True Design Presents Patrizia Moroso and Patricia Urquiola as Restless Jellyfish

This September, The London Design Festival hosts a talk that celebrates females and dynamic creativity at the intersection of art and design. The conversation is called Meduse Inquiete | Restless Jellyfish and will feature Patrizia Moroso and Patricia Urquiola.

Moroso celebrates the role of females in design

Moroso is celebrating the role of design as a meeting point for female spirits on a constant journey, destined to wander through time and space in pursuit of the broad sweep of creativity.

The discussion between the art director and the Spanish designer, who have forged a close bond over the course of a longstanding and fruitful creative exchange, is loosely inspired by Eletta Flocchini’s 2018 book, La Medusa Inquieta (Feltrinelli). The book covers the events surrounding the mosaic sculptural masterpiece by Lucio Fontana, Testa di Medusa, and highlights among other things the collaboration between the artist and Osvaldo Borsani, who were bound together during the 1950s by a special bond that enriched and elevated the project. Drawing inspiration from this remarkable friendship, Moroso and Urquiola offer a light and ironic take on the relationship that connects them, two restless jellyfish, in their fluid journey through the seas of design and art.

The conversation, which will take place on September 20 at 18:30 at Moroso’s flagship store at 7-15 Rosebery Avenue, will be moderated by Max Fraser, editorial director of Dezeen magazine.

First held in 2003 based on an idea by Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans, the London Design Festival celebrates the strategic importance of the British capital on the world of design and represents an opportunity to promote local and global creativity before an audience of professionals, industry experts, retailers and members of the public with a passion for design.

Patricia Urquiola’s Collections on Display

For the duration of the event, Moroso’s most recent creations, all fruits of the firm’s partnership with Urquiola and introduced at the Milan Design Week 2023, will take centre stage in the showroom.

With its distinctive linear shapes and architecturally inspired symmetries, the Rows collection comprises a set of four different types of storage units and two rectangular tables that express a refined artistic memory that evokes the still lifes of Amédée Ozenfant.

Loveland and Loveseat are the result of a drive to produce an even more sustainable version of the two seating systems designed by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso in 2000. The two are revived and reimagined by the designer 23 years on with an approach that draws on their original inspiration and transforms them into evergreen pieces. With the Loveland upholstered system, which retains the elegance of the original project, seats and backrests are softened and the steel bases are replaced by solid ash: these choices ennoble the architectural qualities of the system without abandoning, in the individual sofa as in the composition, its sophisticated rationalist memory.

The modernist aesthetic takes on greater strength and intensity with Loveseat. Here, the sofa bases turn into legs, smoothing and becoming lighter until they emerge from the body; a structural solution that gives the armchair a decisive and contemporary personality, accentuating its independent character while maintaining the option of joining several armchairs in multiple configurations suitable for public and collective spaces.

Theo

The Theo coffee table revisits the thinking of the early 20th-century avantgardes through a progressive reduction of decorative elements. The neoplasticism-inspired vision produces a small domestic architecture of haphazard volumes characterized by abstract geometric shapes. These are recreated into a refined harmony of wholes and empty spaces. The result is a structure that, thanks to its glass surface, allows the eye and light to pass through the interior space.

Pheaby

The Pheaby upholstered seat is the happy resolution of a tension between artisanal design and industrial thought. Recalling a carpenter’s trestle, the legs support a soft, rounded seat that is completely devoid of edges. It therefore makes the most of the characteristics of its materials, revealing its versatility, lightness and comfort.