At this year’s 3daysofdesign festival in Copenhagen, family-owned Italian design company Arper is presenting a new exhibition, (RE)CONNECTING, built around themes of returning to the present moment and the people around us.

Taking place this year from 10-12 June, 3daysofdesign is Denmark’s official design festival and represents one of the key events of the global arts calendar. Its theme this year is ‘Make This Moment Matter’, a rallying cry to all exhibiting brands to reimagine how it feels to interact with furniture and design pieces within the present moment.

It is an invitation to rethink our personal relationship to interior space that has embraced by Arper, which is presenting (RE)CONNECTING in response. The exhibition centres on open dialogue and the everyday rituals of gathering in shared environments.

“It is about creating the conditions for people to feel open, comfortable and at ease,” says chief marketing officer Simona Colombo, “so that dialogue and connection can happen more naturally.”

In material terms, the building blocks of Arper’s drive to ground people within the here-and-now are comfortably familiar. Colombo cites the moments of an evening meal as the sequential elements that inform the company’s mission statement: “Gathering around a table, pausing for a conversation, sitting together or simply taking a moment to observe and listen,” she says.

Environments that connect with the moment

Specifically relating to (RE)CONNECTING, the installation strives to explore how colours, materials and proportions shape the way in which people feel and interact with everyday utilities. The overarching intention of all Arper products is to create environments where people feel welcomed and grounded. Or, as Colombo asserts, “Free to reconnect with others, with the space or with the moment they are in.”

In conjunction with this emphasis on the human element of interior spaces are the practical concerns of manufacturing and sustainability. Embodying this balance between environmental concerns and contemporary living are the four collections on display at 3daysofdesign this year: Aom, Cari, Catifa (RE) and Catifa Carta.

All share a focus on comfort, adaptability and sustainable production. Indeed, when viewed collectively in Copenhagen, Colombo believes “these collections express a common design language: essential, versatile and human”. Arper’s drive toward a more responsible way of designing and production is still grounded in the intention of meeting consumer needs without impeding on comfort and adaptability.

Catifa Carta marks a notable step toward this goal, thanks to the use of PaperShell – a composite of 29 sheets of kraft paper, bonded with a naturally-made resin – which underlines a new approach to the relationship between material use and product life cycles.

As Colombo says of the four collections on display at 3daysofdesign, “They belong to the same product family, not because they look the same, but because they share the same approach. They share a balance between comfort, adaptability and responsibility.”

Balancing circularity with practicality

Integral to the Arper production life cycle is meaningful consideration of the environmental impacts of each new product. As Colombo says, “When we design a new product, circularity is never considered separately from the practical needs of everyday use.”

Instead, from the very outset of the design process, significant time is spent assessing all factors pertaining to comfort and durability, as well as environmental responsibilities in line with the present market demands. All are handled with the same attention to detail. “The goal is not to make one element the consequence of another,” Colombo says, “but to find the right balance between all of them.”

The key to Arper’s philosophy as a furniture designer, as well as an innovator in sustainable manufacturing, is rooted in a unique and dynamically open-ended perspective. The company’s willingness to research new materials and production processes naturally bleeds into its approach to design itself, with each of these innovations pointedly avoiding any compromise in quality.

“These can be materials that may not yet be widely used in our industry, but that can respond to both environmental and functional needs,” Colombo says. “Sometimes this involves developing new solutions, and sometimes it means looking at existing materials from a different perspective.”

Aprer is presenting its (RE)CONNECTING exhibition at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen from 10-12 June. More information can be found here.

All images: Supplied by Arper.