Complementary
“The work we do is very personal to us,” Lelli Mami states.
“We love mutually supporting and reinforcing contrasts,
and because we work as a duo, these come easily to
us. We engage in a lot of dialogue with each other and
the team, which gives us valuable insights. If you work
together as designers, it’s important to be complementary,
and not just clones of each other. That’s the case with
us. Chiara is very good at developing spaces and ideas,
and she never gives up: she’ll do everything she can to
make sure a project succeeds. “Arianna has an unerring
sense of proportion in the relationship between an object
and its surroundings,” says Di Pinto. “And she’s also the
more diplomatic one, so she’s good at reconciling different
people’s interests. We have a perfect rapport, partly
because we’re following a shared path. We grew up in
the same visual landscape, and we have the same frame
of reference, not just in design, but also in everyday life,
travel and things like that. We have a common cloud of
inspiration that we can draw on at any time.”
Contrast in balance
“We feel it’s very important to design things that are
sculptural and timeless,” Lelli Mami says. “That makes
people want to keep them, which is the ultimate in
sustainability. When we design something, we never start
purely with the object itself: we begin with its story, and its
relationship with its users and surroundings. Our products
for Leolux are no exception. “Right from the outset, the
idea was to design objects that work well with one another,
and we submitted several proposals. If you look at both
products side by side, the Lunetta and Patio, you’ll see
that we don’t like hard boundaries. Each product strikes a
balance between graphic and organic, hard and soft.
That’s the thread running through both designs.”
Openness
Lelli Mami says Studiopepe’s first collaboration with Leolux
went well. “We knew who they were, but we learned a lot
about the brand while working with them. Their production
facilities were impressive, and the company’s history was
very interesting. It’s always nice to work for non-Italian
brands, because you have a different vision of products
and materials. “It’s not that far from Milan to Venlo, but
you’re still bringing different cultures together to an
extent. We really liked Leolux’s openness and the way
they embraced our ideas. They never said a flat-out no,
and always tried them out to see if they worked. It was
really good to experience the company’s passion.”
We love mutually
reinforcing contrasts
9
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