Palea / LITHICA
Shelf, 2025
Client: Lapilli
Team:
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Francesco Vedani
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Matteo Mina
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Diego Spartà
MILANO DESIGN WEEK 2025
SUPERSTUDIO PIÙ
Via Tortona 27 – Milano
7-12 april, 11:00 - 21:00
13 april, 11:00 - 18:00
6 april, 15:00 - 20:00 (VIP & Press Preview)
“Palea” is a modular shelf that reinterprets the principle of natural stratification in a design key. The name, inspired by the Latin term for a layer or deposit, evokes the sedimentation of lava over time, but also the memory that is imprinted in the material. Lava stone and steel alternate in horizontal volumes, creating a modular structure that adapts to the space and sculpts it. The design is dry, essential, with a tension between visual lightness and geological strength that defines the identity of the object. Palea is at the same time surface and sign, function and story. An element that, more than furnishing, structures the environment with the precision of an architectural gesture.
LITHICA is a collection born from the encounter between the geological memory of the Earth and the material culture ofcontemporary man. Lava stone and steel confront each other in a dialogue between opposing forces: on one side the naturalheat that forges the rock, on the other the artificial heat of the industrial furnace that shapes the metal. The identity of the projectlies in this tension: an aesthetic that is not decoration, but an expression of matter and function.Each piece of the collection is based on the principles of Max Bill's Gute Forme: pure, functional forms, in which beauty and utilitycoincide. At the same time, it recognizes itself in the Super Normal philosophy of Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa, whichinvites us to design discrete, profound, necessary objects. It is not the formal gesture that imposes itself, but the quality ofpresence, the ability to tell stories through matter. LITHICA is a tribute to myth and modernity. It evokes volcanoes and divinities, magma and landscapes, but it also speaksof industrial revolution, conscious production, design as an ethical gesture. It is a sober but monumental collection, whichrejects pomp to enhance the authentic strength of materials. Each element is a small domestic architecture, a point ofbalance between the Earth and technique, between an archaic past and a possible future. LITHICA is a landscape to inhabit, amaterial story to share.