1: When Metal Animals Run Free

Inspired by the empty streets of Amsterdam, Luca began to imagine gigantic animals roaming freely where humans once dominated, reclaiming the city and transforming it into an animal-filled haven. This vision of post-apocalyptic romanticism reminds me of the reflections of certain 1980s artists on urban spaces. At that time, movements like Land Art and installation art often used “natural” or “non-human” elements to challenge the orderliness of urban spaces, critiquing how we’ve made cities so rigid and boring.

Luca then chose metal as the primary material to bring these animals to life.

I found this choice particularly intriguing because the structure crafted by metal feels linear, cubic, or even minimalist. It blurs the boundaries between two and three dimensions. Unlike traditional solid forms composed of planes or blocks, this “compressed” style invites us to contemplate spatial dimensions. It might even help children visualize how three-dimensional objects can be translated onto paper.

When discussing this choice, Luca shared:
  “As a child, when you are playing with a sword or a gun, you want it to be strong and heavy. In the same way, when you’re playing with an airplane, you want it to be light, flying high. That’s the same thing when you see a wild animal, like a toy gorilla in front of you — you expect it to be strong, sturdy, and robust… So metal was a good choice. The material and the production exactly reflected how I was drawing the animals — simple and synthetic.”

Working with metal for the first time wasn’t easy for Luca.
  “I’m the designer who’s patching and creating the animals, but next to me, I have a welder and a producer who can think with me: How can we solve this? How can we make this animal look nicer? 

This is a beautiful collaboration because sometimes, since I’m not that well-informed about the limits of the machine or the materials, I go wild. Thanks to them, they’ll say, ‘Hey, look, this is not possible to do this, so let’s step back.’”

It didn’t take long for Luca’s creations to capture people’s hearts. His metal animals began to “rewild” various parts of Europe, “sprouting” in different cities.

On a previous project in Bratislava, Slovakia, Luca created six animal sculptures along the Vodné Dielo Gabčíkovo, proposing a set of riverine creatures—whale, walrus, crocodile, octopus, and turtle. Luca likes to imagine the design process taking shape during the nighttime, when those animals are leaping back into the river. Now Luca is at work on a new series set to debut in London next summer, featuring six local animals requested by the client, with reindeer, foxes, and even insects among the chosen subjects.

“Some local animals are more challenging to design, especially if the area doesn’t have many exotic species. A sketch might look great in 2D, but it gets a bit lost when it goes into 3D. It’s always an interesting process of finding the right number of lines and colors to use in designing the animals. Some animals turn out ‘nicer’ than others, and by ‘nicer,’ I mean not just from an aesthetic point of view but also how people interact with them.”