Restart/Milano was born from a short circuit between personal obsessions and professional practice. A condition that, over time, generated not simply a brand, but a network of collaborators and craftsmen capable of giving form to those obsessions. Restart/Milano is a collection of references, sources, and reactivated archives transformed into project matter.

The first objects appeared in 2004: gift boxes conceived as containers of memories, passions, and qualities. This is how the Water Box was born, a box that recalled the world of Italian summer camps through a sachet of Idrolitina, a hermetic bottle, and a polished Swiss steel camping cup. Minimal elements defining the emotional and narrative syntax of the object. Then came shoe care boxes, bicycle repair kits, Finollo handkerchiefs paired with Tempo tissue packs, charcoal and Bic pens, stones collected in Riva Trigoso together with a black marker, a constant homage to Bruno Munari.

The experience at Olivetti followed, a formative environment where components from the Series 45 were reactivated and brought back to life through new functional prostheses; the reinterpretation of the BBPR lamp, originally conceived as a lighting accessory for the Serie Spazio system; and the Olivetti 2025 agenda which, through the work of Diego Perrone, activated a temporal displacement that brought the object back into the present. The Olivetti references conclude with a reinterpretation of the Modulor system, reintroduced as a family of shelving and furniture.

Remaster revisits projects by the great masters of Italian design, reducing them to the bidimensional dimension of drawing and integrating them with minimal functional elements. The discovery of Serge Mouille and French design from the 1950s, together with the use of brass, a material rich in warmth, elegance, and history, became the driving force behind the BRS, ABT, and LNT lamp series.

Then came chance. The discovery, inside an Alinari book dedicated to Piedmontese Baroque architecture, of zenithal photographs of secondary churches in the province of Turin generated a series of mirrors that reproduce their geometries. The dialogue with the great masters of art and architecture led to the re edition of Joseph Beuys’ lamp, as well as tributes to Carlo Scarpa’s easel and Franco Albini’s modular bookcase. The latest reflection turns toward the history of light itself. A box containing a glass vessel, a small brass wick holder, and a bottle of liquid wax celebrates its origins; a lantern introduces the led light source; and finally the NKD table lamp reduces everything to pure function, with no mediation.

This is Restart/Milano.