The name is Stardust, the first revolutionary product Mario Bellini signs for Meritalia.
This project is dealing with a new family of bright furniture – pillows, pouff, chaise longue, armchairs, sofas – realized without cast with “poor” materials.
The extraordinary idea was to make use of “ravioli made of air” similar to those normally used for packages, as stuffing, and a metallic netting made of thin inox wire, in practice transparent, as covering-case.
These new furniture can be even used as big and comfortable lamps on which people can seat. Low consumer, low voltage and high performance leds which can be considered the latest product of refined and ever-new conception fresh realized in Hong Kong, are brought in each piece and turn these furniture into out-and-out diffuse light sources or in a kind of light which, in an optional version, can change at will in the color scale.
Moreover the Stardust system has other two qualities: weightlessness, because this armchair can be lifted with one hand only, and buoyancy, in case it is used in a swimming-pool or at the seaside (the wire netting remains unchanged and, as known, above water air doesn’t sink).
Stardust is just the beginning of a long range research of “no-conventional” solutions supported by advanced technologies and innovative materials. First among all, the opportunity to input precious iridescent powders in the ravioli’s air which are able to produce their own light. All this to explain the journey doesn’t come to an end here …
The name Stardust reminds a well-known standard jazz, composed and recorded in 1927 in Richmond, Indiana, by Hoagy Carmichael with the words written four years later by Michael Parish, and moreover it is even the name of the orbiter built and launched in 1999 by the Nasa. During the mission the orbiter collected from space some particles and fragments coming from the comet Wild 2 . So these samples were sent to Earth by means of a special capsule, landed in 2006. from the capsule some fragments were taken and sent to some laboratories in all over the world.
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