Born in Lecce, in 1979, he trained at the European Institute of Design in Milan, and after the three-year IED he will play a consulting role in the IED Research Center team and then as a lecturer in three-year courses in Interior Design. In 2006 he founded his studio DE SIGNUM STUDIO LAB in Milan. While living in Milan he maintains his roots and many of his projects in the territory of origin, the Salento.
Lorenzo Longo operates transversally in all fields of design and architecture, he guides companies in the process of internationalization and in the development of a creative apparatus.
In 2007 he joined the Pirelli group's supercar tread design team. He specializes in the design of furnishing lamps and presents his first products in the catalog of Kundalini, creative director of the Pimar company for which he oversaw the creation and development of the Pimar Design Collection. Since 2012 he has held a professorship in the Interior Design and Product Design Master of Italian Design Institute, he has been a guest professor at the Polytechnic of Bari and collaborates with the Sotheby's Institute in London.
Among its customers: Campari, Alviero Martini, Kundalini, Verde Profilo, Cesana, Pimar, Sphaus, Mercedes Benz, Naj Oleari, Swish Jeans
1/ How did the idea for the new product come about?
"Penny" is the first of the products born after a long period of research carried out in collaboration with Verde Profilo®, research aimed to the conception and optimization of a natural material compounds basically by lichens. The passion for music often leads us to deal with our neighbors, too loud voices disturb us or prevent us from listening to the person in front of us, workplaces often crowded and full of reverberations caused by building materials don't allow us to concentrate ... they are all problems we face every day; from this analysis, whose solution is often reduced in the adoption of sound-absorbing panels in artificial materials or suspension systems in various types of acrylic fabrics, "Penny" is a free-standing modular system, capable of reducing reverberations and having an attractive appearance and above all made of a natural material. Formally Penny recalls the appearance of a speaker, but unlike this, the holes that distinguish it tend to act as sound absorbers; it is a single-material acoustic object, I would say almost "silent", with a well-represented function and no superfluous elements.
2/ The circular economy is gaining more and more importance today, what do you think about it?
The theme concerning the respect and recovery for materials has become of equal importance as the water saving or the consumption of hydrocarbons. Like everyone, I believe I have become aware of a future in which the earth will ask for the bill and this moment will be reasonably close if each of us doesn't contribute to the recovery and saving of raw materials, even through informed purchases.
