A book by Giampaolo Grassi on Francesco Binfaré, presented at the Edra showroom, tells the professional and human story of a designer who has changed our way of thinking about objects

It was presented last night, in the Edra showroom in Milan (together with the second number of Edra magazine. Our point of view ), the book of “Francesco Binfaré” di Giampaolo Grassi.

The volume, published by Mandragora, is not a biography but does not even resemble a design book. After all, its opening words explain everything, without (deliberately) explaining anything: “Nobody would be able to say exactly what Francesco Binfaré is doing, not even him…”.

It is beautiful when design is told by those who do it, without veils or reticence. And it is precisely this aspect that strikes us in Grassi's book: through his pages emerge the ideas and works of Francesco Binfaré and his way of conceiving objects that revolutionized the world around us.

A real protagonist in the first person of the birth and development of Italian design as we know it today, Francesco Binfaré directed the Cassina research centers in the seventies and eighties and then became the author himself, signing sofas produced by Edra .

It is therefore an extraordinary era that Francesco Binfaré recalls in this book.

The Cassina research center is described as an Italian Bauhaus, the place where the designers who, with Binfaré as director, have created the contemporary Italian style gravitated.

“The Center was like a ship on a mission,” explains Binfaré. “We were sent by Queen Isabella, but it was not important to know what she wanted. The important thing was to navigate the ocean and try to find the New World, a land that no one knew if there was or not. We were interested in experiencing exploration ".

After the search for the New World, the era of solo sailing as a creator of sofas arrives for Binfaré, for Edra, which have made an era: L'Homme et la Femme, Flap, On the Rocks, Standard, Pack, Grande Soffice. ...

Cover photo: Francesco Binfaré in a portrait by Giovanni Gastel