Italian brand cerruti baleri’s multi-spatial installation at Milan’s Fuorisalone features an ideal Maison Martin Margiela apartment
Furniture makers Cerruti Baleri’s installations at Milan’s Fuorisalone always manage to combine and convey optimism, surprise and fun. This year the Italian company pushed things further, though, recreating in its via Cavallotti showroom four different “housing models”: a creative atelier featuring trompe l’oeil marble print pieces such as the “Luigina” and “Luigi XV” chair and a sofa by Maurizio Galante and Tal Lancman. It perfectly reflects their multi-faceted creative process; an office space and a canteen with Cerruti Baleri’s own creations including a new interpretation of the “Juliette” chair designed by Hannes Wettstein to celebrate its 25th anniversary, and an entire flat furnished by Maison Martin Margiela.
The showroom turns therefore into what Cerruti Baleri Art Director Federico Carandini calls “dreamy or realistic boxes” spaces where visitors can admire or play with new designs from the Collezioni and Edizioni lines, complemented this year by pieces produced by other companies that have a special synergy with Cerruti Baleri.
Dazed Digital: How did you manage to recreate an ideal Maison Margiela apartmet in the lower floor of the showroom?
Federico Carandini: It was actually a major achievement as we managed to carve out of the lower floor four main rooms that include all the pieces the maison did for us and for other companies such as Galerie B and L’Atelier d’exercices as well, plus iconic Cerruti Baleri pieces. I followed the installation of the Margiela apartment and I think it looks really strong. While the apartment features different spaces - day and night, formal and informal - the emphasis is on the bedroom space, conceived as the nest where the maison’s new products can be admired.
The maison designed for us the surreal “Telo”, a classic upholstered headboard completely transformed by a distortion process that turned it into an asymmetrical headboard; versatile and compact “Easy” and “Lazy”, a bed desk and a bed table. They look like proper furniture pieces as they are completely made in wood, but they come in a mignon size, and “Lolo”, a sort of deconstructed open armoire structure ideal to store clothes, books or even kitchenware that can be combined with a separate closing element, an external folding screen called “Mademoiselle”.
DD: Did you decide to also integrate products by other companies in the installation to make the recreated spaces look more realistic?
Federico Carandini: This was one of the reasons, but we also opted for this choice as the products complete and complement each other beautifully and because we feel that collaborating together with other producers is important especially in the difficult times we’re all going through.
The cerruti baleri showroom in via Felice Cavallotti, Milan, is open until 22nd April from 10.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m. Showroom images by Andrea Martiradonna; product images by Ezio Manciucca
