In collaboration with international designers, Mara has unveiled four new collections. Bold and playful, they’re a logical extension of the brand’s design and production know-how
Modern, post-war Italy was a luminous era, and against that backdrop of progressive architecture and design, Camillo Marchina founded Mara in 1960. At the time, the Brescia-based company largely made metal-framed chairs for the contract market, but over the decades it plumped up its seating offerings, rounding them out with versatile tables, desks, stools and bookcases that are suitable for office, residential and hospitality settings.
Expanding upon Mara’s R&D savvy and production capabilities was the vision of Luciano Marchina, Camillo’s son, who now leads the family-owned business as CEO with his daughter Laura, who is Mara’s managing director. “Thanks to my father’s passion for mechanics, we started to introduce innovative products with integrated patented mechanisms that could respond to emerging needs,” says Laura. “From that moment on, Mara began to make a name for itself not only as a manufacturer but as a brand with a strong personality.”
Helping to shape that narrative are collaborations, an opportunity, says Laura, for wider discussions “to broaden the perspectives of Mara’s design and achieve surprising results”. In 2021, for instance, Italian studio Barbi Bottazzo conceived the height-adjustable Follow Me table, buoyed by a tilting top, and at the 2024 edition of Salone del Mobile Milano, Mara debuted four collections that exemplify European talent.
Consider Milan-based Ferruccio Laviani’s Elle bookcase and console showcasing L-shaped shelves that can be arranged in various configurations, or Paris designer Christophe Pillet’s slim-legged Foil table, bench and workstation. At first glance, the piece exudes a modest linear aesthetic, but then its flat, slimline surfaces slide open to reveal space-saving drawers and trays that are sleekly hidden away. The piece is at once “solid and resistant, but also dynamic”, says Laura. “Extrapolating such simplicity and such an ideal of lightness was the real challenge of this project.”
According to Laura, metal is “the material that more than any other represents us and is part of our DNA”, and the Elle and Foil products, which come in 100 per cent recyclable versions, are “completely mono-material products that look toward sustainability”.
For the Typo, a classic office chair reimagined with bent steel by Milan architecture firm AMDL Circle, founder Michele De Lucchi pushed Mara to “experiment and find new forms with which design could promote wellbeing”, points out Laura. Mara’s ergonomic, soft-curved Icon family of seating – its first full-fledged foray into fabric – came from Brescia architect and designer Marcello Ziliani. Launched in 2022 to complement Mara tables, it is now invigorated by durable polypropylene shells.
From the beginning, the brief shared with all the designers, elaborates Laura, “was not so much what had to be done, but how”, to amplify Mara’s technologies and metalworking know-how. “These collaborations came about almost spontaneously. It was nice to see how from the very first meeting there was understanding and synergy.”
Although the quartet of utilitarian designs are certainly eye-catching, they transcend mere style. “They all have a good story to tell,” says Laura. “I see in these products a perfect combination between the soul of Mara, which continues to put the user at the centre, and the taste of the designers.”
Images by Nava Rapacchietta and Marcello Ziliani
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