Back to the future with The 50's storage system from Cesar

As the name suggests, Cesar's award-winning The 50's wall system draws on that decade's revolution in shelving and storage design. Mid-century modernists called time on creaking, dusty bookshelves and lumpen cupboards and created fluid, flexible, open shelving systems that offered spare lines but also super-functionality. The modern house, they said should be a place of flow and freedom, of air and light, be free of clumsy clutter but work as a stage for creative display.

Convenience, accessibility and aesthetic unity

Designed by the Italian design studio Garcia Cumini, The 50's takes that mid-century model and brings it into the 21st century. The system, built around extruded aluminium struts, is all about options and those struts can be fitted with shelving units, open and closed, drawer units, shelves with rear retaining rails as well as stemware racks and even home-office desks.

The 50's also turns shelving and storage into structure and space divider. Double-sided and ceiling-height, where and if you need it to be, it introduces order, convenience, accessibility and aesthetic unity to open-plan living. Essentially, you can use the system to create porous but hard-working walls and showcases for objects of interest.

Creating domestic geography

Cesar is renowned for elegant and innovative kitchen design. And installed in the kitchen, The 50's can accommodate open and closed storage spaces as well as allowing for the installation of ovens, coffee makers, wine cellars and small appliances. It can also be fitted with a peninsula to house cookers, sinks and work surfaces and a breakfast bar.

In living areas, The 50's can create domestic geography, direct flow and even mark out home office space from living space. The system's vertical struts, fixed from floor-to-wall or floor-to-ceiling, are made to measure and allow for super flexibility and endless permutations of open or closed storage and shelf space.

A radical domestic shift

These aluminium struts, in brushed satin black, also feature an integrated and adjustable lighting system, making The 50's an almost museum-quality display space and offering sophisticated interplay of light and shadow. Finishes for units, drawers and desktops include engineered stone and natural stone, oak and elmwood veneers or structured and silk-effect lacquers. Shelves are also available in Grigio Fumé and Bronzo glass.

The mid-century modernists, as far-sighted and influential as they were, couldn’t have predicted the radical shifts in domestic arrangements to come. Cultural and behavioural trends have made the kitchen the hub of home life in ways they didn’t imagine. And the collapse of the traditional working week and the arrival of home working have put new demands on our domestic space. Put simply, we are spending more time at home and ‘work’ and ‘life’ boundaries have blurred.

Perfect for the present and open to the future

Mid-century designers, though, did create models and systems that could accommodate those changes. With The 50's, Cesar and Garcia Cumini have re-imagined those systems for a home that is work space and living space, where there is flow and flexibility but also clarity and definition. In looking back, they have created a design that is perfect for the present and open to the future.

© Architonic