Be the Project: interview with Debonademeo Studio

Founded in 2010 by Luca de Bona and Dario de Meo, Debonademeo Studio operates between Padua and Milan, moving across different fields, materials, and scales: from product design to art direction, from research to interior design (and here it is impossible not to mention the highly successful project of Ristorante Contraste in Milan). This attitude translates into diverse projects: from the wrought iron capsule collection Allegorie for Bottega Vazzoler, presented at EDIT Napoli 2025, to the Due Sicilie collection for Chroma Composites - of which they have just become art directors - featuring vases and coffee tables in recycled composite materials. Alongside these works, Debonademeo has been designing wallpaper collections for Wall&decò and lighting for Karman for years. In 2025 they designed surfaces for De Castelli, furnishings for Medulum, a concrete stool for Pulkra, and lighting projects for Zava and Vistosi. Since 2022 they have also been art directors of Adrenalina, for which they conceived Adrenalina Incontra, a curatorial project that led to the co-creation of the Aedo sofa system together with blind and visually impaired people, awarded the Archiproducts Design Award 2025. For Luca de Bona and Dario de Meo, design is never just a solution, but an act of interpretation that restores a cultural and sensitive dimension to the project. We had a chat with them.


Contraste by Debonademo Studio_ph@Serena Eller Vainicher

Your work spans different fields. How do you maintain coherence?
Our design approach is based on a personal interpretation of the concept of Hic et Nunc, in which time and place become the value of the spatiotemporal encounter between design need, intellect, target audience, and maker. In this celebration of the present as a complete synthesis between evocation of the past and projection toward the future, coherence does not take on a stylistic dimension for us, but a profoundly methodological one. Contexts, scales, and languages change, but the way we approach the project remains constant: starting from people, from the real context, and from production conditions. Each project is a specific response, but it always arises from a process of listening, analysis, and synthesis that we recognize as our own. That is where identity is built, not in the repetition of a form.

In your projects, material is never neutral: wrought iron, recycled composites, concrete, textiles, light. How does the choice already become a design stance?
For us, material is already narrative, function, and ethics at the same time. Choosing it means taking a position with respect to the time we live in, to resources, and to available skills. Wrought iron, recycled composites, concrete, textiles, or light are never used as simple cladding, but as active elements of the project. Material influences gesture, use, perception, and often also the meaning of the object or space.


Allegorie capsule collection by Debonademeo

Allegorie for Bottega Vazzoler and Due Sicilie for Chroma both work with tradition, but in very different ways. What is your relationship with craft heritage?
We see craft heritage as a living system, not as a repertoire to be quoted. In some cases the project works by subtraction, allowing the value of gesture and material to emerge; in others it becomes more narrative and symbolic. In both cases our goal is to avoid nostalgia: tradition only makes sense if it can dialogue with the present and open up future possibilities.

Since 2022 you have been art directors of Adrenalina and from 2026 of Chroma. How does your role change when the project concerns not a single object, but the construction of a vision over time?
The shift from designers of individual products to art directors requires a broader and more responsible perspective. It is not only about designing objects, but about building a direction, an imaginary coherent over time. It means working on languages, relationships, content, and processes, guiding the company along a cultural as well as productive path. It is a less immediate role, but a much deeper one.


Palazzo Litta_Divano Aedo_Debonademeo_Adrenalina_ph Serena Eller Vainicher

Adrenalina Incontra and the Aedo project introduced a central theme: co-creation with blind and visually impaired people. What did this experience teach you, and what challenged you the most as designers? Has your perspective on the social role of design changed?
It was an experience that questioned many certainties of contemporary design. Working with blind and visually impaired people forced us to radically rethink the relationship between form, function, and perception, shifting attention from the visual to the body, to touch, to the time of experience. The greatest difficulty was designing without being able to rely on the usual tools of formal control, accepting a more open and less predictable process. This path strengthened our awareness of design as a relational and cultural practice, capable of generating social value as well as objects.

Let’s come to the theme of this edition of Fuorisalone: “Be The Porject” What does it mean to you?
The concept of Hic et Nunc returns. For us, “Be the Project” means recognizing that the project is not only a final result, but a way of being in the world. It is a critical, open attitude, capable of questioning itself and assuming responsibilities. It means accepting complexity, working on process and relationships, and considering design as a cultural act before it is a formal one.


Wall&Deco_Debonademeo Studio

What are you working on? What will you present at Milan Design Week?
Our role in creative direction, supporting companies, continues. In addition to consolidating already active collaborations, new realities have joined us, broadening the horizon toward a design landscape that goes beyond the boundaries of product design and brings different fields of knowledge into dialogue. In view of Milan Design Week, we are completing the development of new products: two armchairs, a seating system, a collection of lamps, and a series of furnishing accessories, while simultaneously continuing to work on product design and exhibition design. In particular, for Adrenalina we are designing a new way of presenting the brand to the public, capable of overturning the traditional trade fair stand format and evolving the concept of the Fuorisalone location, opening up more directly to the city.