Baleri Italia spa
www.baleri-italia.com

History

Baleri Italia was founded in 1984 as a manufacturer of quality furniture with a high design content by Enrico Baleri, a creative and cultured entrepreneur. It was a natural evolution of his activity of research and development in the design area, started at the end of the '60s, inspired by Dino Gavina and continued by creating the design studio Pluri in 1972 where he developed the famous Spaghetti Chair, and at the end of the '70s by participating in the founding of Alias.

The path towards a personal interpretation of the design process led to the creation of Baleri Italia, a company that since the beginning developed products with strong formal and functional qualities with the support of an innovative Research Department and a constant activity of talent-scouting. That activity brought to the discovery of new talents - the first being a young Philippe Starck - and added to the continuous technological experimentation that made Baleri Italia an innovator in materials and manufacturing techniques and product solutions.

The design and manufacturing process is always ruled by the company's philosophy that sets Man and his environment at the centre of the project and by the high technical qualities of the products that make them timeless objects, suitable for a multitude of environments. In this context the contract projects have always played a primary role for the company - equal, if not more important, than the residential market - since the first and prestigious furnishing of the private apartments of President Mitterand at the Elysée by Starck.

While collaborating with successful designers such as Alessandro Mendini, Angelo Mangiarotti and Denis Santachiara, among the others, Baleri Italia has launched several new talents such as Philippe Starck, Hannes Wettstein and Luigi Baroli. At the same time many international prizes have been awarded: among them the Compasso d'Oro 1994 for Cartoons, since 2001 part of the permanent collection of MOMA NY, the nomination for Caprichair in 1994, Lisa chair in 2001 and the corporate image in 1987 and 2001.

The quality of the design process - also presented at the end of the '90s through the innovative travelling exhibition Underwear - is reflected in the ergonomics and functionality of the products and most of all in their reliability and longevity. These attributes make the Baleri Italia collection successful both in the home and the contract markets, with the realization of important and prestigious projects for multinational companies, airlines, banks and financial institutes, luxury hotels and airports in several countries, political and cultural institutions, showrooms and offices.

In 2004, with the arrival of a new majority shareholder, a partnership with Nino Cerruti was born with the objective of developing a new industrial project that could also benefit from his long and successful experience in the textile and fashion business. A new managing group headed by the managing director Angelo Ramponi and the art director Federico Carandini and a renewed internal team, have set the ground for a growth project based on the conservation of the cultural and production heritage of the company with a strong attention towards the needs of today's society and markets.

The formal innovation and talent-scouting activity continues as shown by the collection presented during the Salone del Mobile 2005 in Milan, where Baleri Italia introduced the work of young talents such as Jeff Miller as well as successful designers such as Ilse Crawford, Arik Lévy, Marcel Wanders and Hannes Wettstein. The new collection includes pragmatic and yet groundbreaking products such as the sofas Otis and Horizon, or innovative ones in shape and function such as the Clipt chair, Flipt armchair and Bentz table or again poetic e decorative as the Ballerina chair and The Other containers. It is particularly important the introduction of the new textile collection, a big project that could count on the experience and the direction of Nino Cerruti: it has been redefined, redesigned, enlarged and it can now coun
t on over 450 varieties of wool, cotton, linen, technical materials, natural and synthetic leathers.

Baleri Italia continues its role of innovator and nurtures an attentive and open relationship with all its partners, in order to foster growth both in the contract and in the residential markets.

Philosophy

Heir to a great project tradition, Baleri Italia designs and manufactures contemporary furniture, always in the formal and functional forefront of the design world. Innovation and versatility of use make the collection suitable to the residential as well as the contract market, always respecting the wide variety of contexts of use and applications that make up our market without imposing a total-look on the final customer. The design and manufacturing process is always ruled by the company's philosophy that sets Man and his environment at the center of the project. This vision is embodied by the new residential catalogue - along with the publication "The Collector's Home" - and by the soon available new contract book.

True to its philosophy, which is the DNA and guideline of the company's activity, Baleri Italia decided to renew the presentation of its home collection according to an updated vision of the home environment that could better answer to the contemporary market's psychological, aesthetic and emotional needs. We developed a new visual vocabulary of Solarity and Eclecticism, keywords that sum up the many attributes of our vision of home.

Solarity: it addresses the need for an emotional - and not just rational - content in the living environment, where the choices that determine the design of interiors are mostly based on feelings and not on concepts, influenced by the heart and "guts" and not only by the brain. It means colour, warmth, contrast, surprise, decoration, irony and sensuality. It means parting from the idea that monocromatic, minimalist and aseptic are the only possible visual languages to express modernity.

Eclecticism: it is the absence of a "total style" that has been conceptually predefined and that becomes the home's only visual language. It is instead a real expression of a home, where different styles and elements mingle, reflecting the different moments and the different experiences of those who live in it. It is therefore an expression of life rather than a style.

Baleri Italia has temporarily - because what is eclectic is always evolving, mutating - crystallized this vision at the end of 2004 in the presentation/installation "The Collector's Home". Since 2004, new installations of eclectic homes have been presented in our Via Cavallotti showroom in Milan. Images of these interpretations of interiors are displayed on this website.