect Carlo Scarpa in Venice and it was that beginning, during Italy’s second design renaissance when craft and innovation spectacularly merged that would shape his career. Research into new ways to make things became the designer’s focus, and working with Italian furniture houses in the 1970s opened up possibilities and opportunities to push both materials and manufacturing processes.
The re-launched Alanda table, with the Tufty-Too sofa and the Grande Papilio armchairs, is contemporary today as it was when first launched in the 1980s. Photo c/o B&B Italia.
Working with B&B Italia in the early 80s on the Alanda series, the collaboration began with a sofa and a bed and continued with the now iconic Alanda coffee table. With a glass top and wire frame base, its design captures a moment in time that could be read as an anti-Memphis statement Its transparent glass top and simple folded wire base everything but the loud clash of colour and texture of the exuberant design movement.
Alanda's anti-Memphis statement with Its transparent glass top and simple folded wire base, and following. All photos c/o B&B Italia
Portrait of Paolo Piva. Photo c/o B&B Italia.
Cooler than Studio 54 and exquisitely simple in its execution, the Alanda’s structure is both its pedestal and support, with a large glass slab to finish – and there is its beauty, reminiscent of the work of another famous Italian, Achille Castiglioni, who also re-imagined industrial materials and parts to create beauty from the basics. After more than a decade since the Alanda was last in production, B&B Italia pays homage to the late and great Paolo Piva with the table's much anticipated return.
More Space Summer Reading Series – 'Alanda is back, and with it the 80s' was selected from the More Space archive for the 2022 Summer Reading Series. The story first appeared in More Space on 7 August, 2018.
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