For his latest outdoor furniture collection for B&B Italia, Piero Lissoni was inspired by the concept of lightness, an idea that has fascinated him all his life. ‘As a child, I liked the idea of building planes, but they always turned out wrong, they were too heavy,’ he recalls. For this collection, the notion of lightness was key: ‘Let’s make a light product, something between a plane and a bike.’
Borea: garden furniture inspired by planes
Lissoni created an outdoor furniture collection comprising seating and tables based on an essential design principle, featuring a slim, seamless tubular aluminium frame supporting cushioned seats and enamelled lava-stone surfaces. In the spirit of lightness, the frames are minimally designed with a gently protruding foot elevating the pieces from the ground.
A complete garden furniture collection, Borea includes outdoor chairs, sofas, armchairs and tables, creating a landscape of light furniture that is stackable, versatile and suited to face the elements. The frames are available in four painted earthy colours – anthracite, sage, clay and tortora – while the seats come in a selection of monochromatic and printed outdoor upholstery fabrics.
Borea is designed to be 95 per cent sustainable, featuring both recycled and recyclable materials, and built to be disassembled (so that each part can be disposed of separately at the end of its life). Explains Lissoni: ‘When it has lived its life, it will be recycled to become something else: maybe another machine, a can, another sofa. Or maybe, a plane.’
Watch: Piero Lissoni on Borea for B&B Italia
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