What’s the oldest technology company you can think of? Google will celebrate its 20th anniversary next April. If Apple or Adobe were people, they’d be old enough to have teenage children. IBM’s original incarnation (the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company) was founded in 1911.
But how many companies – let alone technology companies – were founded in 1295? That’s not a misprint. Barovier&Toso has been creating glass objets d’art using traditional glassblowing techniques in Venice, Italy, since Marco Polo returned from his travels to China. But how is it a technology company?
Barovier&Toso has been innovating its artistic methods for just as long as it has been in business, and the latest addition to its tool set is digital 3D design.
But why should a company that obviously knows what it’s doing (and has for more than 700 years) change anything? Barovier&Toso Head of Design Sara Pedrali says it’s about more than a method that stands the test of time. “If we have been in the lead over the years, it’s precisely because we were able to renew and keep up to date with the times,” she says.
Traditionally, glass designers would hand sketch a lamp, chandelier or decorative piece with china pen on glossy paper to present to potential customers. It’s a fairly flat representation and you need to use your imagination when it comes to different colors, materials, etc.
That’s not to say the old way of working isn’t a long-standing art form – Barovier & Toso conserves a lot of old designs and the company’s artistic director and later proprieter Ecole Barovier (1889-1972) used paper and pencils in his heyday in the 1930s. The company still maintains a library of over 25,000 designs he did that way.
But times change, and today – like it’s done for buildings, logos and just about everything else that had to be designed before it’s realisd in the real world – glassware can be concepted and finessed endlessly in a digital model prior to manufacture. Pedrali and her colleagues and collaborators use CAD design to simulate and visualise products and 3D scanning/photogrammetry systems to digitise finished products (or the items that inspire them) to bring into the computer.
“Our strength lies in the customer being able to customize almost all of our catalogue products in term of color and size,” Pedrali explains. “Each product is uniquely produced for a specific customer.” Among the biggest advantages 3D design offers the company is that it can design, tweak and present the product on a shorter timescale than ever.
Not only that, the design can represent all available manufacturing options and render the final product in a 3D model of the very room or space it’s going to appear in, further perfecting its suitability.
The more things change
Barovier & Toso’s markets are both corporate clients like hotel chains or big businesses fitting out working spaces and individual or residential buyers. Pedrali says it’s more or less an even split of both, but a common theme in their requirements is luxury. “Our customer looks for something not only luxurious but exclusive and with a ‘timeless’ look,” she says.
It’s a quality built into the very DNA of the company. Down on the furnace floor where the fabrication happens after the design, analysis/simulation and visualization, she says the working method of glassblowers has remained the same as ever. But surely there must be holdouts? Wouldn’t some of the staff in a company that was around two centuries before Leonardo Da Vinci was a neighbour scoff at the notion of modern machinery and techniques?
“Some more easily than others,” Pedrali laughs when asked if there’s been any resistance to computers over the years or CAD more recently. “but I’d say most of us accepted the change with enthusiasm.”
Still, it’s turned the concepting phase of glass design on its head somewhat. Using Autodesk Fusion 360 to design the product, it can be put together digitally, changed and altered according to the customer’s wishes, and bought into a 3D rendering of the scene such as a bedroom, hotel lobby, etc.
From there the 2D design representations for the glassblowing artists are produced from the 3D model of the piece in situ, so the real-life customer presentation phase actually generates the design materials instead of the other way around.
Then there’s the art of photogrammetry, which lets us digitize the world around us and further manipulate it to repurpose and redesign what already exists in further iterations. Products like ReMake let Barovier & Toso scan and digitise any of their pre-digital era products, ending up with a 3D mesh they can further treat or enhance.
Of course, all the digital trickery and new systems in the world aren’t worth much if they don’t make a difference where it really counts. Pedrali and her team of designers and outside design collaborators are happy with the speed and ease of use, but how will digitising the art of glass blowing ensure Barovier and Toso stays in business for the next 700 years?
Since using Fusion 360, VRED and other products in the Autodesk suite, sales have increased. Pedrali’s not sure by exactly how much, but to her the proof of the pudding is in the way customers react. “Having a real picture of something that’s just a project helps the customer see the final result. You don’t need to imagine, you can see it!”