Posted in Design Stories
Strange Nature
![Flower via natural beauty Pinterest board](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/flower-via-natural-beauty-pinterest-board.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=564&s=09132cbeaec5198028357ce31af5f661)
We live our lives surrounded by nature. Yet, in our organized twenty-first century world, the fluid forms, geometric sequences, and brilliant hues of the natural world remain strange to us.
We watch in quiet awe as the natural world systematically changes around us responding to nutrients, climates and seasons. In her work, designer Patricia Urquiola investigates these systems, finding not just aesthetic inspiration, but rhythms of making and ways of functioning embedded in natural structures. It doesn’t take a microscope to recognize just how strange nature is — that flowers know to open and bloom, that leaves furl and unfurl just so, or that insects land on delicate petals to reach pollen-filled anthers.
![Patricia Urquiola via Frame Magazine by Antonio Campanella 2](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urquiola-via-Frame-Magazine-by-Antonio-Campanella-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1920&s=0aa4673906f49fa7fd863b331cf78dd8 1920w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urquiola-via-Frame-Magazine-by-Antonio-Campanella-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1565&s=9ceecfc8c8689d6f3dbd7286cb97f5ea 1565w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urquiola-via-Frame-Magazine-by-Antonio-Campanella-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1000&s=82b4371a33c4474976db4aa4fa9f41ad 1000w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urquiola-via-Frame-Magazine-by-Antonio-Campanella-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=600&s=f1fc8cf8d753dca50050de087c10486d 600w)
As children, nature stimulates our curiosity, and what we discover evokes within us a deep sense of wonder. Urquiola calls on our innate curiosity in each of her creations. She experiments freely with the way the senses are awoken by forms and materials that resonate with the natural world.
![Serena Lamp Context 2](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/s/serena-lamp-black-sale/Serena-Lamp-CONTEXT-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1245&s=a80aae38e8406ac980d47caee8e6dbd1 1245w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/s/serena-lamp-black-sale/Serena-Lamp-CONTEXT-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1000&s=69a192f2b5c0a4af6aa4f9abcc7bcf06 1000w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/s/serena-lamp-black-sale/Serena-Lamp-CONTEXT-2.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=600&s=72fc249bc138c3812094185d0898e4b7 600w)
As a result, Urquiola’s objects each have a strange nature. Serena, for example, takes the form of an enormous broad leaf, plucked and supported upright, cocooning the exposed pistil of a flower, which reveals itself as the lamp’s light source. Formed in polished metals, the leaf diffuses the emitted light, providing a soft glow around the bright pistil. When approaching this constructed object, we immediately recognize it as relating to the natural world, and then within the same instant, aren’t sure we recognize it at all. Embedded within this moment of confusion is a sense of beauty and purpose.
In our curated interior worlds, we often play out obsessions with order, proportion and geometry. Looking out the window, we notice the twisting, billowing and reforming of plants, atmospheres and bodies, all the while thinking of nature as a mere background to our more rigorous, designed lives. Designed to provide a typically interior comfort ‘en plein air’, the loosely formed Butterfly Sofa straddles our expectations of a sofa and the strange exterior world it is designed to occupy. The profile of the armrest and backrest is drawn from a quick sketch of a butterfly mid-flight, wings fluttering open, full and rounded. As an outdoor sofa it exudes comfort. The result is supremely voluptuous, beautifully grotesque, insistently and unapologetically fleshy.
![Butterfly sofa outdoor bbitalia 16](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/butterfly-sofa-outdoor-bbitalia-16.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1484&s=638c75f97f8e79e5f9633fb4ae42c9b5 1484w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/butterfly-sofa-outdoor-bbitalia-16.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1000&s=bfa46f46f93cc31e96928222b4275039 1000w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/butterfly-sofa-outdoor-bbitalia-16.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=600&s=2292cbacfccb8a50ba5eea4a710a3cee 600w)
Turning back to the interior, Urquiola responds to the sofa in a different manner with Tufty Time. Here, there is nothing flouncy to be seen. It’s a more formal language, conceptual, with ideas rather than images derived from nature. A relatively large piece, Tufty Time is a modular system, that can be selected, arranged and rearranged in a styled manner. In this way it departs from being inspired by nature to creating its own nature. When put together, the nine seating squares form a landscape, becoming a low foreground in a room of more spectacular vertical objects.
![Tufty Time Sofa via BB Italia 3](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Tufty-Time-Sofa-via-BB-Italia-3.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1804&s=8174fc8e6c1e5b74368f18d75f9357cf 1804w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Tufty-Time-Sofa-via-BB-Italia-3.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1565&s=b72825932522d8533b6b07109b090519 1565w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Tufty-Time-Sofa-via-BB-Italia-3.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1000&s=aed1f5b6ef512199fea8e8bd0b3b8db8 1000w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Tufty-Time-Sofa-via-BB-Italia-3.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=600&s=3961213c016a4e8fd7f8c6189fbe8369 600w)
The natural world is often equated with the feminine. This is a correlation that can, in many ways, over-simplify both the natural and the feminine to curvilinear, voluptuous forms, bright colours and close relationships. In Urquiola’s work, we find tough, clever pieces, with a touch of the extraordinary, that ask us to broader rather than reduce our understanding of this relationship. Urquiola reveals herself as a woman of extreme tenacity, wit and vision. She is a master not of the categories of nature or the feminine, but of calling on our curiosity as users, and generating a particular affection between each of us and these strange objects. The sensuality isn’t superficial, the products aren’t inert — this is a new, strange, nature.
![Floe-Insel-Cassina-6](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/f/floe-insel/Floe-Insel-Cassina-6.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=2319&s=71f14ccf742fe55a6dac94f5218b0021 2319w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/f/floe-insel/Floe-Insel-Cassina-6.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1565&s=64192e7e2272ebb1882fee9da5671c4b 1565w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/f/floe-insel/Floe-Insel-Cassina-6.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1000&s=d68b07bff586c2ddbec5018d6be452f1 1000w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/products/f/floe-insel/Floe-Insel-Cassina-6.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=600&s=a50e8b3022f594622716bee9b8ed0dc1 600w)
![Patricia-Urqiola](https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urqiola.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1200&s=1983ac961b5cb19992c87064cf70e895 1200w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urqiola.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=1000&s=1b3b8771f16b1bba6b3c389f7cdf5fd2 1000w, https://context-gallery.imgix.net/images/Patricia-Urqiola.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=clip&q=60&w=600&s=f47369881f9cd4b1654502e2959b63e9 600w)