At the beginning of February 2024, there was a little sneak peak with prototypes and teasers at VooSpace, two months later they took their debut collection to the Salone del Mobile in Milan, and now they are exhibiting their furniture and contemporary objects in their own showroom in the former Cee Cee office: With alternating bursts of nostalgia and joy, we fell in love with Bottone‘s pacchetto completo during the opening and are delighted that the two founders and brothers Michele and Daniele Luciano Ferrazzano are once again bringing lots of passion (and sounds!) to the space. Having grown up in Stuttgart with Italian parents, the influences of both cultures are combined in the label: Italian postmodernism and Bauhaus, moments of pop culture and the precision of craftsmanship are closely interwoven – resulting in eight objects for the first collection that are not only expressive and contemporary in form and color, but also have a lot to offer in terms of sound. Daniele and Michele have been making music themselves for years, so it was clear to them from the outset that they wanted to create their own sounds for their joint label.
You can listen to the results on their website, where the individual objects are not accompanied by texts but by composed pieces of music. And anyone who listens to them will quickly appreciate the omission of the textual level, because nothing could portray the pieces of furniture and their character more faithfully and beautifully than the music of the founders themselves. Sometimes they want to be loud, sometimes fun, sometimes restrained in their wholeness without being less impressive. My body resonates in an S-shape while listening to the “S-Tisch” track, while listening to the “Zooomrug” makes me feel like a little beetle slowly crawling through the interwoven individual parts and enjoying them more and more by time. How nice it can be to simply listen to a piece of furniture.
Text: Robyn Steffen / Photos: Artur De Menezes, Julia Sang Nguyen & Robyn Steffen
Bottone Showroom, Leipziger Str.66, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
@bottone_objects
The Salone del Mobile in Milan has just ended, yet here we are already gearing up for the seventh edition of Berlin Design Week (27.04.-05.05.2024), commencing this Saturday. The festival’s hub is aptly situated in the Peter Behrens Building in Oberschöneweide — a true gem of Berlin’s industrial architecture. Here, one can discover an array of offerings: from the architectural legacy of Peter Behrens himself — often regarded as the founding father of modernism — to Bauhaus designers’ workshop chairs, and the interactive kinetic installation Canvas of Consciousness. Additionally, visitors can explore the digital revival of Berlin activist and artist Helga Goetze, renowned for her radical views on love, sexuality, and feminism, among other attractions.
The Peter Behrens Building is not the sole venue for Design Week. Various smaller showrooms scattered throughout the city also host events, such as the iconic steel furniture manufacturer Tebton in Mitte or Bottone in Leipziger Straße, where the Italian-German label showcases its furniture and lifestyle products. The Kunstgewerbemuseum presents Next: Young European Design in collaboration with Eunic Berlin, featuring 30 projects and works from eleven European countries. Heipl Berlin and the Hungarian animator and illustrator Csaba Klement, also known as CsaK, invite attendees to dinosaurs and prosecco, blending science about the Middle Ages with modern design. With so many highlights, it’s hard to know where to begin. Exhibitions and presentations are complemented by talks and panels, so it’s worth carefully studying the program. Throughout the process, one will realize that Berlin can do almost anything, and certainly, it excels in design.
Text: Giulia Tancredi / Photos: Moritz Bernoully, Pancake! & Anna Maria Vaskovskaja
Berlin Design Week
27.04.–05.05.2024. You can find the entire program here.
@berlindesignweek