On the occasion of the Milan Design Week 2015, Davide Groppi presented ten new lamps between art and technology, starting from the most basic form, the fire, the more sophisticated and rarefied forms of light.

Davide Groppi designs lights not only to illuminate, but also to tell stories, give meaning, draw metaphors and build the theatre of our lives.

They investigate the many dimensions of light playing between magic and impossibility, lightness and invention.

photographer fausto mazza

Ten new proposals between art and technology.

Beyond Colour – Beyond Light with Paola Lenti

Over the color, as well as the light.

The light by Davide Groppi and Paola Lenti‘s colours are interwoven in the new production of the Cloisters of the Chiostri dell’Umanitaria.

In the heart of Milan, a path of light, colour, matter, emotions to live a true multi-sensory experience.

Not only light, but tools to go further in the Interior as well as in the mind.

Starting from its origins in the work of Groppi, from its origins in the world by exploring the most basic form, the fire, and coming to imagine more sophisticated forms of rarefied light.

You can define as you wish the lamp configuration bringing light wherever you want.

The collection appears light and almost impossible

Davide Groppi products interspersed within Paola Lenti’s presentation at the Chiostri dell’Umanitaria

Davide Groppi exhibition within the Chiostri dell’Umanitaria, Milan

About Davide Groppi

In 1988, starting from a small workshop in the historical centre of Piacenza, Davide Groppi began to invent and produce lamps with the same brand.

He still designs, manufactures and distributes all over the world through the company with his own name.

Davide stands out for his interest in technology and innovation, his care for design, his humanistic approach to the project, his international attitude, his awareness towards the social aspects of the business.

The inspiring work of Davide Groppi is to approach the light with the idea of getting closer to the truth and, consequently, to seek the truth in pursuit of beauty.

Lamps and lighting projects where simplicity, lightness, emotion and invention are the fundamental components of the project.

David works with the knowledge that making lamps is not an exact science, but at the same time with the need to look for a method.

It is the discovery of intuition and strength to look inside.

Light is thought to make sense, following a vision based both on coherence and on the need to be different.

The company deals also with light designing and planning, it looks after one-off, sets, shows and whatever can be named “tailored light”.

The factory headquarter is in Piacenza, where Davide is working together with a selected group of people and where since 2012 the first “Spazio Esperienze” has been opened for architects and all the people who want to know in depth the production and the philosophy of the company.

Love your work and the constant urge to make sense of it all has brought David to locate four paradigms of his project: intuition, insight, invention, recovery.

I was born in a summer day of 1963.

My parents decided to call me Davide without knowing that in my life I’d have done lamps and dealt with light.

In fact, if you read my name backwards it becomes Edivad and for one who worked and has been working with the Edison bulb … it’s a strong sign of fate …

My father taught me how to built objects, the sense of beauty and the pleasure to make thinks well.

We made a flipper, a telegraph and … a lamp together.

In 1985 I begun to work as a mechanical illustrator, but only in 1988 I begun to design, manufacture and sell lamps.

I don’t know exactly why lamps, but surely lamps gave me the chance to express my character and to build something true.

My first lab was very little, in the center of Piacenza.

In 1994 I was lucky enough to meet Maddalena De Padova who, inexplicably, decided to buy 40 pieces of one among my models (Baloo) and to display them all together in her shop in Corso Venezia during the Salone del Mobile in Milan.

It was a memorable and exciting moment for me as I realized that probably I’d succeed in doing really what I was fighting for.

Later on I met other people who let me distribute my lamps all over the world.

Some important collaborations helped me to turn my job into an international one: Boffi, Mutina, Paola Lenti, Agatha Ruiz De La Prada and, recently, Christofle.

I cannot forget my staff, marvelous people who I work with daily to develop our projects and to realize our dreams.

You can discover how the story goes on by surfing this site.

The lamps, the projects carried out, the events, the curiosities.

davide groppi with photographer Fausto Mazza

“The Lamps” ..   by Davide Groppi

Making lamps is not an exact discipline.

At the same time I’ve always needed to follow a method.

A method which makes sense of what I do.

I’ve got quite an independent character and since the beginning I‘ve thought I’d have liked inventing and producing all my light intuitions by myself.

I‘ve never thought to be a designer, as it usually means.

What I create is never ‘designed’, but it is born out of necessity.

My favorite lamps come from the heart and from the brain, intuitions which emerge from a certain behavior and a way of thinking.

I begun with the idea of making a collection exactly as the actual one.

Lamps in which simplicity, lightness, emotion and invention are the basic components of the project.

For this reason, I try to come close to the light gently, always looking for Truth, with the idea of making the best light of the world.

Voyage is the metaphor for our way of working.

A voyage inside the etherealness of light.

A voyage which began twenty years ago and has taken us to wonderful places.

Our lamps are simple, light, unique, pure, essential.

Sometimes magical.

From the light bulb to the quest for a light without source, just to be wrapped in welcoming light.

Lamps designed to give depth to the space we live in, or simply to create light.

Always in search of the boundary between light and dark.

We like to think of our lamps as an alphabet with which we write stories.

Stories made of journeys, encounters, emotions.