From the authors of the early 1900s to those of the future: modernity which is timeless and contaminated by art and fashion, animates the collections of Matrix International in an “open” story of the culture of industrial design.
Modernity and innovation are terms that have founded the design vocabulary, becoming transversal through the decades, places and schools of design thought. And they are the rule and the goal of the production activity of Matrix International, which has transformed many new ideas into furnishings that can be used by a values-consciousaudience also attentive to the uniqueness of design. For Matrix International this lexicon has had – in the company’s 35 years of activity – its own meanings that can be found in the sections of the current catalog.
Codici collection
On the one hand, Codici, that is furniture with historical value, especially linked to the period of Modernism with its protagonists (Eero Saarinen, Folke Jansson, Marcel Breuer,Ludwing Mies Van Der Rohe…) and with acultured aesthetic that remains faithful to its points (codici, indeed). It’s acollection that is the result of an ongoing process of dialogue between the company and the heirs of the protagonists of design since the 1920s if possible.
Matrix in fact is dedicated to research in the archives of unpublished pieces to be brought to the attention, in the lives and homes of people, through a production that even today with Arabesk Double – the two-seater sofa designed in 1955 by Folke Jansson – has been revised in an eco-friendly key thanks to advanced recycling techniques of plastic materials for the frame. As Codici (codes) synthesized the needs of the time at their birth, today become the greatest players of a similar fluid contamination, as well as with the arts, also with fashion and trends in the most refined and research expressions.
Forme collection
The second great chapter of the Matrix catalog is Forme: the contemporary lifestyle requires that even the furnishings interpret an idea of flexibility and the company entrusts this input, together with the development of a trendy but always unique aesthetic, both to established professionals of design, both to the generation of designers of the future from Universities and Academies, whose design freshness and spirit of experimentation appreciates.
This is the case of the Sogno seating system, designed by a working group of the DIDA, Department of Architecture of the University of Florence and the Move shelving system designed by the architect and teacher Massimo Imparato. Or the Sinapsi & Intreccio tables designed by architect, academic and architectural theorist Paolo Portoghesi.
The furnishings of Matrix International are dressed in contemporary fabrics and finishes with a strong decorative impact for the chromatic and design choices, up to the histrionic interpretation of Simone Guidarelli who was so successful at Fuorisalone2021, with the Arabesk and Arabesk Double by Folke Jansson.
About Matrix International
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” [William Faulkner] No better words can describe the timeless value of the authors that contributed to the transition of architecture towards modernism at the start of the 1900s. Up to the 1950s, these generations of architects and designers systematized the language and then revived it, giving life to innovative experiments in form. Since 1984 Matrix has preserved modernist culture, respecting its complexity as it bridges art and applied arts. It has produced design objects created by the protagonists of that age and made them accessible to an increasingly aware and informed public. Matrix’s business adventure has always had a single common denominator: giving life to projects never realized at the industrial level. Concurrently, Matrix has built its own contemporary repertory, made up of furnishings that deeply reflect its modern cultural heritage. Matrix’s collections express unique identities, but originate from the same faith in the opportunity to build the design of the future on the heritage that modernism has conferred.