Claudio Bellini lives and works in Milan, where he runs an architecture and design practice, founded in the mid-nineties. An international speaker with many years of university teaching experience, Bellini also works as the creative director for a number of leading global brands, where his success is evidenced by the multitude of awards he’s won over the years.
An ambitious and versatile individual with a keen eye for design – a sector in which he is a well-known innovator – Bellini has a passion for embarking on journeys that lead him to embrace different cultures.
A former competitive yachtsman, his dream is to take a trip in a glider and then a spaceship, because, as Le Corbusier once said, “flying has given us the bird’s eye view, an invaluable vantage point from which we can observe the world at large.”
Let’s discover more about him!
Claudio Bellini | Labirinto for Natuzzi
What are the biggest challenges you have met in your career?
My generation and I have been crossed by an incredible social and cultural transformation, amplified by globalization and the digital revolution. Design itself has changed a lot in these last decades, spinning around the world through different cultures and sometimes alien contexts.
To get aligned with such a big change, cooperating with international clients from Australia to the USA (including the merging countries) while stimulating, has been really challenging overall, and still is looking to the near future.
There will be an effective perspective for a new valuable Design dimension that will be more comprehensive, due to this changing world.
How would you describe your work?
Freedom, passion and curiosity; those are the main ingredients driving my entire life and work. That’s my design approach, a positive open-minded attitude shaped by my cultural background and surroundings, where my vision takes shape.
A new project is a new adventurous journey with no predetermined destination.
How is your passion for visual art and design born?
It’s happened since my childhood, thanks to the opportunity I had to spend some time regularly in my father’s design studio.
My favorite place to stay was the very large and fully equipped workshop, watching people in white coats working and researching with 1:1 scale polystyrene mockups.
I was so fascinated to see how ideas and visions become reality through a magic interaction between manual work and investigation of the mind… the “creative process”. At that time, I began to dream about my future life creating ideas and playing with materials…
What is the most difficult work you have done and why?
I don’t have one specific project but, as complexity usually creates difficulties, overall it’s the working environment; an area I have been involved in since the very beginning.
When designing office furniture, you have to manage and control an incredible quantity of data, from ergonomic requirements to standard compliance.
On the other hand you have to deal with a high degree of modularity and flexibility, keeping in mind that in the end, on the architectural scale, the most valuable result is to be able to provide a range of coherent components to create a welcoming and efficient office landscape, aligned with the latest trends. Furthermore, following my personal positive attitude, I can say that in any case a difficulty is always an opportunity to come up with a more valuable result.
What is your main source of inspiration?
I need to keep my mind open, being active and receptive, learning from each moment of the day. Whether it’s talking with my kids, having a meeting with clients or suppliers, discussing with my team, traveling, or reading.
In the end an inspiration is the result of an unpredictable interaction between past and future, where my memory, my roots and my nature are continuously facing new, exciting experiences and opportunities in a more and more complex world.
What about your next project?
My studio is now running over two hundreds new design projects around the world, both with huge international groups and very small companies. Saying that, the most important goal I would like to reach, is to continue in a transformation of my studio, moving from ME to WE.
This process is actually involving a professional and well-organized growing team of thirty talented people, coming from different countries all around the world.
That’s my vision for the future: a professional creative tank where I would like to work next; a place full of fresh energy, in a fair and positive interaction with the younger generation.
Outside of design, what are you currently interested in and how is it influencing your design work?
For the last six years, I have been involved in a new, exciting and challenging adventure with my wife LARA, creating a new fashion brand for women’s bags, LARA BELLINI.
While Lara remains the main designer, this has been a great opportunity for me to explore a new dimension of creativity with an incredible degree of freedom.
This kind of ‘contamination’ by fashion provides me with a new perspective in my creative process.
More recently, I started a deeper investigation into how the growing dematerialization of our world will potentially affect design and my work. Particularly I am interested in the future transition from real to virtual objects, in a new dimension, the metaverse.
Portrait | Claudio Bellini