LPWK Design Studio

Laura Polinoro,, founder and director of LPWK Design Studio. She is a designer and meta-designer, graduated from DAMS in Bologna, in 1989 wrote "The Alessi workshop. Alberto Alessi and Alessandro Mendini: ten years of projects, 1980-1990". In 1990 you founded the Centro Studi Alessi (CSA) with Alberto Alessi and Alessandro Mendini, a place of experimentation that involves professionals from various disciplines and young creatives, conducting workshops and creating innovative collections, proposing the concept of meta-project. Since 2000 you have continued your collaboration with Alessi by founding and directing LPWK Design Studio. She teaches at Domus Academy and NABA.

She begins her career working in the field of contemporary dance, taking care of the artistic coordination, costumes and sets; subsequently she becomes a researcher at the Domus Academy.

Since 1990 Laura has been the head of the Centro Studi Alessi (“CSA”), as meta-designer and art director. You brought the semiological intuition and training acquired by the semiologists Eco and Fabbri to Alessi.

With Laura, Alessi introduces disciplines such as anthropology and semiotics hitherto completely foreign to his work, and begins the difficult process of extricating himself from the rhetorical swamp in which certain Italian design schools had become accustomed to wallow.

Among the meta-projects in which she has been involved for the CSA are the “Family Follow Fiction” collection, the “Creole Memory Container” project and the “Biological” project (which led to the creation of many objects now included in the collections of design of the MOMA in New York, the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the MAK in Frankfurt, the Museu d'Arts Decoratives de Barcelona and the Museum Fur Gestaltung in Zurich).

Since 2000 the CSA no longer exists as a physical entity, its identity has transformed into a freer and more virtual realm of design research and contact with the emerging international design world, managed by Laura Polinoro as an independent consultant.

Later she founded the Laura Polinoro Workshop, where she organizes workshops with numerous designers, working on a large variety of briefs for different types of companies, with the aim of designing innovative products. The projects that are then put into production are identified by the acronym "LPWK".

Laura meets regularly with company representatives to focus on strategy and positioning. They brainstorm where the company is and where it wants to go. By carefully listening to the needs of the company, she then creates a meta-project to develop a new product line and allows the company to explore new horizons and ideas.