Limited edition masterpieces designed by 06D Atelier
06D Atelier is an Italian designer duo based in London founded by Mauro Fragiotta and Francesca Adami. Born and trained in Italy they both gained experiences in high-end luxury interior projects collaborating with architecture and design practices in Italy and UK before they started their partnership in late 2017. The different training of the two designers allows the studio to operate in various kinds of projects, bringing together different influences to create contemporary and revolutionary projects.
After following their work online I really wanted to get to know them a little bit better and understand a bit more about their brand and aesthetics.
What’s in the core of your designs?
Innovation is always our aim when we start our design process, we always try to create something never done before and which often bring us to unexplored fields, sometimes complicated. We don't like to walk the safe path. We never use the same theme more than once; we start from scratch at every project: a new concept, a new process, a totally new - more enjoyable - journey every time.
Tell me a little bit about you and the brand. What is your background and have you always wanted to be a designer?
We have different training: Mauro studied industrial design, has more experience on details, Francesca, studied interior design and she's more focused on the concept. Despite starting from different points we met having the same dream: to give life to our ideas and that was the start of our biggest project 06D Atelier. However, we're both always been creative, since children, and like children still today we have an indescribable emotional feeling when we see our project taking shape and becoming a physical thing.
What is the source of inspiration for you?
As previously said, every project is completely different for us, but Mother Nature is one of our favourite starting points. In Nature you can find countless shapes and mechanisms that could be ruled by mathematical laws or completely freed from any bondage. This is always a big source of inspiration for us. Our curiosity always pushes us to study and discover the wonder of the Nature, for example in our work The Orbit we wanted to replicate the concentric pattern common in several structures in the Nature: from the propagation of waves to the concentric rings in the tree trunks and the paths traced by planets in the space.
Do you believe in following rules when it comes to design, and if so, what are these rules for you?
We have our way to approach every project, it's something you develop in years and luckily we work well together, in a complementary way. Design basically consists of a process that converts an idea into an understandable drawing and you can use it in different kind of projects from small to large scales. Having always different starting point, we don't constrain ourselves with any rule. We just follow our process until we are sure that the result is valid, being always very critic with ourselves. Having said that, it is also important to follow every detail of the project, leaving nothing to chance.
You are creating furniture but also art, how do you balance functionality and creativity, and is it hard?
We use our process in both design and art pieces, we think to sort out the aged problem of the balance between aesthetic and functionality with always trying to create objects in which the aesthetic is the most important feature, but that doesn't mean renouncing functionality. We like the etymology of the word “aesthetic”, which comes from the ancient Greek's words meaning: the perception of things through the senses, so the beauty is a perception, a feeling created by an object. We try always to create this positive feeling in the observer, whether we are doing a functional or not functional object. We don't see the functionality as a limitation for the creativity and vice versa, for us there are no boundaries between them as between art and design.
What is the best advice you were ever given, and what would you say to someone who is interested in starting in this industry.
“It wont' be easy”, they said and they were right. Unfortunately we choose to work in the intersection of art and design which had a boom few years ago and now it's going to be a bit crowded, and often this microcosm follows the mechanism of the art world with gallerists, critics and curators. To be an outsider doesn’t help at all, we're still humbly working to create our space in this world trying to let our work speak for itself, without the hedonism of the contemporary artists and any connection with circles of important people. What we can suggest to the newcomers is to believe in what you do and never give up until your work has a proper recognition.
What would be your dream project to work on? Our dream is to have a commissioned artistic project for an important gallery or museum. We would like to have the chance to express our vision without any limitations; there are so many ways and media that we have today thanks to the technology that aren’t still used. We would like to explore new ways of interaction involving different senses with an immersive installation. Moreover, we have many ideas and drawings for objects that we would like to bring to reality but we don't have the possibility, we just want to have the chance to present them to someone who might be interested to develop them.
What are you working on at the moment, and what are your creative plans for the future? At the moment we are collaborating with Venetian glass masters for a centrepiece inspired by the phenomenon of the spacetime curvature caused by a big mass like a planet or a star. We used computer simulation to create a shape that is formed by the gravity and randomness; the craftsmen at the moment are building a mould following the shape. And the best part is that every piece will be completely different from any other due to the characteristics of the glass. It is quite a challenging project, luckily we found the right people that are not afraid to develop this idea. We have already made different prototypes and we're sure to present this new project very soon. Speaking about the future we always think that our best project will be the next, what it will be? We still don't really know.
To find you more about 06D Atelier go to their website, and don’t forget to follow them on Instagram.