How Piero Lissoni fulfilled a design promise to B&B Italia

When we last caught up with Piero Lissoni he had just returned from a visit to Mexico. This time it was Iceland, a country he describes as 'unbelievable' and a cinematic show with an 'absurd contrast of scenography – black sand, white snow, and incredibly green grass'. Describing the inspiration of experiences without 'the classical level of show off', is much like Piero Lissoni's approach to design: pared back to the essential elements of process, material and form. 

Working across architecture, graphics, exhibition and furniture design, Lissoni and Associates is a thriving creative hub, with projects for furniture groups including Living Divani, Porro and Kartell, the design of houses, apartments and hotels, including the recently completed Roomers Hotel Baden-Baden in Germany and the Grand Hotel in the spa town of Saint-Vincent, to the visual identity for the International Film Festival organised by the Venice Biennale. Here, we discuss Piero's first project with B&B Italia, a collaboration that began as a toast over dinner with B&B Italia's founder Piero Ambrogio Busnelli more than 20 years ago.

More Space: Last time we chatted was just over a year ago and you had returned from Mexico and were about to go skiing in New Zealand. Where did you go for summer this year?

Piero Lissoni: I spent time on the Italian seaside in Forte dei Marmi, a very beautiful place, then at my house in the southern part of Tuscany which is very wild, very pure and very natural, and then I spent a few days in Iceland to see the volcanoes and the huge glaciers. Ice and fire, very interesting. It was my first time in Iceland, it is such a beautiful island, the nature there is just incredible. The landscape looks a little bit science fiction and I kept asking myself, “is it true or not?”. It’s a cinematic show with an absurd contrast of scenography – black sand, white snow, and incredibly green grass. It’s outstanding for the beauty. I feel very privileged to be able to live and be inspired by many different experiences without the classical level of show off, it’s very special without the pressure.

Does travel help with the design of hotels, for example the Grand Hotel in the spa town of Saint-Vincent, or the Roomers Hotel in the Black Forest?

Yes, and no, I do use my experiences but in the end I am a bit traditional. I don’t like design hotels which sounds a bit strange I know. Twenty years ago hotels were so boring, dusty and a bit old, and the design hotel was fresh like somebody had opened the window. Of course that was an incredible and positive moment and perhaps it helped to change our relationships with those public spaces. Then everyone wanted a design hotel with yellow neon light with one simple bench and two cushions. Now after 20 years, I like to combine together many different experiences and aspects. When I design hotels I like to use a contamination, like in Baden-Baden which is set in a pure, beautiful place in the Black Forest of Germany. There I played with antique paintings, the wall of cuckoo clocks, and with contemporary furniture and antique carpets. That is my idea of something new.

You wrote recently about your new collaboration with B&B Italia saying, ‘I liked the idea of following in the wake of B&B Italia, of modernity…’ Is B&B Italia a company you have always wanted to work with?

Don’t forget what they have done and the catalogue they have produced. B&B Italia is like a super target, you know what I mean. For everybody working with B&B Italia it is like a dream. Previously I was working with Cassina and a year ago I decided to change paths in my professional life. The people from B&B Italia had asked me to work with them for I don’t know how many years, and I decided that now was the time.

Tell me about your two new pieces, Saké and Formiche launched during Milan Design Week. Working with B&B Italia's R&D department for the first time must have been incredible.

For me, it’s a long, long, long discussion, it’s a long debate between me and the B&B Italia team. I never work by myself. I am never alone. Without the internal B&B team: the technicians, the engineers, the tasteful people, nothing happens. We discuss what is possible to do, what I need, and what I need to do. In the end we discuss a new process and the design of a new collection. Then we start the project together. When I talk about process it’s the industrial process, the factory process and the human process. It is a more open minded attitude and approach. I need to be 'in' the process and the process is for me the most important. That relationship between me and the factory is a special connection but each part is important. I think about the engineer and materials, the graphic designers and the best way to show the pieces. When you prepare something, for example Saké, you work with many different intelligences. The way they sew the cushions or the fabrics selected. I feel like a fashion designer because I need to understand the skills and the best way to make it. I think about the touch, the proportions. You start to remodel a cushion by 5mm or you change some softness, so you work in your imagination with the team and they show you what is possible to do, or they show you something completely different. That is the secret of working with B&B Italia.

How long did that design process take?

More than one year, but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes the real secret is the capacity to lose time. If you design or make something to a super schedule with a precise timeline it’s okay, but it sounds a little bit too German. Sorry (laughter). In my mind when we design something together, it doesn’t matter if it’s Flos, or B&B Italia, or Kartell, or another client, the great capacity is to be able to lose time. Sometimes you are super concentrated, you are super fast, you do an incredible number of prototypes and corrections and prototypes, and after that you need calm. You need to lose time, to throw it away a bit. To disconnect yourself by looking through a transparent mirror. You have to reflect and detach yourself. After that you start to run again. To be honest, we threw away more or less one year. We start, we stop, we start again, we run, we start again, we stop. Then in the last month before the Salone del Mobile we start to run quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, and then we showed the whole collection in Milan.