Like many designers whose mother tongue is not English, Italian Marco Goffi would seem to have a flair for creative translation. His work philosophy contains this rhetorical gem: “the ‘sign’ as possible representation… a kind of ‘device’ input receiving, processing data and showing ‘diagrams’ as special output. The sign is the starting point of the design’s answer, the final result its mutation status.” The failings (and successes) of this declaration are likely owed to the limitations of machine translation rather than any human person; nevertheless, the words speak volumes in relation to Goffi’s contract seating flight of fancy that he calls Fusillo.

Fusillo. Designed by Marco Goffi.

Contract Inspiration From Arcane Signification

Parsing out the problematic yet poetic language above, Goffi would seem to be discussing the transformation from mental image to fully realized product. In regards to Fusillo, he characterizes its starting point as “a three pointed star.” The process that bore fruit in the Red Dot Design Winning line of contract seating involved imagining a sort of free floating movement of this star in space—“declaring its identity as a living being… an ‘organic shell’ which encourages the human relationship instead of emphasizing the individual.”

Sitting on Fusillo is definitely a community endeavor. The Polyurethane bench is constructed using what Goffi calls “roto-moulding technology,” whose upshot is a melding of one seat into the next. This characterization is dead-on in light of Fusillo’s concentric dynamism. Indeed, the piece is movement personified—resembling any number of rotating fan blades at the moment of time’s slow demise, the implication of movement quite present even if the actual rotation has slowed to a barely perceptible crawl. Fusillo is not for the timid. Unconventional in a way that might draw the envy of Zaha Hadid or Karim Rashid (or even Stanley Kubrick, would he could see it), it’s a bold gesture toward the future that will enliven any public space. But perhaps that’s putting it softly, for Fusillo is bound to spin us all headlong into the second decade of this new millennium.

Available in polished lacquer or leather (indoor); coloured PE (outdoor)