boattomartino studio means Maddalena Boatto, architect and Manuel Martino, product designer. After their professional paths crossed and they combined their personal aptitudes in 2016, Maddalena and Manuel founded boattomartino studio in Milan. The practice expresses an intransigent design approach, driven by passion, curiosity and dedication to the work. It is an attitude which extends to every order and scale, from architecture, to interior and product design.
The design method is expressed through exchange, combination and summary of accumulated professionalism and inclinations at the same time different and complementary. Together, Maddalena and Manuel focus on inspiration and research, developing influences between different expressive languages, in a vision which is always respectful of the contemporary instances, context and trends. Together, they rework the external inputs and, through attentive strategic investigation, transform them into new products, new images – real or surreal – new compositional and communicative visions, always in keeping with a continually evolving context.
The practice has robust experience in the artistic direction and design of furniture collections and families of products. Among the different paths taken, it particularly investigates the new standards of the high-end, which it reinterprets in design terms through their own aesthetic code and contemporary vision, at the same time more calibrated and essential, refined and authentic.
During these years, the pair of designers have consolidated their partnership with Capital, a company working towards a contemporary interpretation of high-end furniture – as the perfect summary of high craftsmanship, excellent materials, tailor-made design and customisation – and Atmosphera, a company known for its desire to imagine a new outdoor living philosophy.
In particular, Maddalena and Manuel have produced furnishing systems and entire product ranges for the company from the Padua area founded by Paolo Viscovich and now led by his sons Alberto and Federico, dedicating themselves to a design approach which also consistently involves the visual and expository image: a virtuous partnership which – in close connection with and through constant dialogue with the board – leads the artistic and creative direction towards authentically contemporary design paths, compositional visions and aesthetic codes.
The curved and straight lines. The solids and voids, the shadows and light, the austerity and lightness. An evocative name which represents at the same time a tribute and a declaration of intentions. A refined homage to Renaissance architecture and its solemn sense of harmony, in a piece of furniture with profoundly contemporary features, that perfectly summarises monumental vocation and fluid sleekness, precious accents and a sense of minimal and ultramodern décor.
Amongst the most recent projects designed by Maddalena and Manuel for Capital – presented by the brand at the Salone del Mobile 2023 – the Palladio cabinet features a solemn yet at the same time fluid volume, with MDF structure and matt acrylic lacquer finish with a soft-touch effect, here in the verdigris version. The architectural nature of the furniture reveals a sleekly refined stylistic trait, which is expressed through the dynamic and iridescent nature of the bronzed crystal arches with reeded glass in the doors, through the lively sparkle of the precious “jewel” of the furniture’s carcase, like the profiles and metal details on the front in polished bronze brass.
Since the foundation of the practice, Maddalena and Manuel have had a strong interest in the material, in all its expressive power and interpretive opportunities: alongside professional collaborations with furniture and design brands, the pair of designers have dedicated themselves in parallel to investigating material, formal and design experimentation pathways through the creation of objects and accessories designed and manufactured in small runs.
boattomartino thus inaugurates its début at the 2023 edition of EDIT Napoli, the exhibition dedicated to independent and “editorial” design expressed through objects in production, on a small or large scale – now in its fifth year in a totally new location, the Archivio di Stato in Naples – where it will be presenting the Suoli project, a path of experimentation born of the desire to revive the colours of their area of origin using scraps of marble – one of the most interesting and polyhedric natural materials, with infinite expressive nuances and innate elegance – which takes concrete form in a series of coffee tables with archetypal forms and a rigorous and lean mood, with an ultramodern appearance.
Suoli means squared-off and irregular forms, like a succession of cultivated fields; lines, marks and holes, like the patient work of the people who cultivate them; natural stone and marble – matt, acid-worn, milled – like the different consistencies and expressive richness of ploughed soil. Suoli means the thousand shades of colour of the countryside around Venice. A collection which speaks to us about land, origins, childhood: about simple and laborious gestures, and the pure gazes of children on that which surrounds them.
More specifically, in Naples Maddalena and Manuel will be presenting Cavanella, a square coffee table which brings together different types of marble: brushed honed Noce Travertine, brushed, honed and milled Giallo Reale marble, brushed honed Stalattite marble joined together with the process of gluing; and Ca’ Longa, an asymmetrical rectangular coffee table which combines brushed, honed and milled Santa Fiora stone, brushed honed Giallo Reale marble, and acid-etched brushed and honed Santa Fiora stone, once again joined together with the process of gluing. Both pieces of furniture are part of the Suoli project.
