The search for efficient beauty lends form to Fran Silvestre Arquitectos architectural projects and is clearly legible in the BLAU outdoor furniture collection designed for the Spanish company GANDIABLASCO. BLAU exemplifies the aesthetic concept of Fran Silvestre, a passionate adherent of architecture, design and art, at a smaller scale than his usual architectural projects but is established on the same premises in terms of design, quality, efficiency and beauty. “The concept of the BLAU collection comes from a search for innovative tradition” explains Fran. “The idea was to take a typical Mediterranean piece of furniture and make it material using soldered aluminium.”Using the minimum amount of material necessary in the simplest of ways, he designed an outdoors sculptural light fitting, and subsequent furniture collection that features chaise-longues, armchairs, chairs, tables, sofas and footrests made entirely of either anodised or powder-coated aluminium. This manufacturing system that includes perforated panels for the seating, achieves an extremely light touch, almost translucent: “The light can pass through, making the various elements appear extremely light”. This porosity makes the pieces appear different according to the time of day and the angle of view. The ‘pared back’ to the essentials design of the BLAU outdoor furniture collection which won a prestigious NYCxDesign Award in the Outdoor category and that expresses so perfectly the Mediterranean lifestyle clearly evoked in all the work of Fran Silvestre, is both a harmonious and timeless collection. Based in Valencia Fran Silvestre Architects has received important prizes such as the MH in Berlin (2009) and a Red Dot Award (2013) as well as the German Design Award (2016). In the Aluminum House (Madrid), the House between the pine forest (Paterna, Valencia) and the Breeze House (Castellón), the BLAU outdoor furniture pieces become an extension of the architecture within their surroundings, characteristics that are regularly highlighted in the work of Fran. Within the Aluminum House situated in Madrid, designed in 2016, the chaise-longues, the chairs and the tables appear as an architectural extension to the house opening up towards the landscape. Furniture elements are organized under a porch and in front of the swimming pool underlining the metallic and horizontal character of the building that gives the impression of being a single storey structure integrated with the surrounding trees. With the House between the pine forest constructed in 2017 in Paterna (Valencia), the BLAU outdoor furniture collection is once again utilised to reinforce Fran’s purist architectural style that through its various volumes and zones respects the different periods over which the family residence was built and the different generations that lived there. Without abandoning its core character the half levels and the BLAU furniture together with the sculptural lamps in the form of a tree complete the outdoor spaces around the house. The Breeze House located in Castellón also illustrates his holistic aesthetic approach. With this project for the design of an old villa in a contemporary style with boundary walls inspired by latticework, a rooftop terrace where the sea breeze can be felt on the skin and above all else a place where the composition of architectural volumes is resolved harmoniously. BLAU complements the outdoor spaces around the house with the same pure architectural lines offering a restful calm to the body and the eyes.
