FLOS Announces Product Strategy and Design Curators

Calvi Brambilla © Emilio Tini

FLOS, a leading manufacturer of top-end designer lighting for both residential and professional sectors, is pleased to announce the appointment of Milanese architect duo Calvi Brambilla (Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla) as its Design Curators.

This decision came as part of the company’s strategic reorganisation and development programme, drawn up and put in place by Roberta Silva, just a few months after she joined Flos as Chief Executive Officer. The company is an essential part of Design Holding, the leading international group in the high-end interior design sector established in November 2018 by lnvestindustrial and The Carlyle Group, also comprised of B&B Italia, Louis Poulsen and Arclinea, together with their respective subsidiaries.

Following in-depth analysis of the sector and the company, the CEO has rolled out a growth plan that takes a highly innovative managerial approach while fully respecting the brand’s heritage and distinctive identity, a strength which has always been rooted in the culture of design and creative state of art.

This is the first time in the history of Flos that the company has had external product design curators and the concept is very different from that of art director. The intention is to work closely, continually and comprehensively on product development, with the purpose of strengthening product range, stimulating interdepartmental synergy and speeding up development. This role will guarantee continuity with the past in terms of attention to the creative stage behind the idea, while at the same time ensuring a better structured, more efficient product development process for each of the brand’s four collections: Flos Home, Flos Architectural, Flos Outdoor and Flos Bespoke, the latter now 100% owned by Flos. This change will allow Flos to reach the market with a faster, more streamlined production cycle and with a truly integrated vision of lighting products for any application, indoor and outdoor, in this way boosting its competitive strength.

Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla, together, have a total of twenty years of collaboration with Flos, from the design of countless special installations for corporate events and new product launches, the planning of highly prestigious stands and display architecture, including Soft Walls-best stand winner at the Salone del Mobile 2017 and ADI Design Index 2018 finalist-to recent refurbishment of the historic Milanese Flos flagship store in Corso Monforte. This experience has afforded them an extensive privileged awareness of the brand’s philosophy and collections, hands-on experience with its evolution and a chance to get inside the extraordinary relationship Flos enjoys with the greatest creative talents on the international design scene.

Flos’ partnership with its designers is ongoing and the appointment of Calvi Brambilla has been universally welcomed, with work already underway. As external, across-the-board figures, rather than product designers for the brand, Calvi Brambilla can guarantee a passionate yet objective work method that promotes the delicate equilibrium of Flos’ relationship with designers.

This new role will see Fabio and Paolo working closely with all four Research and Development teams across the collections: the R&D division at the decorative lighting plant in Bovezzo (Brescia); the R&D team at the Flos Architectural plant in Valencia, Spain; the Flos Outdoor R&D division based in Bernareggio (Monza e Brianza); and finally the Flos Bespoke team in Collebeato (Brescia). They will also work alongside CEO Roberta Silva and with the Head of International Marketing and Chief Digital Officer Barbara Corti, together forming a Steering Committee that is almost a tribute to the historic model of the Image Committee set up when Flos was founded in the sixties.

Steering Committee © Emilio Tini
Roberta Silva © Emilio Tini

Roberta Silva, CEO of Flos, said: “Huge changes are underway in the home design and lighting sector. These challenges represent a huge potential opportunity for Flos, considering what our major stakeholders increasingly demand from us and experiences that pioneer companies have already had in other sectors. To successfully guide Flos, we must evolve in the direction taken by the company, preserving strong roots in its values and its DNA, but also innovating strategies and market approaches. Innovations that I am putting in place with my team will especially include improved coordination between the company’s four collections and innovation that preserves the cultural and cutting-edge strength of the past, hand in hand with the exciting creativity of our  wonderful designers, in an approach that is more versatile and effective. It is a great pleasure for me to welcome two architects as passionate about design as Fabio and Paolo into the Flos family in the innovative role of Design Curators. Their great culture of design, teamed with a hefty skill set, professionalism and critical spirit, corresponds perfectly to the qualities that we were seeking for this role.”

Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla commented: “Flos is a brand that has always turned trailblazing and design innovation into an element of differentiation and uniqueness. We are honoured by the confidence Roberta has shown in us and we are ready to step up to the plate in this exciting challenge. We like to imagine Flos as an art gallery and us as its curators, where the works of art are represented by poetical creations of light and the artists by the great designers who conceived them.”

FLOS

Founded in Merano in 1962, FLOS is recognised as a leading international-level manufacturer of top­ end designer lighting and innovative lighting systems for both residential and professional sectors. The company boasts a catalogue packed with iconic lamps created by legendary names in the history of design such as Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Philippe Starck, Antonio Citterio, Piero Lissoni, Marcel Wanders, Konstantin Grcic, Jasper Morrison, Patricia Urquiola, Ron Gilad, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Michael Anastassiades, Vincent Van Duysen, Nendo, Formafantasma, and many others.

In over fifty years of business, Flos has grown significantly, showing a constant commitment to research and innovation in lighting, teamed with a remarkable capacity for identifying new creative talent.

In November 2014, acquisition by the Italian private equity firm lnvestindustrial of a majority stake in Flos marked the start of further industrial development and expansion on a global level. In June 2015, Ares, the Italian benchmark manufacturer of outdoor architectural lighting, joined the Flos group. The Outdoor division thus became the fourth production unit at Flos, alongside its historic design, architectural and custom product lines.

In November 2018, Flos, together with B&B Italia, Louis Poulsen and Arclinea, became part of The Design Holding, a project stemming from collaboration between the investment company lnvestindustrial and The Carlyle Group. The holding represents the largest global group in the sector of top-end interior design.

In June 2019, Roberta Silva was appointed CEO of Flos, with a view to managerial development of the holding, guided by President and CEO Gabriele Del Torchio. Flos today offers a universe of fully integrated solutions. It exports to more than 80 countries worldwide and has single-brand stores in Rome, Milan, Paris, Lyon, New York and Stockholm. Its creations have received countless international awards and many of them now feature in the permanent collections of major art and design museums around the world . www.flos.com

CALVI  BRAMBILLA
Design  Curators, Flos

The Studio 

The world of the project is investigated through a creative approach in which imagination matters as much as the functional rigor and control in all the implementation phases.

Since 2006, Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla work together especially on interior architecture, set-ups and product design. A consolidated partnership, thanks to the ability to find the balance of sometimes opposed design visions that become complementary to create a unique style, appreciated both by professionals and a wider audience, especially through the set-ups: as shown by the many and varied awards for exhibitions (the exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Flos receives the signal to the Gold Medal for the Italian Architecture of the Triennale di Milano), installations (the studio wins the II LC50 11 competition in the occasion of the 50th anniversary of II I Maestri II collection) and exhibition stands (Zanotta and Antoniolupi booth projects have been selected for the ADI Design Index, while in 2017 the project of Flos stand at Euroluce 2017 wins the Salone del Mobile. Milano Award).

The working method is that assimilated by the great masters, Achille Castiglioni in particular, and gives life to concepts in which the idea is a synthesis that immediately makes the  sense of the project readable; a subtle irony is the accent chosen to express oneself.

Color and light, often seen as a single essential tool for organizing space, become decorative elements in a pure and graphic sense.

In a creative landscape where trends lead to the uniformity of the aesthetic sense, the personality of the Calvi Brambilla studio is always expressed by surprise, placing the client at the center of the story and communicating its products and history with maximum efficiency.

Among the customers of Calvi Brambilla Studio: Antoniolupi Design, Barovier & Toso, Cassina, Ceccotti Collezioni, Flos, Desalto, Molteni & C., Pedrali, Olivari, Tecno, Varaschin and Zanotta.

Biography

Fabio Calvi (Pavia, 1969) graduated in Architecture in 1996 after studying at the Polytechnic of Milan and Brunel University of West London. He opened his own studio in 2004 debuting with the set up for the personal exhibition of Albert Watson in Milan.

Paolo Brambilla (Lecco, 1973) studied at the Polytechnic of Milan and the Polytechnic University of Barcelona and graduated in Architecture in 1999. He achieved the honorable mention in the architecture competition Europan 6 in 2001. He taught Interior Design at the School of Design of the Milan Polytechnic and he was a Councilor of the PPC Architects Order of Milan.