A statement of transparency

Julia Hauch: Nolita is celebrating its anniversary – what wishes would you like to give your design for its 10th birthday?

Antonio Pagliarulo: When I turned 10, I had the desire to travel and see the world. Back then, Madagascar and Finland were the ends of my imaginary geography. I wish Nolita to last a long time, at least until the day borders between nations will no longer have any meaning and the world will be a welcoming and friendly place where you can sit and observe its living variety.

Simone Mandelli: I wish Nolita to continue making people feel good. People who produce it with dedication as well as people who use it distractedly. May it always bring well-being with its liveliness, its elegance, its composure. Thank you Nolita!

The longing for summer is great – so the perfect moment for an interview with you about Nolita: What attitude to life was the chair designed for, or what scenery did you have in mind when you designed it?

Simone Mandelli: Nolita is an object designed for outdoor conviviality, for that typically human habit of taking a break to sit down and chat, discuss, laugh together. Perhaps that’s why Nolita is made more of air than metal. It seems to disappear rather than appear. It is designed to show, in transparency, people.

Antonio Pagliarulo: Nolita is a summer object. And summer is not limited to the season, it is present in every time of the year in everyone's imagination, with its ingredients of sun, lush leaves and free time. Stopping to sit is a summer action, which in each of the twelve months brings a dream of warmth and color.

What was the task, with which Pedrali came to you?

Simone Mandelli: The design process for Nolita began with a drawing that was favored by a happy coincidence: it was perfect for paying homage to the company’s 50th anniversary, recalling its original expertise: the manufacturing of iron garden chairs.

Nolita is a true multifunctional artist – it likes to be outdoors, is weatherproof, easy to move, stable, stackable and all of this in a delicate, timeless look. A chair that thinks about the future and yet is closely linked to Pedrali's history. Which elements of the company's history were essential for your design?

Simone Mandelli: Pedrali is a company that produces the items it sells. It therefore has practical experience that grows over time and is passed on. When our project proposal reached Pedrali, the company had fifty years of experience in metalworking with latest-generation machinery, in some cases self-produced.

Antonio Pagliarulo: Furthermore, the know-how and the historical memory of the company were condensed in the dialogue. We remember with admiration the passion and trust in the project with which the first prototypes were created.

What do you think makes a timeless design?

Antonio Pagliarulo: For us it is essential to start right from the intention of designing a timeless object. Yet this intention of course does not guarantee we’ll make it. This paradox could be unraveled in a non-contradictory formula: for a designer it is necessary to have a timeless gaze, which observes things as if they all had equal importance and dignity.

"Its idea is so simple that it feels as if it had always existed," says your quote. "Simple" of course only sounds simple. How long did the development take and how complicated was the process – especially in terms of the comfort of the chair?

Simone Mandelli: The development process of Nolita took more time than any other. About three years passed from the first drawing to its public presentation. However, it was a necessary “polishing” time that softened shapes and harmonized the whole. The unity of the load-bearing structure and the supported structure created the organic trend of the curves of the tubes and rods, which traces the ideal surface described by a seated person.

Antonio Pagliarulo: This process is implemented through trial and error, a series of hypotheses that must be demonstrated empirically through models. Therefore, there is expectation, a plurality of people involved, discussions on the prototypes. Some details are shaped during these discussions, others emerge as intuitions while waiting for a component to be manufactured. The creative process unfolds along the stretch of time from the first drawing to the product.

Were there role models that inspired your design?

Antonio Pagliarulo: Since our university days, we began to create a personal Olympus of masters of design. We followed their tracks, observed their mythical enterprises, venerated their creations. Then, little by little, a Promethean drive grew in us, a will to bring Olympus to earth, to make it our daily life. Thus, a whole series of signs, of visual languages, which until that moment we had observed and appreciated from a reverent distance, began to combine with the biographical memory of each of us and to create our own language. In this case too, we proceeded by trial and error. Among all trials and errors, every now and then something truly ours emerged, and that’s what happened with Nolita.

Simone Mandelli: It took and it takes a lot of dedication. We learned it from wood, carpentry, ceramic, and weaving craftsmen we consider our masters.

The more minimalistic and weightless the design, the more playful the colours you chose. What stories do your colours tell?

Simone Mandelli: Undoubtedly, the question contains part of the answer. In most human visual perceptions, a hierarchy is established among the elements of the visual field. In other words, something catches the eye before anything else. Nolita is often perceived first of all for its color. This is because its structure, so slender and minimal, allows the gaze to pass through it and see the architectural context in which the chair is placed. Nolita seems to consist only of thin, coloured lines. It is the retraction of the form that makes the color playful!

