Roberto Paoli, a designer from the Marche region, has collaborated with Fiam for several years and he has designed for the company various pieces of furniture in curved glass: Mir mirror available also with lamp, Luminare drawer unit and Vogue magazine rack.
Roberto Paoli was born in Ancona and obtained his degree in Architecture at the University of Florence in 1994. Thereafter he decided to devote himself to the design of objects. Therefore he went back to his birthplace, a territory full of productive realities, a good training for young designers. During these years, Paoli studied some techniques such as plastic injection moulding and glass bending. He collaborated with some famous Italian brands such as Fellowes (office products made of plastic), Fiamitalia and Liv’it (curved glass furniture). Thanks to these collaborations, Paoli obtained technical and methodological knowledge, which helped him to shape his own idea of design: he thinks that functionality and technology have to merge with the shape of objects, which is always influenced by the materials.
In 2002 he moved to Milan, the city of design. There he started collaborating with Tucanom where now he is Design Director. Paoli supervised the design of notebook cases and accessories and drew Tucano closer to a new product philosophy, based on strong attention to materials and functional details (some of these models after became registered design patents). For Tucano he has also designed the first Tucano shop in the city centre of Milan.
In the past few years Paoli has been collaborating with lighting engineering companies, such as Nemo Cassina and Segno.
In 2007, he set up his studio Seminato Mercadante, a renovated two story building of the first years of ‘900 with a precious ancient floor. Apart from his own studio, Paolo also designed the interiors of some houses and shops, such as Bilancioni clothes shops (in collaboration with Studio MRarchitects).
In 2009 Paoli designed two new lamps for Nemo Cassina, Kami and Flight and Mir mirror for Fiam all presented during the Salone del Mobile. In the same year Mir mirror has been awarded with the prestigious international Good design Award in 2009 by the Chicago Athenaeum – Museum of Architecture and Design.
