4 QUESTIONS with Odo Fioravanti

"Form does matter" is Odo Fioravanti's catchphrase. "The delicate beauty of objects is my goal and form is the language I use to bring beauty to all the people". We sat down to talk about a very special form: our own Dragonfly collection...

Everyone is talking about getting inspired by nature, but with Dragonfly you took it very seriously. How much of the creative process was pure observation?

Observing reality with a constant curiosity is a state of mind, more than a part of the design process. It's a permanent research that is mostly silent and intimate but, as sort of training, prepares the brain to give birth to ideas. For the Dragonfly chair I connected my passion for insects with the need for a new structure for a chair and quickly things got together, like the pieces of a puzzle.

Did you encounter some structural difficulties at some point? How did you overcome them? 

Early tests of the structure put in evidence some issues but not major problems. We got trough them by reworking the frames and the shell and the difficult thing, as usual, was to keep hidden all the tricks. At the end we figured out a way to make the magic happen!

What’s the difference when designing for a home setting and for the contract sector?

If you design for the contract market usually you make things strong enough to work in the home setting. The opposite does not happen often.

What's so special about Segis? 

Segis is a small company that has great energies. Thanks to this strange and unique combination, they can develop really courageous products, quickly and with fast results. 

You can have anyone from fiction and history sitting on Dragonfly - who will they be? 

Nikola Tesla! I don't need to go into the whys, do I?