Multiple unit

design by Paolo Ulian
text by Odoardo Fioravanti

Created for the exhibition Memoriae Visionariae (Florence, 23-26 October), Matriosca is a chair that narrates the expressive potential of even the most banal objects. A poetic reflection on the concept of stacking and the serial production of industrial products.

Projects often complete the character of their maker in the third dimension, offering a real glimpse of his or her personality. Like that of Paolo Ulian, a designer gifted with charisma and capable of transmitting and representing his leanings through products. Ulian, the only Italian designer to have become part of Droog Design in their finest hour, conceals very high design quality behind understatement. His career is full of inspired projects that narrate his poetics and readily present their beauty to the gaze. Invited to participate in the exhibition Memoriae Visionariae, curated by Stefano Caggiano and held in Florence from 23 to 26 October, Ulian has interpreted the theme by making the project Matriosca. Munari taught: “Observe at length, understand deeply, make things fast” and Ulian, in this new product, seems to demonstrate that lesson. The Matriosca project comes from observation of a stack of outdoor chairs made of resin, of the most common variety: the ones you often see outside the most normal barcafes. The designer observes and understands that those objects packed into a pile symbolize technical reproducibility of a standard, but might give rise to a new system of objects. The project consists in the progressive, modular shortening of the legs of nine stacked chairs, so that the tenth chair closes the stack, remaining at the original height. The sum of these objects creates a sort of armchair with the same bulk as a single chair: an image segmented by the repetition of the forms, but made solid by the stacking of lots of material. When the unit is separated into parts you get ten chairs of different heights, a sort of ergonomic paradigm: a chair for everyone, each to his own measure. You can choose the normal chair or a slightly lower one, for those who always want to keep their feet firmly on the ground. There are smaller ones suitable for children, all the way to the smallest –just 15 cm high– that might be perfect for sitting on the sand, or the lawn. The utopia of varying industrial products is thus materialized in the composition of these ten pieces: a realization of balance and intelligence. In a sort of dogmatic formulation, it is nice to think that this project is simultaneously one and ten in number, where distinction does not necessarily preclude unity.