Exactly one year ago in Milan, we inaugurated ‘OPEN | more than books’, an innovative space designed to be not only a place for buying books and furniture but also a site of sociality, sharing and openness..

We have always believed in relationships and in design that favours them. This is why we participated in the creation of this multifunction space, where the boundaries are erased and where you can do a bit of everything: meet, be alone, work, chat, eat and buy.

For the first anniversary, we interviewed our partner Giorgio Fipaldini, the creator and CEO of OPEN.

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Born on the Isle of Wight, Harry Owen is the designer of the Joynt chair, which won an Honourable Mention at Compasso d’Oro this year. It is an innovative, surprising chair that will treat you to an unexpected experience.

Harry, your chair just won a honorable mention for Compasso d’Oro this year…how do you feel about it?

It’s a great privilege for me to see Joynt recognized alongside some of the industries leading projects. My thanks go to Lago Studio for the opportunity they provide for young designers, and also to my tutors at Bucks New University for their support whilst developing the project.

Harry, tell us something more about the concept of the Joynt chair. How did you come up with the idea of a joynt?

Initially the idea developed whilst exploring a traditional chair making process called steam bending, where strips of wood are heated using a steam box. The applied heat and moisture allows the timber to become flexible and bend to a specific shape. However that process is both costly and time consuming, and I wanted to explore other opportunities to bend a timber frame and provide comfort. The key feature of the Joynt chair is the flexible rubber in the backrest, which is a commonly used component from the automotive industry.

Which needs does the Joynt chair solve?

Naturally people are always moving, and the flexible back rest provides movement and support in a similar way to a complex office chair. Ideally it can be used in locations ranging from public spaces and offices, to schools and waiting rooms. I still have a couple of the early prototypes around my desk at home.

How important is the ergonomics when designing a chair?

Ergonomics and the understanding of interaction among the user is essential when designing anything. A number of prototypes early in the development allowed us to determine comfort before deciding details of how we wanted it to look. The coloured backrest is intended to indicate to the user that something is going to happen, but many people still seem surprised when they first sit down.

Do you think the ergonomics is an essentials or a plus today?

I think many factors including ergonomics are essential and should influence the development of a product. Costs, materials, proportions and forms are perhaps equally important. I think what we tried to do with the Joynt chair however was to make something innovative, playful, and of course comfortable.

Your chair in three words?

Innovative. Fun. Flexible.

At the 23rd Compasso d’Oro, LAGO received two Honourable Mentions: the Joynt chair for product design and Appartamento LAGO in the project category.

Two recognitions that touch two important areas for LAGO: Lagostudio and Appartamento LAGO.

The Joynt chair, designed by young designer Harry Owen, emerged from Lagostudio, the LAGO creative workshop where each year students from the world’s best design schools are invited to participate

The innovative aspect of this design lies in the flexibility of the seat back. At first look, the Joynt chair appears to have an ergonomically unnatural slant but, thanks to the rubber joint integrated into its wooden structure, in reality it follows the shape of the body. The seat back flexes to support the spine and is extremely comfortable.

The Appartamento LAGO project instead redefines and reinvents spaces reserved for contact between company, consumer and product. It is an entirely new living space and cultural experiment: a real flat, with real residents and entirely furnished with LAGO products, the owner of which, a design lover, opens the doors to visitors, organising and hosting cultural events, talks and exhibitions in the flat itself.

Inaugurated in Milan in 2009, for the Salone del Mobile, the Appartamento LAGO project is proof that design today is no longer simply physical, but instead goes beyond the object: the energy, relationships and situations generated between people in the Appartamento can never be replicated anywhere else in the same way.

A few months ago, the photographer Pippo Onorati stopped by LAGO because he wanted to photograph our company and present the photos in ‘Cambiamo clima! Gli eroi della terra‘, an exhibition dedicated to showing how ordinary people can work in a creative, innovative and socially useful way while respecting the environment around them.

Pippo Onorati is a Roman photographer, designer, director and journalist. Over the course of his professional career, he has worked with Oliviero Toscani and realised major photographic and communications projects for celebrities, publishers and big companies.

The exhibition, which will open at MAXXI, then travel to Gianicolo and finally, from 6 June, be on permanent display at the Centro Elsa Morante, Rome, mixes the visions of professional photographers like Gianni Berengo Gardin and Francesco Zizola with those of photographers from Shoot4Change, a not-for-profit volunteer organisation dedicated to humanitarian photography.

