This past year B&B Italia, one of Italy’s most revered furniture brands, celebrated its 50th anniversary with a retrospective at 2016’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, a 360-page coffee table book, and various birthday events across the globe. A particularly lauded component of these affairs has been the private screenings of an autobiographical documentary titled Poetry in the Shape—When Design Meets Industry. Today, as the finale for this anno importante (the company founding was April 13, 1966), the brand releases the captivating film online for all its fans to see. Company CEO Giorgio Busnelli, son of founder Piero Ambrogio Busnelli, narrates the 50-minute movie, tracing the company’s roots from innovative postwar plastics manufacturing that allowed for the creation of unconventional lines to controversial ad campaigns starring a nude Andy Warhol muse to its collaborations with some of the world’s top designers, including Ettore Sottsass, Zaha Hadid, and Jasper Morrison. Interviews feature insights from contemporary collaborators such as Patricia Urquiola, Vincent Van Duysen, and Renzo Piano, the Italian architect behind the company’s Brianza headquarters. Watch a clip of the film below, and catch the entire film here.
