Creative duos have always fascinated me, possibly because I can't fathom being part of one myself. How do they work? How does the concepting stage work? Does one of them get the initial inspiration for something—a chair, a building, a dress—and the other manifests that inspiration into a drawing, a mock-up? Once they have that drawing or mock-up, what next? Does one person develop the design from its early stage to its middle, while the other troubleshoots problems that come up along the way? I often envision (and experience) creation as a solitary act, sometimes a very lonely one. Does working as part of a creative duo mitigate that solitude? Or does it possibly, counterintuitively, heighten it?
Take Afra and Tobia Scarpa for example, the award-winning Italian architects and industrial designers (a husband and wife team, no less). Their work is included in museum collections such as MoMA and the Louvre; their designs are sold at some of the most influential, renowned design retailers in the world. But which of them first came up with the idea for their coveted Soriana chair or Papillion lamp?! Sometimes these questions keep me up at night, no joke. But as I reflect on it now, any idea, even one created by an individual designer or artist, is never created in a vacuum. Maybe in a way, a creative duo is like a metaphor for the creative act: it never takes a single person to come up with an idea. No matter how original, influential, or profound.
-Eugenie Dalland