She is an architect, a designer, a professor, an entrepreneur and one of the most influential persons in the world of contemporary lighting design. Carlotta de Bevilacqua is the managing director of Danese Milano and the vice director of Artemide. She is married to Artemide's founder Ernesto Gismondi. She has received many awards for her research on lighting design and numerous famous light creations.
Carlotta de Bevilacqua was born in Milan in 1957 and graduated in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1983. She has been leading her own design office in the Italian metropolis and implementing projects of interior architecture, architecture, industrial and lighting design since decades. In the early nineties, the Milanese started with designing light fixtures for the Italian labels Artemide and Danese and was very much involved in the development of a new generation of patented LED products.
In 1999, Carlotta de Bevilacqua acquired the traditional manufacture Danese Milano which at this time had lost much of its prestige and has contributed to its renewed success. As the vice manager of Artemide she is also responsible for the strategic, creative direction of the biggest manufacturer of light fixtures in the world. She developed Artemide's philosophy "The Human Light". Since 2001, Carlotta de Bevilacqua has been teaching design at the Polytechnic University in Milan and already worked as a guest lecturer in many Italian and international academic institutions.
Carlotta de Bevilacqua explores every facet of light and how it influences people's psychic and physical well-being with enthousiasm. Her products have been selected for international exhibitions dedicated to contemporary design, such as the Triennale di Milano, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Serpentine Gallery in London. The Danese HBM light and the prized Artemide Copernico designed together with Paolo Dell'Elce are two of her trailblazing designs. For the fascinating Copernico light Carlotta de Bevilacqua was awarded the Red Dot Design Award in 2011. For the Empatia lights which feature beautiful blown glass bodies she received the iF Product Design Award in 2014.