The Story of Ardi

Ardi produces distinctive objects born from a close dialogue with both established and emerging designers. Ardi pieces are conceived to be used, admired, and at times questioned. They play with conventions and inhabit the space around them with character — and a touch of impertinence. Between function and aesthetics, Ardi champions a vision of design in which objects are never neutral.

Ardi’s story begins with an aluminium foundry established in 1950 in the aftermath of the war. Yet it was in the early 1990s — at a moment when design was moving beyond anonymous industrial production to embrace the realm of editions and collectible objects — that a meeting with Philippe Starck, under the impulse of Anne-Marie Nicol, propelled the workshop into the world of design publishing. Ardi was born, with its artistic direction entrusted to Kristian Gavoille, then a close collaborator of Starck. Around him he gathered a generation of designers, still young yet already remarkable. Ronan Bouroullec created his first published object there, Martin Szekely redefined his design language, while Éric Jourdan and Pucci de Rossi each brought their own blend of rigour, humour and anticonformism.

Ardi quickly became a place of creative freedom — a true playground for experimentation. Designers seized aluminium — the emblematic material of the 1960s and 1970s — bending it, casting it and shaping it while pushing against its constraints. Lightweight, durable, malleable and recyclable, aluminium offered designers remarkable freedom. The resulting pieces were surprising, playful and often delightfully unexpected.

Today, Ardi reconnects with the creative energy of its beginnings and opens a new chapter. Ardi reissues its most emblematic pieces while inviting a new generation of designers to imagine what comes next. Alongside aluminium, other crafts now enter the conversation, expanding the possibilities to create objects that are bold, expressive and unmistakably contemporary.