Walter de Silva and the harmony between solidity and dynamism

My father was an architect, my brother was an architect – what was I supposed to do? Architecture! But at the age of 21, I plucked up the courage and told my father I didn’t want to do architecture. My father was a bit upset but he understood. Fortunately, Walter de Silva, an icon of automobile design, is also involved in the design of lighting and furnishing elements. It was from a great architect like Renzo Piano that he "learned [...] the great ability to articulate the project, to change its facets in the course of work." He does not distinguish between cars or furnishings: "Whether it moves or not, it’s still industrial design". On Domus 1026, July 2018, in an interview he talks about his history and a collection of his shoes, demonstrating his innate eclecticism.

Walter de Silva is the designer of complexity, discipline and creativity. He brings to the industrial design sector his decades of expertise developed in the automotive sector and finds with Performance iN Lighting a perfect harmony of intent and research. Both the designer born in Lecco and the industrial group based in Colognola ai Colli, in the province of Verona, have travelled internationally, with a stylistic approach rooted in "Made in Italy" and technological research worthy of the best "Made in Germany". Liquid, In-Tense and Mercury are the result of this partnership: three lamps that express the right harmony between a classic and futuristic, solid and dynamic approach. The wave is the metaphor chosen to represent the interpenetration of energy and matter and to describe the dual nature of light as a physical reality, both corpuscular and undulatory.

“With Performance iN Lighting there was an instant rapport. This gave me the opportunity to apply my research on design and creativity in a new field. I drew up a concept which would take into account the evolution of the Group, of its deepest vocation for technological innovation and solidity, expressing at the same time the spirit of the digital age, its acceleration, its fluid dynamism,” says the designer.