Studiopepe has accustomed us to what it calls “manifesto projects”, which express their vision of design and space. Suggestions that come from work, that precede shapes and objects. But, given the times we live in in which both public and domestic space have completely changed, and it is not clear whether the shape they now have will be definitive, we can only try to imagine. This is why the studio has decided to try to look upwards: towards the sky, starting from the etymology of the word desire.

The word desire is composed of the Latin prefix de-, which means “lack of something” and the word sidus which means “star”. Wishing for something literally means “lack of stars”, “to feel a lack of stars”, or in other words to have the perception of a lack implying a feeling of passionate searching. De-siderio is the name of an imagined constellation, formed by all the product design projects they have carried out this year, which involved formal and material research, sign and language analysis, all characteristic aspects of their design vision. No longer a physical place to contain the projects, but an imaginary architecture born to relate the projects, told through a video that uses the poetic and synaesthetic language typical of art, creating references, connections, dialogues, analogies.

It is a strongly symbolic space, that of the sky, which is why the video is seductive. From the last, famous verse of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, “e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” (Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poem in public domain. ndr) – which since March 2020 has been quoted again in books, articles, exhibitions – to space flights. From the idea of the divine to the houses on Mars, but also more simply resonates in each of us as an image of free and infinite space, in spite of light pollution, because we have seen it, the sky, when we could.