Italian contemporary modern furniture Design

B&B ITALIA

B&B Italia has been a leading company in the field of contemporary furnishings since its founding in 1966. Their headquarter is located in Novedrate in Como province.
Offices are situated in the building projected by Renzo Piano in 1972.

The Company’s ability to reflect contemporary culture, to sense and anticipate trends, to respond to changes in taste and living needs, has risulted in a collection of world-famous furnishings, which account for a crucial chapter in the history of Italian design. It's success is based on a matchless alchemy of reativeness, innovation and industrial skills, aimed at producing “timeless”products “lasting through time".

With an in-house Research and Development Centre cooperating with several designers, B&B Italia promotes a process that has enabled the Company to stand out for its highly innovative capacity. All this has brought about many mentions both in Italy and abroad, among them four “Compasso d’Oro” awards, the most prestigious honour in the field of Italian industrial design.

In the multifaceted and extremely fragmented environment of the furnishing sector, the Company stands out for a well developed industrial talent, which affects all the links of the product chain (research, production, marketing).


Antonio Citterio Design

Ottoman & Sofa






IUTA



B&B ITALIA

Paragon Prairie Tower

Paragon Prairie Tower
Mosaic prairie to encircle metro office park beacon

Urbandale will soon be home to an unusual artwork that builders say will be the largest mosaic glass tile mural in the United States.

Workers are now wrapping a 5,000-square-foot scene of an Iowa prairie around a 120-foot tall tower located at the entrance to R&R Realty Group's new Paragon Office Park at 123rd Street and Meredith Drive in Urbandale.
Craftsmen are attaching nearly two million pieces of colored Italian glass in a year-long project that melds art and engineering with high-tech tile manufacturing.
The Paragon Prairie Tower will "look like a watercolor painting" when seen from Interstate Highway 35/80, but will actually comprise individual tiles that are each less than 1 square inch, said Des Moines artist David Dahlquist, who designed the image on the tower and helped oversee manufacture of the glass tiles in Ravenna, Italy.

The tower will cost an estimated $1 million to create, according to R&R President Daniel Rupprecht.

It is "a tribute to Iowa and Iowans," Rupprecht has said. "We intended for it to draw businesses to the Paragon Office Park, but also be a visual reminder of our Iowa heritage."
Office parks frequently offer amenities, including outdoor sculptures, corporate lakes and other park-like features to attract tenants. Some also employ visually iconic structures, ranging from giant signs to oversized architectural features that can serve as landmarks to help guide potential clients to a particular location.
But the Paragon tower will be more than a commercial landmark, Dahlquist said. At the center of the state north of the juncture of two interstate highways, it will be "a cultural landmark for the state of Iowa," he said.

By week's end, workers at the tower were nearly a third of the way up in applying 1-foot-square sheets of tile to the tower. Each sheet contains 144 individual pieces of glass tile that were prearranged by Italian tile manufacturer Sicis to create a prairie image that includes grass, wheat and corn.
Artisans from Des Moines Marble and Mantel expect to complete the installation in early July, said Steve Bennett, president of Construction Services Inc., an R&R subsidiary that's overseeing construction of the office park.

The 120-foot tower is 16 feet in diameter, creating an exterior circumference of about 50 feet.

A mobile scaffolding system is hung from the top of the tower and was designed specifically for this project, Bennett said. The scaffold is powered by four motors at the top of the tower so it can be raised and lowered as different phases of work on the tower progress.
Each piece of glass tile was colored at the factory in Italy and assembled by a computer into 1-foot-square sheets, which when properly applied to the tower, will reproduce the prairie image created by Dahlquist.
The 1-foot-square sheets were carefully packaged and numbered so that when they were unloaded in Urbandale, the craftsmen installing the tile just needed to follow directions and install the sheets in the proper order, working clockwise around the tower.
Installing the tile is an art of its own, Dahlquist said, because tolerances for how much grout can be placed between individual sheets of tile are very small.

The tower is visible to motorists as they round the northwest corner of Interstate 35/80 and begin heading south. It also can be seen by motorists headed south on Iowa Highway 141 a mile or two before that highway joins the interstate.

Follow this link in order to view the Paragon Prairie Tower Website

All the tiles of the Prairie Tower are from the Art Factory



SICIS

The Art Mosaic

The Art Factory

In 1987 they brought the artistic mosaic from the depths of historical oblivion to our modern age. They grave it a name SICIS, a shape, a life, a material, marble, stone, gold, terra cotta, steel, Murano, Samalto, Iridium, Glimmer,Waterglass, Synthesis, Basic, and a future. They build a home (a factory) and turned it into the world of designers and the product captivated everyone.
All are still taken aback by its sheer beauty and think its only for kings and queens. To the skeptical few and those who have not seen it I say: "Take a look."
Nobody can outdo them or match them SICIS


The Iridium Collection



Murano Smalto



The Glimmer



The Fumetto



Water Glass



Glass 3



Neo Glass



Sheer Glass



Posh Pix



Flower Power



SICIS