The professional history of the master Tobia Scarpa is studded with awards and accolades since, with his work consistently and constantly at the service of beauty, she has been able to write the history of Italian design and elect him in all respects as an artistic event. Born in Venice in 1935, Tobia Scarpa work in the city with the professional and personal help of his wife Afra Bianchin, with which signature architectural projects now entered the historical heritage of our nation.
architectural the work, spouses Scarpa assemble a vocation dedicated to furnishing large offices of Veneto companies, among which C & B, Benetton, Unifor and Geox, by designing also the operational headquarters and factories where they are produced by clothing. We are in the 60s, a period of turmoil in the world of design, but the spouses Scarpa do not adhere to any specific movement, reserving the right to continue their work outside the box and distinguished by great stylistic value choices.
The couple won the 1970 Compasso d'Oro, the most coveted prize dedicated to the world of design and began a series of collaborations with major national furnishing names, such as Flos, Gavina, Cassina and Stildomus. Memorable and still recognized as large pieces of furniture today are the beds Vanessa, designed for Cassina and the sofa Bastiano for the historic Gavina brand. The bed Vanessa, element adored by the best design lover presents a completely made of painted metal, which is tinged with saturated colors such as red China, the deep black and optical white. What surprises of this element is the purity of the forms, the simplicity of applied geometry, but fails to possess a soul warming and full of passion. The same principle can be found and recognized in the sofa Bastiano, which presents itself consists of a wooden structure and a coating made of leather. Saturated colors, deep and bourgeois of this much-loved 1961 dated sofa assemble a quality and a comfort that wrote the furnishing history, as this piece of furniture can be considered the precursor of modern sofa beds. By moving the cushions the available area is in fact incredibly wide, comfortable, cozy: the ideal choice to create the best rest.
All this is Tobia Scarpa, a man with the help of his wife and intelligence has been able to create pieces of design that now have become part of the collective imagination and that will never be forgotten as they are perfect works, and adaptable to any historical epoch. These traits can be recognized in lighting systems created for the Flos brand. In particular, the Blaise system and the Ghost system can be considered as cornerstones of Italian lighting design. While Biagio owes its success to the use of quality materials such as Carrara marble and the anthemic form an elegant spatial geometry, the Phantom of the element can only be defined cutting edge, because it is a slender pedestal and made of glass fibers on a metallic armor.
It's amazing to understand how each work of spouses shoe has become a landmark in contemporary design, as the echoes of their work are widely visible in the works of the present and in the inspirations of that produced in series. All of this is a credit to this pair of artists, who were able to cross the boundaries of space and time, proposing works that will last forever.