Zanellato/Bortotto: a promising young duo

Founded in 2013, the industrial design studio, formed by Giorgia Zanellato and Daniele Bortotto, has proven its competence, in a limited time frame, and won the biggest winners. Their clientele already includes famous names in the design world like Rubelli, Moroso, Cappellini, Tod’s and Nilufar, among others.

With studies in industrial and product design, the creative duo joined forces to begin their first Acqua Alta collaboration with Rubelli, a historic Venetian company. The aim of this project, presented at the Milan fair in 2013, is to pay tribute to the city of Venice. Thus, the traditions, techniques and artisanal secrets characteristic of the city are borrowed to interpret, in a contemporary way, the effects of the high tide phenomenon. The collection is made up of a series of fabrics, blown glass fragrances, a marble table lamp and a vase. The designers succeed in their bet and manage to translate a sensitive subject into objects of everyday life. Having met each other on the study benches of the Cantonal Art School in Lausanne, young Italians share much more than their profession. Venice is at the center of many of their interventions and inspirations.

In 2016, they launched Giudecca for CC-Tapis, completely hand-woven rugs, like the Venetian stairs covered by the lagoon. With a special shape, one half of the product is in Himalayan wool in several shades of gray, illustrating the stone steps, and a second part in shimmering silk with tones of blue and green, more like the sea and the vibrations of the waves. Still around the same theme, Redor sets up a new interpretation of the traditional Murano mirrors of Venice, for the Nilufar gallery. On the other hand, far from isolated objects, the Italian duo’s first intervention for an interior design is 5 rooms. Inaugurated in 2018, the project consisted of fitting out five rooms of the Moulin des Ribes in Provence by five different artists. The piece worked by Zanellato/Bortotto was called Petali. It pays homage to the city of Grasse, capital of perfume, and is inspired by local and international know-how, in order to present an ingenious space.

In 2017, they won the prestigious Red Dot Design Award for their Storie mural, with Cedit Ceramiche d’Italia. These ceramic panels for indoor or outdoor use express a certain fading and amazing color nuances, to define an elegant modernity. The work, under grayish pigments, attempts to highlight the plaster and decorations of traditional Italian architecture under the effect of time. The end result portrays the authentic transformation of these elements.