FOLIA at Lake Como Design Festival: Devoto Design + Naessi

FOLIA at Lake Como Design Festival 2023. Friends before collaborators, Studio Naessi involved Devoto Design in the development of an original collection of sustainable furniture that we’re exciting to show you today.  

Technically, well knowing the capabilities of Devoto Design, we decided to enhance both the use of the curving techniques and the surface finishing techniques such as the use of veneers.  (Studio Naessi)

This collection of sustainable furniture will be presented at Lake Como Design Festival 2023, come to its 5th edition, that is taking place from 16th to 24th September 2023 in Como.

Every year Lake Como Design Festival focuses on a different topic and is divided into several events that take place in the pulsing heart of Como and along its breathtaking lake. The main purpose is that of promoting a dialogue between history, design, architecture and art.

The topic of this fifth edition is the observation of nature. Title is “Naturalis Historia”  inspired by the homonymous work by writer and naturalist Pliny the Elder. This year falls the two-thousand-years anniversary of his birth (Como, 23 d.C.).

FOLIA at Lake Como Design Festival: the wavy furniture

According to the topic of the festival, the collection by Studio Naessi and Devoto Design is called “FOLIA” since it is basically inspired by the macro structure of the leaves.

We asked Studio Naessi to tell us more about the origin of such an evocative name:

The plant kingdom is full of light and apparently fragile three-dimensional surfaces. FOLIA, the research, stems from the desire to bring wood, a natural material, back to the organic form which it comes from. By merging traditional cabinetry processes with contemporary transformation techniques such as thermoforming, we have obtained wavy surfaces in maple briar with a glossy finish. This is the basic material for the development of the first outputs of the FOLIA Collection: two occasional tables and a console. (Studio Naessi)

FOLIA: materials and finishes

The core of the FOLIA furniture is in recycled panels obtained from the waste of the food industry (rice husks).

We are talking about a sustainable and recyclable material that is also lighter than wood fiber panels or MDF.

The skin of the FOLIA collection is maple briar. It is commonly considered a “non-noble” part of the tree because knobby and veined, with different degrees of opacity and lacking the elegant fiber which is typical of wood essence. The use of briar has ancient origins, though, has always been part of the Italian cabinetry tradition and in the 19th century was largely used to make valuable and precious furniture.

The chosen finish is organic and has got a high decorative potential, exclusively conceived to be paired with explicitly contemporary-designed furniture.

FOLIA, an eco-friendly and collaborative project

Conceived by Studio Naessi, the collection was designed and tailored to the cutting-edge technology and techniques Devoto Design can offer:

TOGETHER WE DECIDED TO ABANDON THE PARADIGM of carved and turned solid wood used to obtain three-dimensional and sculptural forms. Instead, we chose to obtain curved shapes by hot bending the panel between two moulds that we made ad hoc. In this way the material is not wasted and the folding of the panels takes place very quickly, with little waste of energy and resources. (Studio Naessi)

Thanks to our friends and designers Alessandro D’Angeli and Eleonora Carbone of Studio Naessi for answering our questions.

If you are planning to go to Lake Como Design Festival, don’t forget to have a look at the FOLIA collection and have a quick word with us!

THE FOLIA COLLECTION PROJECT brings out both our technological and craftsmanship skills. The construction process behind FOLIA perfectly matches these two souls of ours. We thank Naessi for being able to converge and turn this into the elegance, fineness and beauty of the FOLIA collection. (Marianna Devoto, CCO Devoto Design)

Links:

• Lake Como Design Festival 2023 > the official website
• Studio Naessi > the official website