CATALANO 4.0

40 YEAR ANNIVESARY FOR THE CATALANO BENCH

« We have discovered a new way to ideally adapt the deployé.  The material is elastic, easily curved in one direction making it resistent.  It wastes no iron plates and is perforated. This reduces the steel from heating up, permits quick drying after a downpour and gives the bench an appearance of transparency - an effect we have been persuing from the start.  We have also introduced freedom to the length of the bench, now being able to increase in modules of metres. »

In 1974 Lluis Clotet and Oscar Tusquets wrote the text for the presentation of the Catalano Bench, signed by Studio Per just when BD had been founded.  These young architects designed the Catalano when there wasn’t even a definition for outdoor furniture, but we can affirm that it was initiated with the bench.  The secret for success was in the virtues within the steel «déployé», it’s profile, it’s ergonomics which is insurpassable.  It has been wisely adapted to Gaudí’s famous mosaic bench in Park Güell.

Before Clotet and Tusquets started the Catalano project, the benches were classic and very romantic, but esthetically were anchored in the past.  With the passing of time the Catalano Bench has also ended up being a classic in Spanish design.  It almost seems like yesterday when we were blowing the candles out for the 25th Anniversary and today we are 15 years on.  There are very few companies in the world that can be proud of having in their catalogue a design that has such a commercially long life.

Forty years for the Catalano Bench.  We want to celebrate with a change of image which will assist in its enduring half a century with happiness and colour.  Axalta Coating Systems has especially designed something for this special occasion.  Four bright colours in pastel tones give a new life to the Catalano 4.0, covered with powdered paint and topped off with a texturised high quality finish.

    Ramon Úbeda, BD

CATALANO ACAMPANADO

    When we finished playing with the ends that dress and sweeten the deployé, we noted the extremes hanging freely and we said to each other:  “Well!  It looks like a design by the Campana brothers”.  In the same way that when I finished the chair that looked half Gaudí and half Mollino, I decided to call it “Gaulino”, and when Ingo Maurer finished a book with a luminous aerial which was much like my Bib Luz, he decided to called it “Oskar”, thus we should call this version of the bench “Catalano Acampanado”. 

    OTB

In the last image, the two designers at the 25th anniversary of the bench