Bianca Felicori: three design pieces that inspire her work

Strips 77, Arflex, design by Cini Boeri

Design Watching, the Salone del Mobile.Milano’s new column, gives a voice to design professionals. Every month, a selection of products, ideas and visions

Design Watching is the Salone del Mobile’s new column that, month by month, highlights the vision of journalists and insiders in the design world. The voices of those who have their hands on the pulse of this industry, voices with experience and attentive to current issues: from innovation to technology, passing through sustainability and social changes. Design pieces, insights and curiosities recounted directly by a professional in the sector with decades of experience and expertise.

The first appointment is with Bianca Felicori, architect, curator and researcher at UCLouvain in Brussels. Bianca is, among much else, the author of an interesting editorial project: Forgotten Architecture. Launched with a Facebook group on 28 May 2019 to bring together and share architectural projects forgotten or left in the shadows in Europe and the rest of the world, today it is a volume published by Nero Edition, the result of years of careful research and the collection of photographic materials, documents and drawings from professional studios, private archives and institutions. A collector's volume that sports contributions by photographers such as Giovanna Silva, Luca Caizzi, Federico Torra, Roberto Conte, Stefano Perego, as well as great architecture and design studios and archives such as those of Gaetano Pesce, Fornasetti, Nanda Vigo and Vitra.

Tizio, Artemide, design by Richard Sapper

Tizio was the lamp that accompanied my childhood for as long as I can remember, but it always played a central role, especially in my own home. It was the lamp of discord. My mother couldn't stand it, my father adored it. Goodness known why, but my father would always keep it on the table where we ate all our main meals, lunches and dinners. My mother considered it cumbersome (and it was true), my father, I now believe, had become attached to that constant squabbling. And so had I.

Strips 77, Arflex, design by Cini Boeri

The sofa, by far my favorite furnishing. I eat on the sofa (always, I never eat seated properly at table), I sleep there, I work there, I make love there. I welcome my friends, receive confessions, we exchange affection and drink a glass of wine. The sofa is the only thing that should never be missing in every space I live in. I chose Cini Boeri's Strips 77 because it is the sofa of my dreams, and because of the immense respect I have for Cini Boeri for surviving the masculine dimension of the world of architecture and design in the darkest times. Cini Boeri is the symbol of a resistance for which I struggle every day.

Shoto Table, Maruni, design by Cecilie Manz

A table because I dream of one day having a family to gather around it, since we won’t all fit on the sofa. A table as an image of a future in which to imagine creating a new domestic dimension around it that is still unknown to me. A table to put my parents' Tizio back on, and think back to those serene and peaceful days with my mother, my sister and my father united.