Luca Gruber & Sara Bologna (IT)

BGGB Studio is a Milan-based design and research studio founded by Sara Bologna and Luca Gruber. Their practice brings together product design, material research, communication, and curatorial work. They understand design as a material act with symbolic meaning and use objects to explore complex relationships between the scientific and the aesthetic, the real and the imaginary. Sara Bologna is a designer and researcher whose work focuses on material culture, anthropology, narrative design, and contemporary interpretations of traditional crafts. She collaborates with universities and craft communities and is a member of MADEC, the Material Design Cultures Research Group at Politecnico di Milano. Luca Gruber is a designer whose work connects craftsmanship and material poetry with mythological and anthropological narratives. He creates furniture, lighting, and objects in collaboration with craftspeople working with glass, wood, metal, and textiles. During their residency at Center Rog, they will develop The Arquà Manuscript, a speculative project that brings together furniture, textiles, writing, and artificial intelligence. Inspired by medieval bestiaries, the project approaches AI not merely as a tool but as a non-human co-author participating in the creation of images, patterns, and myths. The project will be developed primarily in the Wood and Textile Labs and presented through a public workshop on collaborative design with artificial intelligence.