Artists and designers, creatives in general, have the capacity to draw inspiration from nature and from what surrounds us. Observation is of course an indispensable tool, artists see details invisible to most eyes and are able to translate them into the universal language of art, for us “common mortals” to enjoy. 

What if inspiration was to be drawn from another universal language that apparently has no relation with art? Riccardo Nobilini’s artistic eyes transformed a mathematic sequence in a linear cabinet, perfect for any dwelling. 

Sectionem Auream is a furniture designed after the tiling with squares representing the Fibonacci numbers, that are the numbers in a following integer sequence called the Fibonacci sequence, and characterised by the fact that every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144… These numbers are named after the Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci. 

Fibonacci numbers seem to have first appeared around the year 200 BC in a work by Pingala, an ancient Indian mathematician, on enumerating possible patterns of poetry formed from syllables of two lengths: but it was Fibonacci in his 1202 AD book Liber Abaci to introduce the sequence to Western European mathematics. 

The tiling representation of this sequence starts from a square of 1 by 1 and moves anticlockwise, forming a composition of squares attached one to the other. Riccardo Nobilini saw a potential application of this tiling to the construction of a cabinet that  follows the same sequence structure. The result is stunning, as the cabinet results linear yet harmonious; a range of colour palettes makes it completely customisable to consumers’ taste and style. 

Sectionem Auream is the result of the observation of an artist, the transformation of math into design, the encounter of the creativity of a young Italian designer with the brilliance of an Italian mathematician ancestor. Ultimately, it is the encounter of talent through time and space.