Driade, the ever-evolving aesthetic lab of mass-produced living
What started as a family intuition became the most fashionable brand within ItalianCreationGroup: Driade is the Italian furniture company that counts more than 50 years of lifestyle.
A passion for fashion and design, an obsession for ice cream. Copywriter, storyteller and outstanding cook, traveling during winter to warmer places. Living in Italy, since always and forever.
LinkedinOnce upon a time, a graduate in stage design, Adelaide Acerbi, her husband, architect Enrico Astori, and his designer sister Antonia, joined efforts to found a company that would soon contribute to creating some milestones that marked the history of design.
The year was 1968: from the beginning the still very young team surrounded itself with the best designers, combining creative project planning, sharp execution and smart advertising into a factory of art named Driade.
Driade was a sudden success: what started with a family intuition turned into an aesthetic laboratory incessantly searching for beauty in all the aspects of living.
Objects for daily use and pieces of art, furniture for home, outdoor and public spaces created in a unique, eclectic way, in Driade’s lab, where experimentation sneaks into the mass-production system.
Enzo Mari for Driade
Driade’s early years are strictly bound to Italian design: the ‘70s are the years of Nanda Vigo’s Blocco seat, De Pas, D’Urbino and Lomazzi’s Due Cavalli armchair and, of course, of Enzo Mari‘s moral revolution.
For Driade, Mari designed some of his most successful pieces: with his minimalist and elegant Delfina chair, Driade wins the first Compasso D’Oro in 1979 and 22 years later, Mari’s Legato table wins Driade’s second Compasso D’Oro.
Eager to discover more about Enzo Mari? Don’t miss the story of the iconic designer, acknowledged as the critical conscience of design.
Alessandro Mendini for Driade
The ‘80s are the years of the excesses: Driade introduces pieces that wink at the eighteen-century opulence, starting with Alessandro Mendini’s Sabrina chair.
Named after the popular movie, this strong and distinctive chair created in 1982 is a reinterpretation of the ‘bergère’, with a wooden structure and a typical velvet cover.
Achille Castiglioni for Driade
In the same year, another great Italian master designs one of Driade’s iconic pieces. Achille Castiglioni, a functionalist poet of design, creates for Driade the Sancarlo armchair, whose ergonomic seatback conformation features original padding volumes reminding the seat of a racing car.
Philippe Starck for Driade
During the ‘80s Driade takes an international turn: among the other talents discovered by Enrico Astori, a young Philippe Starck in 1984 designs his Costes chair, starting a long-lasting collaboration with Driade that will lead to other renowned creations, as the Lou family of armchairs (2011-2017).
Ron Arad for Driade
The acronym ‘MT’ that defines Driade’s third Compasso D’Oro, received in 2008, in English is pronounced ’empty’, and emptiness really is the key element of this incredible project: Ron Arad MT3 rocking chair is the result of a long industrial study on rotational molding technology.
Fabio Novembre for Driade
In 2010 Fabio Novembre designs for Driade the suggestive Nemo armchair, an intense representation of a mask that hides and at the same time reveals the inhabitant of this iconic piece.
Less than ten years later, as a result of an intense, long-lasting collaboration with the brand, Novembre will become art director of the company that shares with him the ability to be a trendsetter and a passionate lover of beauty: Driade.
