The icon of Italian automotive design continues its advance with the creation of the Oksýs chaise longue, taken from its first furniture collection, which was revealed at the latest edition of Milan Design Week.

Over the course of almost a century, Pininfarina has expanded and developed various design fields, including transportation, industrial design, architecture, interior design and automotive design. Nevertheless, the "collection" approach has remained rooted in the history of the Turin-based brand since it was founded in 1930 by Gian-Battista Pinin Farina. Its original vocation was to create unique, luxurious cars as collector's items. One example is the emblematic Cisitalia 202, built in 1947. This little aerodynamic revolution was the first car to join the MoMA collection in New York in 1972. The hand-hammered aluminum panels embodied a break with traditional mass-production methods, evoking a timeless blend of art and engineering.

FORM AND FUNCTION IN TUNE

Today, the family business, recently headed by Lucia Morselli following the death of Paolo Pininfarina, continues to combine creativity and craftsmanship, while adding a new stone to the edifice. With the Oksýs chaise longue, unveiled at the Rossana Orlandi gallery during the last edition of Milan Design Week, she inaugurates her furniture collection. This prototype model, produced in the brand's workshops in Cambiano (Turin), is the result of a single aluminum casting and presents the contrast between two textures and two shapes. For Marco Becucci, designer and head of Pininfarina's Architecture and Design department, Oksýs is an "oxymoron" object, its name deriving from the Greek root of the same word. Here, "the artificial and the natural, man and nature, are not opposites but complementary elements, all part of the same logic".

CRAFTSMANSHIP WITH INDUSTRIAL AMBITIONS

This harmonization of seemingly disparate elements forms a coherent whole. The upper part of the seat features a smooth surface, with flowing lines for sitting and reclining, reminiscent of the brand's automotive design aesthetic. In contrast, the lower part evokes the natural, wild, rough and rugged beauty of rock. "The two elements meet and form part of a whole in a balance that finds its center in the synchrony of forms," explains Giovanni de Niederhäusern, Vice President of the Architecture and Design Department. For Pininfarina, this limited-edition design is a pure tribute to the history of its expertise, with an eye to the future of craftsmanship in the age of digital technology and automation.

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