Born in Belluno in 1979, Luca De Bona is an Italian designer that lives between Venice and Milan.

While he was working on the projects of industrial design, achieved in collaboration with Italian important companies and institutions of renowned prestige such as the Biennale di Venezia and the Canova Museum of Possago, Luca created Atomo6 which is a studio, situated in the core of Venice that works in the fields of architectural projects and design.

Since 2010 he has been working as the art director of the Design Week of Venice.

We asked him questions to know more about his collaboration with Lago firm and find out what his vision of design is.

What kind of approach do you have during the process of creation? How does an idea come to life and develop?

Inventing, etymologically speaking, means being able to see. Creation comes from the gaze first, and then the thinking. When I project something, I usually see again the frames in my mind, here and now I adjust the focus of emblematic features, I detect messages, new codes to crack, the relationship with the past, the exigencies and trends projected to the possible futures. The right questions lead to the most forceful answers. Creating is a spontaneous process of filing this information that, on instinct, turns into sings on the paper.

What are the great designers that inspire you?

Scarpa, Albini, Ponti, Caccia Dominioni, Castiglioni, the main characters of the Italian Rationalism or Russian Constructivism are and always will be the masters for their methodological approach in small and big scale, which is able to answer back, in an universal way,  the exigencies of their own time with eternal objects, balanced sum of beauty, shape and function. But I feel that multiple influences flow through my mind and pencil, that are conditioned by who pave the way, who is at the top today, and also by that kind of minor design you can find in a market of second-hand things or in a developing country, and by the constant research of innovative or to rediscover materials, by the several improbable things I’ve been collecting for years.

How has the collaboration with Lago started?

There’s no product in Lago catalogue that I wish I could have or suggest to my clients in order to furnish the house or the office. Many years ago, while I was turning the pages of my Moleskine full of sketches, I had thought of proposing Lago some of my ideas to see the technical department’s reaction. In 2010, I took part to Lagostudio, among foreign designers I went by myself to experience the creative spirit and the weaving Lago factory, in order to think of projects that might had been oriented to the company’s spirit, being right in the place. I remember that during the first drill they wanted us to invent ordinary objects by drawing our inspiration from reading a newspaper randomly opened. The process, in a certain way, supported my method: travelling, observing, reading is essential in creating objects related to the everyday life. After few weeks since the workshop ended, the company contacted me. Among my offers, they chose a chair. Following meetings, collisions, drawings, prototypes, looking for metal materials and fabrics, Dangla was born.

What does it mean being a designer nowadays?

Making your own idea come to surface in a world full of offers is surely harder than in the past, but it’s stimulating and rewarding to realize contemporary society has the right to find something that characterizes and represents its customs related to objects. Today, you can enter the market by following consumer rules of trite and trivial ideas, styles that are suggested again or historical furniture that has been coloured, or trying to get something that is really needed. The right idea must be saleable but also ethically correct, aesthetically valuable, an idea that is able to amaze, to touch and stimulate most of the people’s imagination.

Are you working on something?

I’m developing some design projects with Lago and other companies of the field. At the same time, I’m committing myself to architectural projects in Italy and abroad and I’m following the realization of some intervention in Venice, Milan and Rome that go from the housing field to the museum, fashion and accomodation field.

Translation credit: Chiara Ferrara