Specialised in the design of offices, seats and kitchens, the creative duo comprised of architects Roberto Lucci (Milan 1942) and Paolo Orlandini (Grosseto 1941), designed over 250 products for furnishing companies during the course of their long professional career. With a creative mentality focused on enhancing the evolutional potential of a design, they place great importance on the close relationship between technological research and functional innovation. Their approach to industrial design is inspired by two fundamental principles: simplicity – because the product must be able to be understood by everyone, both aesthetically and functionally – and flexibility – in the sense that the products are conceived in a way that allows them to change and evolve over the years, to adapt to changes in the market and in manufacturing processes.
The collaboration between these two designers and Snaidero has led to some of the Company’s most successful models, and also those that best represent its own particular design language. Among these are: “Sistema ES” (2001) winner of the “Grand Prix de l’Innovation Design” awarded by “Foire de Paris”; “Time” (2002), winner of the “Good Design Award 2003” awarded by the “Chicago Athenaeum”; “Skyline” (2004), “Panoramica” (2004), “Florence” (2006) and “Forma” (2008).
With “Sistema ES”, their debut project with Snaidero, Lucci and Orlandini introduced some completely innovative elements into the field of domestic design. This kitchen is a fully modular system, characterised by a strongly essential look – the result of the systematic elimination of the superfluous – and by the light and dynamic nature of the volumes, achieved thanks to the employment of a clear and comprehensible line, which up close reminds one of forms that can be easily recognised in nature. Even the characteristic softness of the lines is not the result of a superficial aesthetic choice that exists for its own sake. It is instead the result of a careful, direct and conclusive analysis of the functional and operational relationship between the user and the two work areas: fire and water. Therefore the ideal straight line that forms the work top in all common kitchens is transformed here into a dynamic “S” shape. This is to ergonomically improve the interaction between the two areas, and at the same time to offer a more organic response to human morphology.
This last design feature was so innovative as to be further developed – even more decisively – in other subsequent designs such as the “Skyline” kitchen for example. This kitchen arises from a customisation concept driven by the worktop. In this project the worktop is freed to be able to adapt almost completely to personal requirements (which are different for each one of us), thus promoting the idea of complete ergonomics. It is an approach to domestic design that constitutes a kind of Copernican revolution, placing the solid existential nature of the user at the centre of each design choice.
This design flexibility also caters to the needs of particular kinds of users that require superior ergonomic solutions, such as disabled and elderly people. The “Skyline_lab” is a functional expansion of the original design that caters specifically to them. This is a further confirmation, if one were necessary, of the authentic and tangible sensitivity of the two designers, who are always humanly and systematically focused on ensuring their creations improve quality of life in the home.
