On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2023, Foscarini presents VITE 2, the second chapter of the project created in 2018 together with artist and photographer Gianluca Vassallo, which, by staging Lives (Vite) of people told through the houses they inhabit, marked a change of direction in the storytelling of the Foscarini collections. VITE represents a new perspective, a change of focus, an evolution in the way the brand positions itself with respect to its products. The desire to talk about light starting not from the lamps – those who design, develop, or produce them – but from the people who live in the spaces that the lamps illuminate. With VITE – from 2022 also a volume published and distributed in bookshops by Corraini publishing house – in fact, the product is no longer at the centre of the scene, because people are at the centre.
VITE is not a stylistic exercise, but a project desired by Foscarini to invite people to grasp the true power of design: the emotion and atmosphere that a lamp can give to a real home, inhabited by real people, eager to take care of things to feel good about themselves and their living spaces. The beauty and emotion that Vassallo captures is the same that Foscarini aspires to create with its lamps: made to shed light, but above all to be lifelong companions.
“At the end of 2018, while we were thinking about updating our sales literature, we found ourselves at a crossroads. As fortunate participants in the world of Light, offering products differing when on or off and capable of insertion in many vividly different contexts, it is always hard to find individual responses that can represent so much versatility and expressive variety. Is it better to show the design piece itself, or should we surround it with a setting, a context? It is difficult to choose either option since they both have their positive aspects and intrinsic limits. But then we began to imagine a new, different path. A story in which our lamps would enter and become part of real homes, taking part in life experiences. Displaying their ability to bring character, but also to adapt. Not demanding a setting but contributing to creating a scene, becoming part of real LIVES (VITE)” states Carlo Urbinati, Foscarini Founder and President.
A tale in images, video, and words, VITE is a journey through cities of the North, South, East and West. An itinerary within real environments, meeting real people. People are at the centre of the lens and the narrative, while the gaze is left free to wander in personal, real and therefore also imperfect environments, inevitably far from the typical communication of the design world in which Foscarini operates, which often fears imperfection, that which characterises life. With the VITE project we no longer see photographic sets, but lived-in, everyday houses, which tell us the stories of the people who live in them.
With VITE Foscarini illustrates design in its most human dimension. That design which reveals its qualities in the dwellings of people, who experience their homes as if they were mirrors: to see yourself, not to display yourself. To know yourself – not to show off.
