Michele’s beard – whether long or short, is always there – seemingly a way to tell him apart from his identical twin, a chemist.
He was born in Ferrara in 1951 and graduated in architecture from the University of Florence. There he quickly became an assistant to Adolfo Natalini, who founded Superstudio and often told him to, “show up in your coat and tails, walking on stilts, all with total seriousness.” He was a young radical designer. After early experiments with the Cavart group in Padua, where his brother studied, he moved to Milan in the late 1970s to work alongside Ettore Sottsass

who connected him to the professional world of Olivetti – for which he became design manager – and with the avant-garde world of Memphis whose decorated, playful plasticism he appreciated. The dualism of these two realms – in the balance between the precision of mass production and experimental craft – has defined him his entire career. He is always oscillating between industrial products and limited editions. In 1987 he designed the Tolomeo for Artemide, a lamp that was to become an international bestseller, and in 2005 he founded a brand, Produzione Privata, to develop his own products alongside the studio’s activities and his personal research in painting and sculpture: a cohesive design identity that encompasses seemingly antithetical expressions.