Portrait:: Roberto e Ludovica Palomba

By Monica Scanu - 8 January 2010

The 2005 Milan Furniture Fair took on a new face. Design shows were staged in numerous spectacular locations round the city like the former post office adjacent to the main station, and a pelota playing ground in Via Palermo 10. It was a rare occasion to tune into what many young, acclaimed designers have to say. They explored new ideas, themes and projects. A restlessness to progress new ideas was tempered by a humility that is born of confidence in one’s design ability and knowledge of materials. In a contemporary world where sameness of sign, style, colour and materials all too readily pass off as modern design, these “off-site” shows were a breath of fresh air.
Two of these “designers with a difference” are Ludovica and Roberto Palomba.
I got to know Roberto Palomba when we were students at Rome’s Faculty of Architecture. Ebullient and communicative, Palomba even then added a very personal – and recognisable – artistic touch to his splendid projects. As well as studying architecture at that time, he also designed bridal dresses for Egon von Furstenberg – and I have never since come across anything to resemble his wonderfully feminine figures resplendent in flowing shawls, large sunglasses and hats. In those years too Roberto met Ludovica Serafini.
They met at a ball. “Blond and tanned, Ludovica was wearing a long red gown by Valentino” Roberto remembers. “It was love at first sight”. “It was five in the morning and he was still in full swing. I realise now that my first reaction was dictated simply by exhaustion”, counters Ludovica. The architect couple started working together in 1994 as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a bond of love that extended to the workplace. They started out in Rome, still their favourite city (he is Sardinian while she is a native of Rome). The turning point came, however, when they moved north to Verona to follow their real passion: design. They deliberately eschewed Milan, the design capital, to retain...