I live and work in Milan, with one foot on Lake Maggiore.

I was born in Verbania in 1980. I live and work in Milan, while keeping one foot anchored on Lake Maggiore.

I studied in Milan, at the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico and at the Istituto Europeo di Design, where I graduated. The bond with my place of origin and an interest in craft-based processes shaped my education; an attention I now find again in projects dedicated to the valorisation of productive cultures in different parts of the world.

I work in the field of product design and, in recent years, I have begun to explore illustration, which allows me to express a more intimate side of my observation of everyday life.

An admirer of Achille Castiglioni’s design irony, in design I look for the expressive potential of forms and materials, in order to bring out the attractive value of an object. In my work I seek an ethical, ironic and poetic component. I mainly work on products for the domestic environment, a field that allows me to imagine table architectures and build an ideal city.

I approached illustration in 2020, during a period of forced isolation, fascinated by Wes Anderson’s aesthetics and influenced by Luigi Ghirri’s photography and the metaphysical painting of empty squares. I observe and reinterpret iconic, unknown or overlooked architectures, as well as the landscapes around Lake Maggiore.

The observation of everyday life, architecture, lake views and my passions, travel, books and films, become frozen images, meticulously reworked into suspended atmospheres dense with meaning. Giorgio Tartaro, journalist and design critic, described my work as an illustrator by saying that I work to miniaturize repetitions, which become cells of a cybernetic organism.

One form, two ways of using it.

On one side, I am an industrial designer specialized in products for the home: I look at objects through use, measure, proportion and the weight of gestures.

On the other, I am an illustrator. Illustration is my most intimate and free way of representing places and products: I do not have to solve only a technical problem, I can better listen to memory, atmosphere and the symbolic character of an object or landscape.

A photograph of the studio.

Photo: Matteo Cirenei

Studio, work table, sketches, objects, prints and prototypes.

Design, art direction: Excélsa, Ichendorf Milano, Viceversa, Ambientha, Briebe.

Illustration and editorial projects: La Repubblica, Trenitalia FS, Associazione Mercurio, Associazione Musei d’Ossola, Domus, L’Industria Italiana del Cemento, Legambiente, Milanovibra, Minotti, B&B, Fantoni, Linkiesta, Silvana Editoriale, 66th And 2nd, Esquire, Attila & Co, Banca Ifis, Rizzoli.

I am currently design director for the brand Excélsa.

Design, illustrations, prints and editorial projects

For design projects, artistic collaborations, commissioned illustrations or print purchases.

Paolo Metaldi Design Studio · Milan, Isola · VAT no. 06090090967
info@paolometaldi.com
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