Few weeks have passed since Enzo Mari's death, great protagonist of the italian design and culture, and we meet Lorenzo Damiani. He collaborated with many brands from Cappellini to Ikea, has a vision of the design process that comes from the research of necessities and exploration of materials and he ideally works in that junction area between the works of Enzo Mari and the Castiglioni brothers and the contemporary design system. More of an inventor rather than an archistar.

Polyhedric but never blatant, firmly balanced between form and function, where and when begins the design experience of Lorenzo Damiani...

Few weeks have passed since Enzo Mari's death, great protagonist of the italian design and culture, and we meet Lorenzo Damiani. He collaborated with many brands from Cappellini to Ikea, has a vision of the design process that comes from the research of necessities and exploration of materials and he ideally works in that junction area between the works of Enzo Mari and the Castiglioni brothers and the contemporary design system. More of an inventor rather than an archistar.

Polyhedric but never blatant, firmly balanced between form and function, where and when begins the design experience of Lorenzo Damiani?
You always need a reason to begin to work around an idea: from this belief I begin to work on a project. Every function can be translated into one or more forms, the important thing is to find a match. I never thought of just following the temporary trends... Usually I only work on what I believe to be necessary.

In your projects it can be often seen an unconventional use of materials, very present and enhanced like in the "Foglio" elastic marble seat. What is your approach toward material research? Are they inspiring you or are they just the result of an equation?
I always had great respect for materials, artificials and even more naturals: it takes millennia to create a wonderful material such as marble, that we often use in a careless abundant quantity. The same is true for wood, like all natural products that surround us and take their time to become as we see them, choosing then to use them to give consistency to our ideas, sometimes also to pointless ones. This evaluation should be done for artificial materials as well,  considering that to produce for example a plastic object many resources and energy are requested, and it would be a pity to waste them.
I had the luck to get to know the work of the woodworker Pierluigi Ghianda through his objects: he used to say that "any material, if well worked, becomes precious". This is what I always thought and supported within my projects: for example, the collection "Truciolari" (Chipboards) was born connecting a semi-finished product with extremely well known production techniques that probably were never used together before that project.
With a similar approach I created the seat Foglio and other objects made with a marble sheet, thin and bended and even foldable to a certain limit, presented for the first time in 2012 inside the exhibition Lorenzo Damiani: Without Style, held at the Achille Castiglioni Foundation in Milan. I consider Foglio an experiment of flexible marble to underline the unexplored elastic potential of marble and granite, as well as to propose the idea of a more rational use of natural resources.

How has the design world changed in the last twenty years?
Design changed a lot, because the world has changed a lot in the last twenty years. After all this time I feel a certain satisfaction to see that the founding principles of my work, with the due changes and evolution, are similar to those I had in the beginning. When I start a research, I do not worry about being fashionable. Every designer, through his work, represents a possible perspective toward the world that surrounds him: for example, I subscribe to Bruno Munari's thought:"Luxury is the triumph of appearance over essence, it's the wrong use of expensive materials that do not improve any function".

From Cappellini to Flaminia,which is the collaboration that has most excited you?
To design means, for me, finding a new idea - even small - that could justify the presence of another object in this world... The idea can be functional, structural, can be related to materials research or other issues, without forgetting that the communication of a message can be considered a true function, the final meaning of an object. I want to underline this principle because - even if in a reduced form compared to my other researches - this projectual approach is always present in my path, as well as for the products created with the above mentioned companies.
Every project has a story to tell, as it happened with Caimi or Ikea. For this last one I created a scenography built around a small house - ideally movable through a large handle mounted on the roof - containing a tridimensional scenario made by furniture that gets an animation and transforms itself through an unusual assembly process. Inside the Ikea House I created surfaces entirely coated by modular components to create an environment where the single element disappears in the whole: an environment to be touched, walked on, because even disassembled furniture laying on the floor were telling a story about infinite modularity.

At last, a consideration about Made in Italy: where is italian design going?
Where is italian design going.... Maybe you should ask this question to someone else!