A conversation with Roberto Ziliani, CEO and Founder of Slamp, ADI Compasso d’Oro alla Carriera 2024
In the early 1990s, Slamp made its debut in the world of design with an intuition as simple as it was revolutionary: to create a lamp that was lightweight, accessible, nomadic, yet strongly iconic. A “pop” object – a cylindrical lamp decorated in collaboration with Swatch’s graphic designers – conceived to surprise and provoke questions. “But is it really a lamp?” many wondered. Yes, and not only that. It was an object designed to redefine the relationship between function, aesthetics, and accessibility, inaugurating a new way of thinking about light.
Slamp immediately grasped the cultural shift underway and grew rapidly, reaching an annual production of 350,000 pieces. Yet these numbers never overshadow its craft-based dimension: every product is handmade by the Sarte della Luce, without glue or screws, thanks to a sophisticated interlocking system – up to 256 joints for some creations – which demands skill, precision, and know-how passed down over time. Everything begins with a single sheet that is transformed into light.
Roberto Ziliani, CEO and founder, ADI Compasso d’Oro Lifetime Achievement Award 2024, explains: “Since the very beginning, Slamp has been able to engage in dialogue with great visionaries. Alessandro Mendini offered invaluable contributions. Alberto Alessi inspired us to explore new channels, such as wedding registries, redefining the idea of the lamp as a cultural object, not merely a functional one.”
The materials used are advanced technopolymers: fireproof, UV-resistant, lightweight, and virtually unbreakable. Processed through proprietary techniques, they offer infinite possibilities in form and volume. Thanks to these characteristics, the visual identity of Slamp lamps is both sculptural and dynamic, constantly evolving.
Sustainability is also a core element of the industrial project. Production scraps are donated to a company that repurposes them into objects for other sectors – such as hospital beds or bomb cabinets – thus fostering a circular and responsible production chain.
Today, Slamp continues to evolve, exploring new horizons. The boundary between decorative and technical dissolves: even a spotlight can be beautiful when switched off, and function can harmoniously merge with form. The result is hybrid, luminous, and sculptural solutions, designed for contract, hospitality, and residential spaces.
In 2025, the company will also expand into outdoor lighting. The new collections – Bang by Adriano Rachele and Charlotte Outdoor by Studio Fuksas – introduce the use of metal while remaining faithful to the founding principle: starting from a sheet to create a three-dimensional object. The context changes, not the philosophy.
The project that best embodies the present and future of Slamp is Nuvem, designed by Miguel Arruda: a luminous, modular, organic surface that inhabits and transforms space, indoors and out. “It is not a lamp,” explains Roberto Ziliani, “it is a system. You don’t hang it, you build it. Nuvem, made from fireproof and waterproof polycarbonate, allows for maximum customization: it can become a luminous ceiling, a wall covering, or even a façade. It is a landscape. With Nuvem, Slamp powerfully asserts its identity: not just a producer of lamps, but an emotional interpreter of light, capable of turning it into a cultural project.”
Nuvem Outdoor – a new development presented at Euroluce 2025 – has been selected for the ADI Design Index 2025, thus joining the shortlist of products competing for the most important accolade in Italian lighting design.
Today, just as in the past, Slamp continues to imagine light as experience, emotion, and architecture — a project in constant evolution, where innovation and poetry meet to shape the spaces of tomorrow.
