Italians have found a home in the world

At a time in which design has become more international than ever — provocateurs from the Netherlands, Japan and Brazil are just a few of the players who’ve shared the field in the last decade — Italy’s reach is global.

And when you say “Italy,” you really mean “Milano.” It’s the country’s design capital, the place where every aspiring young designer heads in hopes of becoming a powerhouse. Italian design has many legendary, influential figures, like Alessandro Mendini and Michele De Lucchi.

But among the most powerful designers in Milan today are three mega-successful people — Antonio Citterio, Piero Lissoni and Patricia Urquiola, a Spanish protégée of both Castiglioni and Magistretti who set up shop in Milan in 2001.

Omnipresent

Tour the showrooms of the top-tier Italian companies, and these three are omnipresent. At this year’s Milan furniture fair, for example, Urquiola’s designs appeared at B&B Italia, Kartell, Moroso and Axor (a German maker of bathroom fixtures), to name a few.

Lissoni has designed hotel interiors in Tokyo and Jerusalem. Citterio has designed furniture, most notably the lean, elegant Charles sectional sofa of 1997, which has inspired a thousand knockoffs. (According to Citterio, there is even a Chinese company whose Web site bears his name, although its copies are, of course, unauthorised.)

What these designers have in common is a stylistic language that makes Modernism user-friendly. Their clean lines, precise details and knowing sense of fashion (a few years ago, it was coffee tables that hovered near the floor; now it’s sprawling sofas suitable for a loft or club) make them shoo-ins for upscale condominium lobbies, where people want to feel comfortable as well as au courant.

While it may be technically sophisticated, it isn’t shocking or abrasive; it fits in anywhere. It’s a kind of New International Style.