Lapalma

Heritage

Lapalma's story begins in Cadoneghe, near Padua, in Italy's Veneto region, where Dario and Romano Marcato began making furniture at weekends in a garage a few metres from home in the early 1980s. Before becoming Lapalma they made precision transistor capsules for NASA. A first coffee table, designed by the two founders in 1980 and shown at a fair in Padua, sold so well that the company was born from the agent's reply: "Now you make them." In the early 1990s Lapalma decided to focus on seating, and ten years later turned its collections into a system of versatile, minimalist products.

Philosophy

Lapalma's design culture rests on the Italian tradition of the "beautiful and well-made": excellence in materials, simple solutions to complex problems and care for every detail, even the hidden ones. It describes itself as an industry run with the spirit of the craftsman — state-of-the-art machinery for precision, hand finishing, assembly and inspection for quality.

Iconic Works

• LEM stool by Shin & Tomoko Azumi (2000), in the V&A permanent collection since 2008, with more than a million pieces sold
• YO table by Romano Marcato (2016)
• PLUS seating system (2017)
• SEELA chair by Antti Kotilainen (2018)

Today

Lapalma works from a 14,500 m² headquarters in Cadoneghe opened in 2010 and powered by solar energy, with metal, wood and upholstery workshops in-house, and distributes to 81 countries. It added an outdoor range in 2019 and runs Lapalma for Architects spaces in Milan, London and Lucerne.