Matrix International

Our main activity is based on an intense research work; when it comes to projects which have never been carried out, a research is conducted on a series of registered documents and drawings; when it comes to the reissue of products which no longer exist on the commercial circuit a study is conducted directly on the original models; and, in some fortunate cases, it is still possible to work in collaboration with the author, who keenly accepts the challenge of modernizing his/her own projects thanks to the technical means which were not available at the time of the project?s conception. The final aim of our work, is that of giving life to a small series of high quality standardized productions in compliance with the original goals of the project (the structural and formal conceptions that originated it). During the last ten years of activity we have been able to enrich our collection with less well-known projects such as: the Arabesk armchair designed in 1955 by the Swedish designer Folke Jansson (exhibited at the Vitra design museum), the trolley designed by Marcel Breuer in 1928 (an original model is exhibited at the Neue Galerie of New York), as well as a table, also designed by Breuer, produced and commercialized by Thonet until the late 1920?s. In 2002 we carried out a research on a different number of old master projects, identifying several furniture and fittings designed by Saarinen and Associates studio for the GM Tech Centre. Throughout the following two years we have performed surveys and in-depth studies, visited the GM headquarters in Warren, Michigan; we have examined the original sittings present in the lobbies and analyzed the pictures of numerous prototypes which make part of the Moma collection. Gathering all this material, has given us the opportunity of setting up the prototypes of the lobbies? sittings which were perfectioned and industrialized thereafter.