'Just light' by Garth Roberts

There is a roughly 50-50 chance of meeting up with Garth Roberts in Milan. Like so many product designers nowadays Roberts darts from client meeting to seminar to fellowship with seeming disregard for international borders. Yet Roberts’s peripatetic leanings run deeper than protocol. Currently he divides his time primarily between Berlin and Milan, and these homes mark the latest destinations in a career journey that spans continents.

'Not-just light' by Garth Roberts

It began in Toronto, where the Canadian-born Roberts first went to work for Jonathan Crinion, the designer intimately linked to Knoll. By 2000 Roberts was in New York, shouldering industrial-design tasks for a local architecture studio for the next three years. The work may have been gratifying, but certainly not profile-raising. Crinion suggested to Roberts that he attempt designing contemporary furniture. He made trips to Milan to circulate his portfolio, and there he met Jeffrey Bernett, an exemplar of the field who also offered him a job back in New York.

Garth Roberts

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FaiTuttoTu, or YouDoEverything, for Serralunga

Chris Redfern shouldn’t worry himself about youth. The British-born designer is only 36. For one-third of his life he has worked with Ettore Sottsass. And since Sottsass’ death in December 2007, Redfern has deftly led the studio in closing one chapter and starting a new one.

His rise was quick. After earning a degree in graphic design from Norwich School of Art, he found work designing toys in Hong Kong. “I knew the heart of mainstream industrialization was in China,” he says, but he also realized “there’s got to be more to design” than launching Bert and Ernie dolls or executing the designs of others. He enrolled in Domus Academy’s master’s program in industrial design in 1995, shivered through a six-month stint with Thomas Eriksson Arkitekter in Stockholm, and then found his way back to Milan and Sottsass Associati thanks to having made a good impression on James Irvine.

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