Gufram - Baby-Lonia construction toy

A gigantic construction toy of soft polyurethane, designed at the beginning of Seventies, has become an unusual modular decor. Baby-lonia came to life from the genius of Studio 65, a group of radical designers led by Franco Audrito, following the innovative ideas of pedagogue Francesco De Bartolomeis. Because of its educational content it was used by some of the best Italian schools during the Seventies, since it is light and flexible and so suitable for kids.  In the Eighties Gufram decided to make it into a true interior design item, perfect to enrich the catalogue of a brand already involved in the production of pop and radical objects. The polyurethane foam Baby-lonia is composed of is coated with Guflac, the special paint patented by Gufram that makes polyurethane look like leather while increasing its resistance and maintaining its softness. Baby-lonia is to all intents and purposes a domestic sculpture that can be broken up into chairs and tables, but that still remains a toy … for kids as well as adults. As the story goes, it is the only toy that belongs to the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Studio 65

During 1965, a group of architecture students began to think about wanting to become architects when they grew up. However, after learning about the adult world (architectural and otherwise), they decided that, while they wanted to become architects, they didn’t want to become adults. So, to realize their dream and following the example of Peter Pan, they built their little happy island and called it Studio65.
These young students of architecture were also painters, who painted in strong colors. Like all young people, they loved life to the point of being ready to fight to build a more just world, where imagination and its form of expression could find space and be appreciated. They loved American Pop Art and New America Cinema films, the Nouvelle Vague and the Italian avant-garde; Carmelo Bene, Lonesco, Beckett and the Living Theatre. They listened to rock and jazz music, read Mayakovsky, Marcuse, Montale, Asor Rosa, Tafuri and Simone de Beauvoir.

Gufram

Gufram is an Interior Design Italian brand globally known for pushing the limits of industrial design. With its Radical Design spirit and its nonconformist experimentation linked to aesthetic, technological and material research, Gufram has created seats and interior design icons that have entered collective imagination: playful, subversive and desecrating products with a POP soul, willingly designed as anti-design items. Gufram was born in Turin as an artisanal entity, where the craftsmen specialized in upholstery, cabinet making and furniture padding met the artistic and international avant-garde with the goal to give birth to a new way of understanding modern furniture. Since 1966 Gufram has been producing design icons that have become unique in form and value thanks to the cross-contamination between the industrial design approach, the artisanal creation and the imaginative flair typical of art. Gufram's unmistakable furniture items like the couch Bocca, the chaise lounge Pratone and the hall tree Cactus (just to name a few), also known as Domestic Sculptures able to interpret the contact point between both the artistic and the design worlds, are now displayed in the most beautiful houses and in the most renowned museums in the world.