LAGO was chosen by Pippo Onorati for its philosophy, centred on the individual, and its search for a kind of sustainability that is not just environmental but also social. The LAGO FABBRICA (Lago Factory) is evidence of both, built in glass and wood and designed so that sunsets permeate the workspaces, as is Lean Production, which is focused on minimising waste, and projects like ‘An evolved industrial zone’ by Anna Scalfi Eghenter, which aim at revitalising the territory, and Art Waiting Room, a project that brings the value of art to time spent waiting.

Pippo took the photos for this post while he was visiting the company. We are delighted to have been chosen, understood and expressed from an outsider’s view. It is confirmation that when design tries to transmit change, it often succeeds.

Download the exhibition catalogue.

Today we meet Luca de Bona, designer of the Dangla chair. Luca took part in the 2010 edition of  LAGO STUDIO and he designed a chair that likes its clothes to fit like a glove, perfect for the living room and the kitchen. Enjoy!

What was the guiding concept for the design of Dangla?

I wanted a feminine chair: an elegant body to be dressed and undressed in a single gesture, as well as sturdy and cradling. But I also wanted a chair that could adapt to various contexts and times, not one that follows trends. I thought that designing a chair that meets all of my personal and aesthetic needs (including swinging) would make Dangla something that everyone could find one or more affinities with.

Why did you decide to design specifically a chair?

In the history of furnishing, there have always been chairs. And, in a certain way, the chair has reflected the styles and uses of every age in its forms. More than any other piece of furniture, it has the task of being both aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. Designing this type of chair is a kind of challenge: I wanted to show how it is still possible to invent a chair that has never existed before and offer a timeless solution, a chair that is a little bit magical, one that changes its appearance with a single gesture and its shape with the weight of the body.

The Dangla chair can be customised with three different fabrics. How important is it today to give the consumer the opportunity to create a personal design?

Today, people’s ways of living, travelling and working follow rhythms and habits that are increasingly heterogeneous and dynamic. This makes their taste more broad, aware and intermittent. They know design, but they want it to be flexibly adaptable to their own needs and environment. In this period of transformations, even the hierarchies of living and work space are undergoing unimaginable revolutions. Dangla perfectly satisfies its practical and ergonomic role, but thanks to its sinuous silhouette, it can also be either elegantly or casually ‘dressed’, becoming a chair for the kitchen, the living room or the office.

Which Dangla would you choose?

I live in a small house, with spaces distributed around a living area that functions are a place for eating, working, relaxing and getting together with friends. Around the big table, which acts as a hub for all of the main activities in my home, I would like six Dangla chairs, each dressed in a different way: fabric, leather, smooth, textured, with a zip and exposed stitching, so that each person can instinctively choose where to sit.

What do you think the fabric for the new millennium will be?

I imagine it will be a synthetic fabric, produced by a loom that combines tradition and cutting-edge technology: an ecological use of natural fibres interwoven with innovative, sustainable materials that can warm, illuminate and change colour but that is also easy for anyone to work with, embroider and customise according to their personal style and taste. We are projected towards the future, and this lets us achieve exceptional goals, but we are also human beings with ancestral sensory requirements to satisfy, as well as a congenital need to leave a trace through marks and decoration.

For more info about LAGO STUDIO and to apply for next workshop: http://lagostudio.com/. The deadline to apply for the second workshop is 25th May.

From 20 to 22 May, we will be in London for Clerkenwell Design Week. LAGO will be present at this London design event in three locations: the Clerkenwell Press Room, where we are an official sponsor; the Design Addition area at the Crypt on the Green (underneath St James Church), Clerkenwell Close, where we have set up a lounge corner, and, finally, the courtyard of the Farmiloe Building, furnished with our Lastika chairs.

Something LAGO will be happening at each of these locations. On 21 May, at 6 p.m. in the Clerkenwell LAGO Press Room, ‘Interior Life Conversation‘, a roundtable discussion on the role and responsibility of contemporary interior designers. How can places for life and relationships be created that generate beauty and positively influence the lives of those who use them?

Discussants will include Daniele Lago, chief executive of LAGO; Angelica Longo, architect and tenant of the Appartamento LAGO Alto Salento, Nigel Coates, architect and designer, and Charles Ganz – Managing Director of World-Architects.com. The moderator will be Virginio Briatore, journalist and design philosopher.

