Among Gabriel Tan’s many achievements is his debut collection for Italian furniture brand B&B Italia at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair.
Established in 1966, B&B Italia is one of Italy’s most respected furniture manufacturers, producing iconic pieces such as the UP armchair designed by Gaetano Pesce with an upholstered ball for an ottoman. Only the most talented designers and architects such as Antonio Citterio, Jean-Marie Massaud, Patricia Urquiola and Naoto Fukasawa have had the privilege of designing for the brand.
He was pleasantly surprised at how the pieces were so well received. Influential global design publications Wallpaper* and Surface magazines featured them as one of their highlights of Milan Design Week, and the B&B Italia country dealers expressed excitement about their design and the fact that B&B Italia was working with new talents outside from their stable crop of designers.
These achievements are commendable for someone who grew up in the Singapore during the 1980s and 1990s, where a career in industrial design was unheard of. Tan discovered it by chance when he stumbled upon design books in the library. “I was in the navy doing my military service and read them before lights-out almost every night. I was fascinated that such a profession even existed,” he recalled.
In a way, as a creative director where he curates designers and craftsmen to collaborate with brands, he is following in the footsteps of George Nelson. He is a fan of the American designer “not only for his timeless designs, but also for the way he discovered and introduced other designers such as Alexander Girard, Charles and Ray Eames and Isamu Noguchi to the Herman Miller brand”.Some of the collaborators are contemporaries Tan admires, such as Staffan Holm from Sweden.
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