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Enterprises
Above, British Museum (Hundven-ClementsPhotography), macro detail of the matter being worked. Below: Spun Coriolis Chair by Thomas Heatherwick (Cristiano Corte).
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This experience reveals an important concept of the industrial situation in Italy, and in particular in Brianza: the value of the industrial district considered as a whole of small to medium enterprises capable of synergies and able to convey and keep an artisanal wisdom which knows how to renew itself without losing its capability and uniqueness built and developed in time. This is Marzorati Ronchetti’s case, amongst the main protagonists of Brianza industrial district, and able to convey a precious know-how and an entrepreneurial reference model for the rest of the world. Starting as a company satisfying precise requests for design in general, specialised in the working of metals (painted iron and chromed brass at the beginning, then stainless steel and further on spreading its own know-how to every kind of metal), in the Seventies Marzorati Ronchetti could also manage the production of integrated services as well as the production of complex objects. From logistics to the creation and development of milieus, commercial spaces, objects and manufactures for architecture, Marzorati Ronchetti developed in time also a fundamental technical support and constant quality control, both linked with its own artisanal know-how. At the end of the Eighties the company offered itself to the international market, reaching with its own metal working – above all stainless steel – towards the highest possible expressivity. A point of view introducing in 1992 the adventure with “Metals”, a young
brand of experimental design characterised by metal furniture collections and above all by the meeting and co-operation with Ron Arad, emerging designer in the London underground scene. This brought the company to a high-end level both for custom-made production and for experimentation, assessing itself as one of the excellences for production quality and artisanal wisdom in Italy. The custom-made idea, the capability to make what is impossible to others, the will to work outside standards have become the rule and main feature of the company, merging the making capabilities of wise artisans, the ability of workers able to “caress” and forge metals to emphasise shapes and surfaces, and the qualities of the company technicians. The story of Marzorati Ronchetti is above all an Italian story, linked with Brianza – an area known the world over as the land of made-in-Italy furniture. A story keeping and developing an artisanal know-how, shifting it into the new millennium with new logics and ever more professional and complete ways to tackle the project, able to conquer international markets thanks to the value of a performing capability almost impossible to imitate. The concept of “luxury”, Marzorati Ronchetti’s main business area, is a value of great and substantial quality, rather than a style criterion or an idea of shallow opulence, a guarantee it offers the world market for every plan to be developed as a new challenge, never to stop and always to cope with technical capabilities and know-hows being in constant evolution and spurred towards a purely virtual goal, the future.
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