When technology disappears, design returns to the person
Key Round, the mirror I designed for Vanità & Casa, has been selected for ADI Design Index 2026, entering the path towards the next Compasso d’Oro.
It is an important recognition, but I prefer to start with what comes before it: the reasons that gave rise to the project.
When I began working on Key Round, I did not want to design a mirror with a light added to it. I wanted to understand how far the reflective surface could be pushed without betraying its nature, allowing the mirror to remain entirely a mirror and making technology visible only when it was genuinely needed.
The mirror remains a mirror. Until light is needed.
This idea lies at the heart of Key Round.
Ghost Light technology allows light to emerge directly from the reflective surface without compromising its continuity when switched off. This technical possibility gave me the freedom to work not with a simple illuminated line applied to the mirror, but with an extended luminous surface, capable of establishing a more precise relationship with the face and with everyday gestures.
The person, literally at the centre
Putting the person at the centre of the project has become a widely used expression in design. With Key Round, I wanted it to become almost a geometric condition.
The face occupies the centre of the mirror, while the light develops around it.
Through the Modular Light System, different luminous areas can be activated according to need; both intensity and colour temperature can be adjusted, allowing the lighting to respond to different moments, gestures and individual preferences.
There is therefore no single predetermined lighting condition.
Technology creates possibilities and seeks to adapt to the person, rather than asking the person to adapt to it.
A simple form becomes a system
Key Round begins with an elementary geometry: the circle.
Yet formal simplicity does not reduce its possibilities. On the contrary, it becomes the starting point for different configurations.
The mirror can rotate, interact with shelves and accessories, be combined with other elements and generate more articulated compositions. A single object therefore becomes a small system for the bathroom space, capable of adapting to different dimensions, functions and ways of use.
It is a principle I care about: achieving complexity in use without creating formal complexity.
Design does not begin with the object
Design also concerns what happens before installation: production, protection, transport and materials. Within Vanità & Casa’s packaging, eliminating polystyrene has become standard practice rather than something to be showcased: one of the many decisions that contribute to the overall quality of the product.
ADI Design Index 2026
The selection for ADI Design Index 2026 places Key Round among the projects identified by ADI’s Permanent Design Observatory and admitted to the process leading towards the Compasso d’Oro.
For me, above all, it is an opportunity to bring attention back to an issue that has long accompanied my work:
the quality of a project does not coincide with its final form.
It lies in the relationship between form, technology, use, production and the person. It lies in the visible decisions and in those that, when a project works, almost disappear.
Key Round comes from this research.
And perhaps this is precisely why, in the end, it appears so simple.
Key Round is also the result of Vanità & Casa’s technological expertise and its constant drive to push the boundaries of what a mirror can be.