Antonio Pagliarulo: The choice of colors is like a game. We imagine combinations stacking chairs of different colors. We match fabrics. We create harmonized palettes around prominent chosen colors. Over the course of this decade, we have observed how Nolita has been used in many different contexts. Color, as the first graphic evidence of the object in space, has often been used to recall details of the architecture or the visual identity of a venue or a business.

How does your process work? Does each of you have a different function?

Simone Mandelli: Every project is the result of an alchemical process. A set of contributions, ideas, intuitions, criticisms, doubts, convictions that come from each of the people involved ends up in the alembic that synthesizes everything in a design. We think it is right to keep the magic of this chemistry veiled by a sort of mystery. It belongs to all of us equally.

Antonio Pagliarulo: The completeness of the final form of our projects is a measure of the unity between us.

You have been working with Pedrali since 2012, what do you particularly appreciate about this collaboration?

Simone Mandelli: Our collaboration with Pedrali began with a bold proposal on our behalf, that piqued the company's interest. Monica and Giuseppe’s welcome was very encouraging and allowed us to give our best, to firmly believe in what we were doing. Since then, mutual respect has grown, giving even more space to daring ideas, which implied big investments or a radical reorganization of production. That’s what happened with Nolita.

Maximum comfort with minimal use of materials is what your chair says – what role does sustainability play in your designs?

Antonio Pagliarulo: A Japanese proverb remembered by Bruno Munari says: beauty is the consequence of fairness. With the ideal impetus typical of youth, when we came across this phrase we made it our credo. Since then, we’ve been keeping asking ourselves: what is fair? This question is in itself a yearning for sustainability. For us, sustainability is doubt, it is what makes us discard design paths, what makes us research more deeply, what makes us question an idea or our own profession. For us, sustainability is the conscience that prevents us from doing unfair things, and that is silent only when we are certain that we have maximized the minimal.

Simone Mandelli: If we look at the Nolita we realize that the material used cannot be further reduced. And that the components are arranged in such a way as to collaborate in the static nature of the object, without redundancies. For example, look at the rear legs, they create a sort of curved bridge that supports the seat and connects the rods. This makes the whole as solid as a single beam. This is a sustainable choice because it brings together functional elements in the smallest possible number of components!

"100 percent made in Italy" – does this Pedrali motto also apply to Nolita?

Antonio Pagliarulo: For Nolita we could use the motto “100 percent made in Pedrali” since it is actually entirely made at Pedrali factory in Mornico al Serio, Italy.

Nolita is a chair that does not cast shadows, but multiplies lines in the room. In some restaurants, the seating ensemble has become a visual trademark. How important was this aspect already in the design phase?

Antonio Pagliarulo: To be honest, the graphic effect given by the repetition of the Nolita lines, and by their multiplication in transparency, was discovered by us after we had designed the chair. More precisely, we noticed how the Nolita created a pattern of colored lines that acted as a visual attraction for a venue. From that moment on we began to consider this aspect from the start of our projects.

Nolita stands and lives in private outdoor areas as well as in bistros and cafés, museums and universities, hotels and luxury resorts - do you have a favorite place?

Antonio Pagliarulo: I couldn't name a specific favorite place, but I’m always pleased to bump into it in the streets or in a square while walking around, in my own city as well as in a distant one. I get the idea that we've made a small contribution to that corner of the world.

Armchairs, lounge versions, modular sofa systems, a chaise longue and even a stool - the product family has grown a lot in the meantime. If you were a character in your Nolita product family, which one would you be?

Antonio Pagliarulo: Low-back chair, beautiful proportions

Simone Mandelli: High-back chair, beautiful proportions

Antonio Pagliarulo: We don't agree about that.

Simone Mandelli: Thank goodness! In fact, we insisted on developing both of them and they were both very successful.

When is the maximum of a product family reached? Is there still room for improvement?

Simone Mandelli: Sure, there’s always room for improvement. We periodically pick up the Nolita drawings, retrace the turning points of the main design decisions and question them, imagining a different, alternative development. Who knows: something might come out of it one day.

Where do you see Nolita in 20 years?

Antonio Pagliarulo: Our purpose was that Nolita had to be a timeless object. Not a flavor of the month. We hope that the next twenty years will confirm this and make Nolita as much as possible an object for everyone.

Pedrali @ Salone del Mobile
8. – 13. April 2025
Hall 24 | D30 D38