Imagination and discovery are at the core of Danese Milano’s new summer series of objects. The design brand has collaborated with designer Michele De Lucchi on colourful puzzles, and also reissued Enzo Mari's classic 16 Animali/ Pesci wooden puzzles from 1957. Both projects with clear educational missions, each is conceived to invite hands-on exploration.
Design gets playful at Danese Milano
De Lucchi’s graphic and architectural language is captured in his two projects: La Fattoria di Chele and the Chele Puzzle. In the first, eight farm animals – playful and expressive creatures that reflect De Lucchi’s sketching style – emerge from cut-out slots in Chilean pine panels.
La Fattoria di Chele by Michele de Lucchi for Danese Milano
In this contemporary nod to Enzo Mari’s animal puzzles, each creature is cut from a single 9mm-thick wooden circle and is as much decorative object as play thing.
Chele Puzzle by Michele de Lucchi for Danese Milano
Equally tactile, the Chele Puzzle is a composition tool, comprising colourful shapes and forms from De Lucchi’s sketches, which users are encouraged to arrange to create imaginary animals and environments. Made from cardboard, the puzzle is designed to be durable and portable.
16 Animali by Enzo Mari for Danese Milano
Danese Milano has also relaunched classic designs by Enzo Mari: 16 Animali and 16 Pesci. Both are centred on a single continuous cut that generates 16 different figures from one piece of wood. These little characters all slot together to fill the puzzle's wooden housing, or playfully stack on top of each other.
16 Pesci by Enzo Mari for Danese Milano
These four projects mark a championing of classic ideas of play, encouraging independent imagination and creativity, while in turn reducing over-stimulation – minimal, considered design that’s also fun.