Client
Lamborghini and Riva 1920
Category
Furniture, luxury residential
Year
2017
Scope
Industrial design, form development, CMF
Channel
Trade & Showroom
Constraint
Two brands with opposite languages. Lamborghini is metal, speed, aggression and machine-cut precision. Riva 1920 is solid wood, craft and material honesty. The collection had to reference the car without the pieces becoming a car in wood, which is novelty rather than furniture, and it had to hold together across six types: dining chair, credenza, sofa, dining table, desk and bookcase.
Decision
Restraint, mostly. The pieces live in a house, not a showroom floor, so anything that read as a supercar in furniture form was wrong. But both brands trade on the top of their categories, so the work still had to feel expensive in the hand and at a distance.
Two rules did most of it. Keep the material palette tight, because two or three materials handled well read as luxury and five read as busy. And allow exactly one major form gesture per piece. One angle, one cut, one line that moves, and everything else quiet around it. A single gesture concentrates the attention and reads as decisive. Two gestures compete, and competing gestures are what makes furniture look like it's trying.
The Lamborghini reference lives in those single gestures, one per object, rather than being distributed across every surface. That's the difference between a collection that references a car and a collection that impersonates one.
Finish
Solid oiled walnut, black leather with tailored stitching.
Recognition
NYCxDESIGN Award 2017, Winner, Office Furniture
Designed At
Karim Rashid Studio
More work
