First Dressed

Magis celebrates its 45th anniversary this year and looks back on an eventful success story that began in 1976 when Eugenio Perazza founded the company.

Eugenio Perazza, the founder of the Italian furniture manufacturer Magis, is honoured for his life's work with the ADI Compasso D'Oro Liftetime Achievement Award 2020.

The Italian family business Magis combines an international design language in its extraordinary range. "Class not mass" is the credo that Alberto Perazza, together with Barbara Minetto, continues in the second generation. We met him and designer Konstantin Grcic for an interview at the Salone del Mobile in Milan. Read part one here.

Robert Stadler, an Austrian whose adopted home is Paris, has enriched the tradition-steeped KWM Krefeld with a coffee house that thoroughly lives up to the famed Viennese model. As an “gesamtkunstwerk”, it carries the spirit of productively combining art, craft, and industry forward into the Modern Age and playfully melds design and life, tradition and innovation.

With his “Bell Chair” for Magis, Konstantin Grcic has not only designed a sustainable and robust alternative to the Monobloc. For he also demonstrates by means of the contemporary color concept that the focus on the essentials in design is important in every respect.

April may be doing its rounds as usual, but the warm summer days won't be far away. For the ideal furnishing of gardens, terraces and balconies, we show you 29 current products that combine craftsmanship with elegant design.

Why do chairs have to be connected to crash bars? And what is the purpose of installing a fire hose on an armchair? In his “New Normals” solo show in Berlin's Haus am Waldsee, Konstantin Grcic shows how much our idea of normality is associated with objects.

Heatherwick Studio with IM Motors has unveiled a fully automated electric-powered concept vehicle that uses a HEPA filter to clean ambient air while driving.

OOAK architects have designed a holiday home on the island of Karpathos. The building stages the surrounding landscape and with its patios creates complex spatial relationships.

In the form of “Costume” for Magis, Stefan Diez has designed a durable sofa that is straightforward to repair and flexible in use.

Sustainable design – what matters now? Is the call for sustainability in design a trend or is a change in values taking place? Is the designation "sustainable" being given too lightly? We discussed these and other questions on March 18, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. on Clubhouse.

"What if we completely rethought the sofa?" – this question brought Magis together with Stefan Diez for a joint experiment: a flexible system made from recycled and recyclable materials.

The time is ripe for change: Stefan Diez has formulated ten requirements that he believes products should meet. He explains the concept to us in an interview.

Tadao Ando has transformed a 250-year-old former commodities exchange in Paris into a new contemporary museum for the Pinault Collection. The Pritzker Prize winner has inserted a richly-contrasting horizontal line into the venerable rotunda beneath which fair-faced concrete shimmers gently.