Visit Bocci's exclusive apartment showroom at Milan Design Week 2024

We catch up with Canadian designer lighting brand Bocci to learn more about its recent initiatives and upcoming plans for Milan Design Week 2024

It’s been a busy few years for Bocci. Known mainly as a designer lighting brand retailed by Space Furniture, it is, in reality, an entire design ecosystem built around co-founder Omer Arbel’s design principles. It is at once a multidisciplinary design studio with projects that span various creative disciplines, a research lab dedicated to exploring novel production methods, and unveiling the hidden potential of materials such as glass, metal, concrete, fire and electricity, and much more. It has its own factory, too.

Arbel and the Bocci team are building a new headquarters to house this design ecosystem under one roof. This is on top of a fresh new logo, branding and website, as well as a new Milan apartment showroom, all of which debuted last year.

We caught up with Bocci’s sales director, Eleanor Smith, at Space Furniture ahead of Milan Design Week.

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The garden at Bocci’s Milan apartment showroom

Above The garden outside Bocci’s Milan apartment showroom

What are Bocci’s plans for the upcoming Milan Design Week?
We’ve been exhibiting in Milan for the past 15 years, and we always built these large displays at the Fiera. But we realised how wasteful it was because we had to tear them down after two weeks. We just didn’t have a permanent home when we also found that people were more interested in visiting off-site events and seeing how the city is being activated in different ways during Design Week.

So, we purchased an apartment in an early 20th-century building in Zona Vincenzo Monti, near Rossana Orlandi, renovated it for a year and a half, and launched it last year. The idea is that it is an actual living space—you can visit, browse, stay, and sleep over. And we host parties there. This is how we feel Bocci is best experienced.

This year, we’ll redo the apartment completely. Another fun thing about the Milan project is that we also choose to celebrate our relationships in the community. Many of our friends, like Calico Wallpaper, Christian Woo, ClassiCon, De La Espada, E15, Rocky LaRock with Monte Clark Gallery, Knoll International and others, contributed to the apartment. We’ll have some new friends contributing this year, and we’ll be launching new versions of some of our existing products.

The interiors of the Milan apartment showroom in 2023. It is currently closed to the public and will reopen during Milan Design Week 2024 with an all-new look and collaborators

Photo 1 of 2 The interiors of the Bocci Milan apartment showroom in 2023. It is currently closed to the public and will reopen during Milan Design Week 2024 with an all-new look and collaborators

Photo 2 of 2 A bedroom design at the Bocci Milan apartment showroom

What’s the latest from Bocci for the Singapore market?
We have the 14p with a USB-C charging connection. It’s a portable version of our iconic 14, launched in 2005. You can take 14p with you anywhere, its battery holds up to 36 hours on a full charge, and it has three levels of brightness you can adjust by tapping it. We will be launching this in a new colour at Milan Design Week.

Above More of the Bocci Milan apartment interiors and lighting creations

Above Playful lighting designs showcased at the Bocci Milan apartment showroom

Tell us about your upcoming new headquarters.
It is another five years away, but I think you will be excited. We’re building a seven-storey headquarters from the ground up in Vancouver. We’re using the same free-form concrete concept that we used to develop the 75, except instead of plywood and fabric, we are going to use spray-foam formwork, so the result will be even more organic.

The glass hot shop where all the pendants are made is located in the same space. This hot shop will be on the top floor, and its heat will warm up the entire building. I think it will become a destination in Vancouver because it’s so unique.

Above The one-of-a-kind 84.2 vases

Above More of Bocci’s 84.2 vases

What’s the story behind the naming of your products?
It’s always numbers and with dots because [co-founder] Omer gives a number to all his projects in chronological order. The chronology is from the idea’s inception, not when the product became public, and the number behind the dot indicates the version of that idea.

For example, the 84 pendant’s second iteration is the 84.2 vases, which expand the pendant’s manufacturing technique by adding colour and making them one-of-a-kind objects. We now have editioned objects, and maybe in the near future, we will have editioned furniture objects as well.

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Above Bocci co-founder, Omer Arbel

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Credits

Images

Courtesy of Bocci

Topics

Bocci Lighting Milan Design Week 2024

Tatler Asia

For Milan Design Week 2024, visit Bocci’s designer showroom housed in a 20th-century apartment