On 22 May at 5 p.m., we will inaugurate the Dolcezza Bonhill coffee shop, a project developed together with 7Gr and located in the Shoreditch neighbourhood, London’s most arty and fashionable neighbourhood.

Dolcezza Bonhill is part of the LAGO Inside initiative, which is focused on improving the experience of places through design. The space merges the best of Italian food and design culture and revolves around extra-long, welcoming ‘social’ tables that facilitate sharing and human interaction.

‘White strikes us like a great, apparently absolute silence. Inside, we hear it like a non-sound, similar to the musical pauses that briefly interrupt the development of a phrase or theme … It is not a dead silence, but rather one that is rich in potential. White has a sound of silence that we can, unexpectedly, understand‘. Thus Kandinsky described the colour white, in his intriguing essay, Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

White contains all colours within it, it is its source and we often use it for the walls of our homes, whether because, being neutral, it goes with everything or due to laziness or a lack of creativity. And yet wall colour is not a secondary element of interior design: instead, it is a tool that changes our perception of space and influences our psychic and emotional wellbeing. There is no doubt that a red wall communicates something quite different than a green one. Of course, we do not claim to be big experts in Feng Shui, but most people could use a little advice about how to colour the walls of their homes. Which colours do the experts say are best suited to the various areas of the home?

The entryway

A place of transition between inside and outside, the entryway is an opening to our private world, so much so that people who are not welcome are left there, if not at the front door. Travelling salesmen know a bit about this. Curiously, these spaces, which are in and of themselves not very bright, are often not very well cared for, as if to discourage ‘invasion’. And yet they are the first welcome we offer our guests. If you are not so fortunate as to have a charming entryway with an exposed stone wall, like the one in the Lago Appartamento in Alicante, you can make it more welcoming by painting it in bright, luminous colours. You can decide which ones. The entryway is one of the few areas of the home where there are no limits to our choice of colour, a place where we can fearlessly experiment with our personalities.

The kitchen

This is the heart of the home. It is the room that most strongly expresses the concept of family, since it is a place of exchange and sharing. The best colours for the kitchen are ones associated with conviviality, like yellow and orange. Yellow is the colour of cheerfulness, communication, extroversion, the sun and ripe grain. It stimulates digestion, since it helps the assimilation of food. Orange, which you get from mixing yellow with a bit of red, is full of energy without being aggressive. Normally associated with citrus fruit, it stimulates the appetite. One should avoid reds and blues in the kitchen (they are too heavy), while bright shades of green work very well. An alternative to colouring the walls is to leave them white and install a colourful kitchen.

The living room

Relaxation. This is the key word for the living room, the space where we go to relax after a long day of work, and where we entertain guests. The best colours are neutrals, from the brown range: creams, biscuits, brownish-greys. Colours of the earth and natural materials have always been classics of interior decoration. Terracottas are also excellent choices, like red, brick red, antique pink and orange, which help warm up the atmosphere.

The bedroom

This area needs to be healthful and tranquil. Rest is extremely important to us as human beings, otherwise we would not dedicate a third of our lives to it. For the bedroom, you can choose cool colours (like blue and green) or warm colours (like pink, peach and apricot).

The study

The room dedicated to work and study needs to help us with our organisation, concentration and productivity. The colours that best meet these needs are bright green and yellow, while orange is good for the more creative types, since it stimulates visual memory.

The bathroom

This is arguably the most intimate room in the home, the place where we strip away our masks and fatigue. Like the entryway, the bathroom is a very versatile space, in terms of colour. Since water is one of the first things we associate with bathrooms, the best hues are blue, turquoise and green, but a peach or antique pink bathroom can also create a gentle atmosphere, perfect for relaxing.

An alternative to paint is wallpaper. There are many different kinds in the LAGO Interior collection, like the most recent design, 3Dots, which is perfect for children’s rooms; Playwall, a Velcroed wallpaper (patented by Jannelli&Volpi) to which you can attach, detach and reattach shelves and cushions, and Luci e Ombre, which invades the room with light patterns coming from imaginary windows.

Take a look at the LAGO wallpapers designed together with Jannelli&Volpi.

Choose the colours for your home from the Natural Wall Painting collection, developed together with Oikos.