QUADERNA 476 Freestanding rectangular framed mirror

The Quaderna collection – designed by Superstudio from 1969 to 1972, manufactured by Zanotta from 1972 and recognized as Radical Design manifesto collection – expands with the addition of three brand new products that widen the functionality and product types covered by the checkered furniture range: the mirror, the low storage unit for living room and one cupboard.‎

The Quaderna mirror is inspired by the 'Measuring Mirror' sculpture module that the group's architects used to study the effect of the continuous and potentially infinite super surface.‎ A 5 mm thick plate glass is perimetrically contained by a 51x15x195 cm frame in white Print laminate wood, digitally printed with black squares at 3 cm spac-ing.‎ The mirror is floorstanding and fastened to the wall.‎

The products in the Quaderna Series are the result of a highly industrialised process and - at the same time - impeccable craftsmanship skills.‎ The chequered laminate was purpose-created by Print based on a design by Superstudio and features an isotropic chequered design with a 3 cm centre distance.‎ The mesh is produced using digital printing that causes a slight variation in the centre distance of the lines and thus means it is necessary to create a body to cover that is not perfectly orthogonal in order to make all the lines on each side line up optically.‎ The laminate pieces are individually applied in a specific sequence.‎ This manual task requires extreme artisanal precision and uses the inlaying technique which takes many hours of work to produce a single item of furniture.‎ Every Quaderna object comes from a single sheet of laminate so that the centre distance is the same, albeit slightly misaligned by a few tenths of a centimetre: this is the only way the chequered surfaces prove continuous in the three dimensions guided by the Cartesian axes in keeping with the original project.‎ The convergence of the lines of the mesh determines the total homogeneity of the surfaces and lends the furniture a strong personality, as they are visually marked in their corners.‎ The difficulty in ensuring all the joints line up to the nearest millimetre makes it impossible to detach the legs from the tabletop even during transport.‎ An additional complexity, however an essential one to preserve the uniqueness of the original idea.‎