When the CIRCLE was born in 2019, Michele De Lucchi wrote a letter that defined the founding aims of the new studio, understood as a “circle” of innovative designers eager to contribute to the evolution of the world, proactive, committed and always attentive to economic, environmental and social sustainability. “We’re not followers. We belong to the category of designers who believe in the need to bear witness to the civilization in which we live. We believe that designing objects, buildings and environments for future generations requires a continual process of innovation. We transfer concepts into facts, abstractions into realizations, keywords into images, the intangible into the tangible. We are committed to distilling the meaning of social coexistence, generating evolution and promoting the sustainability and survival of the planet. We combine expertise in architecture, interior design, industrial design and graphics with the contribution of the humanistic and scientific disciplines. We defy convention and reveal hidden worlds. We want to be a leader in experimentation. Our task is to create objects, buildings and environments that inspire the peaceful coexistence of individuals and different cultures, that provide a tangible response to the need for responsibility towards nature, that regenerate what already exists without needlessly consuming the goods and resources that are available, that exploit technology to its fullest practical and functional potential. Our work is based essentially on creation, judgement, presentation and realization. This process becomes all the more intense and fertile the more we embrace the many questions that it spawns. Questions about possible better worlds. We try to be the most imaginative when creating, the most exacting when judging, the clearest when presenting and the most meticulous when implementing. But I have come to realize that this is just not enough. Something more is needed to achieve true success. Something that is not easy to define, not easy to quantify and not easy to teach. I’m speaking about courage. This is what I continually ask of myself: be courageous, intellectually courageous! I don’t want to be a meek follower but a brave pioneer. Not with a sense of presumption, not with arrogance, never irritating and never irritated, always kind. A brave pioneer. Where is the courage hidden within me? Where is the courage hidden within you? Let’s find out! Be brave! (With me!).”