Platform_Architecture_and_Design_1.pdf
74 BACKSTAGE Davide Groppi is the name of a company, a designer, a person who won two Compassi d’Oro during the Award’s last edition. Two of his productions were declared to be excellent: “Nulla” and “Sampei”. Given the large number of companies within the lighting sector of the Italian design panorama and the competitivity that typifies them, how did this happen? Davide Groppi wasn’t expecting it and so when the news reached him it must have been a tremendous feeling. This result was the external recognition of a great body of work that comes from the distant past, as well as a contribution to commercial growth, which is not surprisingly very important this year. But when did his story begin? 51 years ago in Piacenza, but he doesn’t really show his age, perhaps because he maintains a healthy lifestyle and surrounds himself with beauty, but in actual fact some years later, when as a child together with his electrician father, he discovered the pleasure of making his first creations (a pinball machine, a telegraph) and going on to eventually master technology as a tool for expressing innovation. Turning on a new light is like re-living once again those early emotions. What interests him is talking to people through light. “A lamp exists to make people feel close” he says. His language combines technology and poetry; two components that could be considered far apart; humanism and industrial production as necessary ingredients in design. As in all the best stories, success did not arrive overnight, but rather as the result of a journey, made up of consecutive stages and constant hard work. He opened his first workshop at 22 (and his business began in 1985) then 1994 was his coming of age when Maddalena De Padova put one of his lamps in her own store, ordered forty or so more and christened him a designer. There followed a partnership with Roberto Gavazzi of Boffi and the large scale sale of products like “Ozen” and “Toast” which led him to organize production. So it’s difficult to understand where he stops being a designer and starts being a businessman. He was at the start of what we today call “self-production” so as to best create a personal identity; as points of reference he cites Ingo Maurer among others for his way of creating lamps with poetry, and the technical production of companies like Kreon. Davide Groppi is passionate about what he does and he does it well; he designs lights, produces them and then distributes them, he talks about them, he suggests them to his partners, clients; it is not by chance that he produces them for numerous restaurants and their chefs such as Moreno Cedroni, Massimo Bottura, Massimiliano Alaimo, Giancarlo Perbellini (the “Tetatet” lamp answers the need for an independent table lamp). He lights up spaces by thinking about the light he wants to obtain and the relationship between the people that he wants to illuminate, he reduces the lamp to a “Nothing” to make us appreciate just the light ( thinking long and hard about the size in millimetres that this opening – a white hole – should have even when turned off) or with “N-euro” he draws the outline of a wire on a wall that reaches a faraway socket, turning it into a decorative wall feature in order to resolve a problem. Decorative and technical lighting, there are no limits or types to answer to; what is important is searching for the best light, female at times, (diffused) and male at others (precise) depending on the need, to give depth to spaces. The theme of magic, amazement, simplicity and lightness are constant together with the search for technology at the heart of design. With “Sampei” he has managed to create an overhead lamp even in the absence of a ceiling and the lamp makes us feel we are under a star-filled sky, at home in the universe. Even his warehouse, where he walks around at ease, is a poetic machine, surprisingly tidy; it expresses the attention to detail behind the process, not just the end product. The show-room lets his lamps speak: they don’t need explanations because their words are clear, in harmony with what is created. There is a sense of irony, his lamps express joy and knowing that they exist is like getting a present, perhaps because they were created to be a gift to the world. This is the heart of creativity: sharing the beauty of the world and enlarging it... if possible. He manages to do it very well.
BACKSTAGE 75 LEFT: Davide Groppi Sampei
- Page 26 and 27: James Bort “ It is just the begin
- Page 28 and 29: 26 RUBRICA
- Page 32 and 33: 30 FRAMES SO-IL is an idea-driven d
- Page 34 and 35: 32 FRAMES ARC HITE CTU RE AS A BODY
- Page 36: 34 FRAMES Let’s speak about the s
- Page 39 and 40: FRAMES 37 Pubb 5
- Page 41 and 42: RUBRICA 39 Photo WOWHAUS, GROUNDLAB
- Page 43 and 44: FRAMES 41 e-discovery istoric struc
- Page 45 and 46: FRAMES 43
- Page 47 and 48: FRAMES 45 International Competition
- Page 49 and 50: FRAMES 47 POWER STATION
- Page 51 and 52: 49 A Londra, l’iconica Battersea
- Page 54 and 55: 52 PORTRAIT INTERVIEW: Luisa Bocchi
- Page 56 and 57: 54 PORTRAIT IT’S THE LITTLE DIFFE
- Page 58 and 59: 56 in order to visualize alternativ
- Page 60 and 61: 58 PORTRAIT LB Hai citato Memphis,
- Page 62 and 63: 60 PORTRAIT Michele De Lucchi, Nich
- Page 64 and 65: 62 CIRCLE MINDS lightness CIRCLE MI
- Page 66 and 67: 64 CIRCLE MINDS The sound of each s
- Page 68: 66 CIRCLE MINDS FRANCESCO ZURLO The
- Page 71 and 72: INTERIOR 69 The architectural studi
- Page 73 and 74: INTERIOR 71 definite che cambiano i
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- Page 81 and 82: Richiedi online il tuo INVITO GRATU
- Page 83 and 84: TIMELESS 81
- Page 85 and 86: TIMELESS 83
- Page 87 and 88: TIMELESS 85 The Torre del Mare Arch
- Page 89 and 90: INKED 87
- Page 91 and 92: INSIGHT 89 Arianna walking through
- Page 93 and 94: 91 Ergonomic seat “Wellness Ball
- Page 95 and 96: INSIGHT 93 Arianna Malagoli ha intr
- Page 97 and 98: INSIGHT 95 Copenhagen harbor seen f
- Page 99 and 100: ARTEFACTS 97 Francesco Camillo Gior
- Page 101 and 102: specialmente perché ho dovuto inge
- Page 103 and 104: DOWSING 101 Luigi Bonotto took his
- Page 105 and 106: OFFICE & WORKPLACE Emmesystem by Em
- Page 107 and 108: PATHFINDERS 105 Ph. Hamed Ouattara
- Page 109 and 110: PATHFINDERS 107 La parola d’ordin
- Page 111 and 112: SEEDS 109
- Page 113 and 114: SEEDS 111 Nuove generazioni di arch
- Page 115 and 116: OVERVIEW 113 Capital and the leadin
- Page 117 and 118: OVERVIEW 115
- Page 119 and 120: 1964-2014|CINQUANT’ANNI DI DESIGN
- Page 121 and 122: OVERVIEW 119 MEGANOM VINCE LA GARA
- Page 123 and 124: ID 121 Francisco Gomez, Designer
- Page 125 and 126: MAKERS 123 The term “maker” was
BACKSTAGE<br />
75<br />
LEFT: Davide Groppi<br />
Sampei