ABOUT SA

Based in Milan, where we were founded in 2010, we are a company devoted to furniture design and construction, and are involved in architectural and interior design projects too. Though the company is now in its 6th year, our founders bring two decades' experience to the work that we do, and have built a reputation for inventive and practical work across Europe and beyond, acquiring some big name clients as we grow. Creating a design solution for BMW? We’re still smiling about that. The pieces that we create are varied. What they share is a philosophy. In fact, less a way of thinking than a way of existing in the world, drawn more from nature and the human body than any particular theorists or schools of design. We are still new, and we want to maintain that fresh outlook. We know that we know very little – and that we can learn. And we learn best from nature’s solutions, it turns out. That approach accounts for the very distinctive look that our work has. We’re confident about creating pieces that seem radical because we know our influence is timeless. When we use curves in particular ways, we’re acknowledging something nature has done eternally. We consider ourselves lucky to live in a time when computer technologies allow us to conceive and construct shapes that would have been impossible with traditional methods. We also have access to materials that in some cases didn’t even exist a few years ago, and the production capacity to manufacture up to 100 of each design over the course of a year. Mother Nature is an exquisite teacher. And we continue to learn, and look forward to learning more, in the years ahead.

MANIFESTO

We are opposed to the standardization of mass product. We abhor uniformity. We stand against the coercion of geometry. We believe that modern technology liberates designers to take in the influences of the natural world. Our imaginations soar, freed by the possibilities of digital design and new materials. We listen to the wind, and we talk back. We admire the avian, the aquatic, the feral and free, and we learn from them. We recognise two divinities, without being their worshippers: Eris – goddess of chaos, some of whose secrets were revealed when mathematicians unlocked the formulae that revealed the structures of flowers, of clouds, of those shapes that had captivated us in nature but eluded our understanding. Eros – god of love, whose power we will never truly understand, and whose passions drive us to the heights of human excellence, to achieve at the peak of our capabilities in the name of something which exists beyond language, and pulses within us all. With those twin influences shaping our thinking, we aim to capture forms that wouldn't exist without us to bring them into the world. To be moved by what we haven't previously experienced. To be comfortable with ambiguity, and be guided by our hearts when charting the unknown. Our design concerns relationships, and particularly those of nature and the human body. We respond not as problem solvers, but as poets. Our creed is one of beauty, and of how beauty might find new forms in this age of technical genius. Through offering the world new forms, we wish to better the lives of those who encounter what we do in our work. We want people to engage with what we do joyfully, with sensual appreciation, with glee and curiosity, with a renewed sense of the possible. Above all, we reject the linear, both as an element of design and as a style of thinking. This glorious world we inhabit was not designed for the convenience of straight lines. Its principles are beyond our comprehension, and it is only be seeking to approximate them that we can approach a state of being that reflects the truth of our environment.

SA Design