22
23
M&C 13
#MolteniGroup
Yabu Pushelberg
We design places and products:
immersive environments, compelling
destinations, and considered goods.
George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg
founded our studio in 1980 with
an emphasis on interior design
and have since expanded our firm
into a multidisciplinary practice
that addresses multiple layers
of human experience. With offices
in New York and Toronto and a team
of more than a hundred creatives
and professionals, we design
buildings, interiors, landscapes,
lighting, furniture, objects, and
graphics with a focus that goes
well beyond what things look like,
to how they make people feel.
Our firm and founders have earned
many honours, including being
appointed Officers of the Order
of Canada, inducted into the Interior
Design Hallof Fame, and named
among the world’s most influential
design studios by Wallpaper*, Elle
Decor, Hospitality Design, and the
Business of Fashion. But the trophy
shelf is not our primary concern.
We’re always focused on what’s next,
and continually search for the new
and innovative, as we strive to
conceive the memorable experiences
of tomorrow. Our clients include
leading hotel and resort brands,
developers, retailers, restaurateurs,
manufacturers, entrepreneurs
and creative individuals looking
to stand apart from the crowd.
With an approachable, collaborative
way of designing and solving
problems, we believe in dreaming big
and vaulting over obstacles to arrive
at fresh new solutions. We bring the
same attention to detail to every
project, from tabletop objects to
expansive new developments,
and actively look for partners who
share our passion for doing better
than what has been done before.
For us, it’s all about designing the
world we want to live in.
Art of Living
by Peter Hefti
Yabu
Pushelberg
Taking a Bow
Interview Oli Stratford
This year sees
the multidisciplinary
design practice
Yabu Pushelberg
make its Molteni&C
debut with Surf,
a new sofa that recalls
the soft undulations
of waves on a shore.
Here, studio founders
Glenn Pushelberg
and George Yabu
discuss their process.
How did the collaboration
with Molteni&C come about?
Glenn Pushelberg We did some
experimentation with a cantilevered kitchen
system for the company a few years ago,
although in the end that didn’t really fly. But
that project did allow us to get to know the
company and the family – Carlo especially.
George Yabu He was serious about what
he did and had a clear passion. Every year we
go to see them at Salone, and five years ago
Carlo was showing us this wonderful, iconic
sofa with laser-cut leather seats, which had
been cut so it looked like an asterisk that
was punctuated throughout the leather seat.
Carlo asked what we thought of it and I said
it was very sculptural – he said that I should
design him a better one. Five years on,
we thought maybe we should design
a sofa for him.
How do you approach designing
a familiar typology like a sofa?
George Within design, there a lot of very
rationalised, modular sofa systems,
and then there is the other direction of far
less rational, statement pieces. With this
project, we bulldozed through the middle.
So it’s a modular system, but it’s also got
an emotional value.
Glenn Our work always has a balance
between emotional and rational qualities;
it’s never frivolous, but it still has a point of
view. With Surf, we were sat in a beach house
looking at the waves, and then we started
to sketch them. The final design has that kind
of fluidity and undulation to it. It’s important
that a design has a clarity of view, but it’s
also important that it has its own voice.
Yabu Pushelberg works across a huge
range of projects – product design,
architecture, interiors. How easy do
you find it moving between the
different scales?
Glenn There are parallels and differences
between all the disciplines. Although our firm
is best known for its interiors, our projects are
more holistic than that, and we’re helped
by George’s natural ability to work at smaller
scales and with detail.
George The benefit of working across
scales like that that is that we have context.
When we design a sofa, chair, or drinking
glass, we always imagine it in a space,
whereas people who don’t have that broader
background can sometimes design in isolation
and as a result there’s an austerity to their
work. Industrial design can sometimes take
place in a vacuum.
Glenn We’re interested in the emotional
appeal of an object. We look at the process
of designing a piece of furniture by asking
if we would use it in a project ourselves.
Would we specify it? If the answer is no,
then maybe the design is inappropriate.
Today’s consumer of fine design objects is
interested in context: what is the setting;
what’s the meaning behind it; what’s the
value? All of these things become a part
of the package of creation today.
Art of Living is both Molteni&C|Dada’s 2019 look book and its new advertising
campaign – where the art of living meets beauty, and where the classics of the
Heritage collection sit alongside contemporary pieces, Molteni&C icons and
sophisticated Dada kitchens. A home and a palazzo, the hill between the woods
and the water of Venice, modernity and classicism – different eras and stories
coexist in the interiors that host the Molteni&C and Dada collections.
They are all “Case all’italiana”, like the Palazzo Querini Stampalia in Venice, just a
short walk from St. Mark’s square, the headquarters of the Foundation of the same
name, a museum home open to the public since 1869. Restored in 1963, the palazzo
bears the signature of important architects such as Valeriano Pastor and Mario
Botta, but above all of Carlo Scarpa, a great master who left his mark, both ancient
and modern. “We could say that architecture that we would like to call poetry
should be called harmony, like the face of a beautiful woman”, he wrote.
This is the same harmony that distinguishes the rooms of Villa Carminati,
near lake Maggiore, designed at the end of the 1930s by Romeo Moretti,
assistant to Gaetano Moretti at the Milan Politecnico and a friend of Sant’Elia.
It is a square, two-storey building, with a small inner courtyard. Its wide-ranging
architecture combines classical, medieval, Venetian and modern elements,
linking them together naturally and harmoniously. The villa has belonged to
the same family ever since it was first built, and was intended as a prestigious
venue for important international diplomatic meetings.
Italian-style homes offer a stimulating backdrop for special artistic and cultural
initiatives and events, like the representations of the Molteni&C|Dada home.
Because industry had already fallen in love with art, the meeting between past,
present and contemporary is a piece of Italian heritage worth promoting.
These are, fundamentally, stories of family, determination and challenges.
These are stories of visions conceived in the Italian landscape.
The Art of Living
