Davide Groppi

Davide Groppi is both the name of a designer and that of the lamp company he founded in Piacenza. His work starts from a simple idea: what matters is the light, not the lamp. This is why many of his fixtures are reduced to a minimum, almost invisible, leaving room for the effect of light in the space.

The workshop

Davide Groppi was born in Piacenza in 1963 and first worked as a mechanical designer. In 1988 he opened a workshop in the city where he designed and made lamps under his own name. An important moment came in 1994, when Maddalena De Padova showed forty examples of his Baloo lamp in her space on Corso Venezia in Milan during the Salone del Mobile. From the 1990s the lamps were also sold abroad, and the business expanded into lighting for exhibitions, museums and buildings.

Light, play and irony

Groppi's lamps use direct, indirect and diffused light, and are designed to reduce the visual impact of the object. They often have an ironic tone: Nulla (“nothing”) is little more than a point of light in the ceiling, while Sampei, designed with Enzo Calabrese, is a long fishing rod that carries light over the table. Both won the Compasso d'Oro in 2014; another came in 2024 for the Anima lamp. Sampei lights the President of the Republic's Studio alla Vetrata in the Quirinale Palace, where the light work Infinito was also installed in 2023.

The company today

In 2018 the company joined the Dexelance group, keeping its base in Piacenza; since 2020 it has been a member of the Fondazione Altagamma. Besides homes and museums, Groppi has designed the lighting of restaurants by chefs such as Massimo Bottura, Massimiliano Alajmo and Moreno Cedroni.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Davide Groppi (it)