The ECHO Low-Showcase: the new project in collaboration with Marcel Wanders studio
A renewed partnership
With the new low showcase the ECHO collection becomes wider and strengthens the collaboration of FIAM Italia with Marcel Wanders Studio, that led to several innovative projects over the years.
The ECHO family grows
The ECHO family grows with the latest low-showcase that broadens the possibilities of the successful collection born from FIAM Italia’s collaboration with Marcel Wanders studio: a successful partnership that has led to many innovative projects over the years. And “giving light” is certainly the leitmotif connecting Wanders’ stylistic research and the craftsmanship of FIAM Italia’s master glassmakers.
Giving light for FIAM Italia means mirrors: the POP mirror, the first model born from the collaboration with Marcel Wanders Studio, is a clear example of this. POP is a harmonious concentration of technology and lightness. The typical texture of its frame is enhanced through a high-temperature fusion process that forges on the glass surface a rhythmic movement of bubbles and ornaments that seem to lift and lighten the material from its own consistency. The silvering process then makes this sinuous surface reflective, so as to associate the effects of brightness with a multiplication of light. The central part of the mirror, which portrays the surrounding reality, reflects a surface that transfigures the reality in a dreamlike dimension: dream and reality, expectations and surprises, material and energy, merge in a mirror that changes according to the variation of the light intercepted by its surface.
dream and reality, expectations and surprises, material and energy, merge in a mirror that changes according to the variation of the light intercepted by its surface.
The same lightness can be found in the Lollipop mirror, another style icon of Marcel Wanders studio, in which the curved lines are combined with the delicate playfulness of the surrounding shapes and the light effects they can recreate. Flat and curved mirrors break the linearity of the environment, suggesting a new perspective able to downplay the reality by creating surprise.
Multiplying light and consequently space is, however, the main objective of the ECHO collection, in which the mirroring surfaces leave room for more or less veiled transparencies, not renouncing to the reflections. Giving light, multiplying light, furnishing with light. In other words, furnishing with energy more than with matter, which remains present, although almost implicit. The aspect of the ECHO showcases that strikes most at first glance is not much what is visible, but what can be seen: Echo is light without structure (apparently), light that multiplies in a thousand directions, as a voice multiplies in an echo. Its structure, the sounding board, are actually hidden by the immateriality of glass. Technology and craftsmanship shape the surface, embellishing it with signs, geometries, three-dimensionality that modify it and make it poetic.
Giving light, multiplying light, furnishing with light.
It is a hidden code forging the ECHO multi-reflective surfaces, an almost invisible DNA that gives shape to life: the life that animates the surrounding ambience thanks to a display case or a sideboard, in extralight or colored glass, transparent or opaque. Today this same DNA is transmitted to the new low-showcase, which will be presented at the 60th Edition of the Salone del Mobile 2022 in Milan. A new piece of the Echo Collection that inherits both the formats of the sideboards and the characteristic surfaces of the showcases, taking these factors to a new, bold level.
The level of an ostentatiously absent materiality, which works by subtraction, and in subtracting itself multiplies the surrounding light and space, modifying in this – like many other products of FIAM range – the common perception, and even the laws of physics.