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WHO ARE LUCIDIPEVERE? In the first place, the two of us have been friends for twenty years now. We are both from Friuli but, strangely enough, we had never met in the area we both come from before we started to study at the Polytechnic in Milan where we got to know each other. At the end of our studies we decided to start working together because we noticed we had the same feel for design and followed similar methods. We also liked more or less the same things. These are the reasons why we decided to try to master this profession together. We have been working together for about a decade, since 2003 when we launched our first designer product. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO BASE YOUR STUDIO IN THE FRIULI REGION? Mainly because we are fond of this area, we were born and bred here. The time spent in Milan was very important from a cultural viewpoint, at the Polytechnic, but also in terms of work experience: I worked for Marc Sadler and Luca worked for Marco Ferreri. These were very important years for us. We came back to Friuli because, rather than working in close contact with editorial staff or the press, we particularly like to work with manufacturing companies, with artisans and with the people involved in the induced production activities.  We are happy about this choice and we believe that time has confirmed it was the right one for us. WHY PALMANOVA? Firstly, for practical reasons because I live in the south of Friuli while Paolo lives in the northern part so we looked for a central location that would please us both. Palmanova was a perfect choice, partly because it is a beautiful, historical town, and partly because it is very close to the A4 motorway that we use to visit all our clients and the companies we work with. This makes life much easier for us.   There is a nice atmosphere here, it is a quiet town where you can also have fun. Peaceful surroundings are important for us because they aid us in the creation of new projects. Life here is quiet, not too frenzied. HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THE PREMISES FOR YOUR STUDIO? We searched in every nook and cranny of the Palmanova star. We looked in all the villages and quarters until we found this small place; we wanted it to be the right size. This used to be a record shop. Lots of youngsters tell us this was a historical shop and we like the sound of that. We also liked it because it is in the centre of town which means that there are always lots of people around. The market is nearby and we can see the housewives walking around with their shopping bags. We like being inside the everyday life of the people of Palmanova. Our studio is bright, we renovated it and opened it up as much as possible to get lots of light. We followed the same principle in our choice of colours and fabrics. We also liked the fact that we had access to an outdoor space which gives us the freedom to open the windows and to use our studio in a way that is slightly different from how they are used in Milan. We were used to working in more restricted spaces which is why the idea of having lots of light, of being able to open our windows up wide and breathe some fresh air is a real bonus.  This also aids creativity. HOW DID YOU START COLLABORATING WITH KRISTALIA? We started in 2003 with a very simple product, a coffee table called Mobius. The company aroused our interest. We noticed a change in its communication techniques, more focus on the product, and this is more or less what we were looking for. This was a change from the other companies that work in this sector. What we liked was the company’s consistency, year after year. We perceived it was a young company that wanted to distinguish itself, that put lots of passion in what it did and in its products; this was the main reason behind our choice. We also liked the mix of product and music that was even noticeable on the web, in the way the company communicated. The products, but perhaps to a greater extent the company’s way of communicating, were very important for us. We are happy we chose this company and we are now happy we can continue our collaboration because the firm has grown of course (hopefully so have we) and attracts the interest of many of our colleagues. The fact that we can carry on working with Kristalia at a higher level of quality is something that makes us proud. It was an exhilarating start because the first product, the Mobius coffee table, was launched at the end of February and exhibited at the Salone del Mobile furniture exhibition as early as April. Straight away the company, we and the supplier worked in a very lively, close-knit way and this led to the first product presented. From there we went on to work on various other products. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE The present……well, we are very satisfied in the sense that we started off by working with very small, local companies, some of which were quite obscure but we can now say that we work with Italian and foreign companies that are very well-known internationally and we are really happy about this. We are also more well-known. Let’s say that the choice to say no quite often, sometimes, to quote Kristalia’s owner:  event “eating bread and maize porridge” allowed us to present one or more products each year that represented us in some way, giving us the opportunity to create our own identity. We believe and hope that we will be able to continue this way in the future. We are not eager to become a large studio, we like having long-lasting collaborations, working at a steady pace and the privilege of concentrating on quality projects instead of lots of small ones. This gives us the time to finish them properly and even to question them.  Strangely enough, the most difficult thing isn’t managing to work on lots of projects but having enough time to refine each and every one of them, leaving them to rest for a while and picking them up again until you are satisfied and convinced of the result. On top of this, there is a matter concerning the way we design, i.e. our aesthetic design code that is not well defined. This is why we are often not guided by technology, by the material, by the process. This is an advantage because it leaves us very free to design products that differ a lot from each other, that are eclectic, but it also exposes us to the risk of losing our sense of direction a bit, perhaps of becoming inconsistent. This is why we hope, in the future, that Lucidipevere will define and focus on their own identity, even repeating themselves to reconfirm their own personal style. HOW ARE YOUR PROJECTS BORN? Our projects are usually sparked by an intuition, a material, a process, a clever artisan or business man. By lots of things. Even by an archetypical innovation; an example is a project we tackled all by ourselves, a sideboard, in which there is no special material but just a new point of view we used as a starting point to design the product. In most cases though we start with a technology, with trying to express a material in the best possible way without pushing it too far, without trying to make it do things it wasn’t born to do. Boiacca, as well as Plana, are good examples of this.