XL 1986 – ongoing

“Everything began on a kitchen table, with just a few design tools and a fax machine. That was where I started, together with Nicoletta Canesi: a simple and minimal space where a design approach took shape and which has never really changed over all these years. For me it seems just like yesterday: I graduated, began to take the first steps, Boffi arrived, and this was 1986. I remember the drafter, the set squares, the compasses, the pencils, the rotring… and a table to design on.
Even today the feeling is the same: I open the door, enter the studio, and there’s my table, as always. I still design more by hand, and although I don’t use the drafter, it’s basically the same thing.
If I think of the difference of scale, I don’t see it as anything extraordinary: even then it was larger than life to start as art director for Boffi without any experience. Maybe today the projects are simply more to scale.
What hasn’t changed is the energy: opening a door and finding new things, people and different tools. The joy of coming to the studio and the curiosity of beginning every day as if it were brand new are the same as in 1986. Just a little time has passed in the meantime.” Piero Lissoni

From 1986 to 2026: forty years that are not just an anniversary for Lissoni & Partners but also a measure of time expressed through design. A measure that is today incapsulated in the two letters XL, signifying forty in roman numerals but also representing a broadened perspective capable of bridging eras, scales and languages.