Donato D´Urbino studied at the Politechno di Milano where he met Gionatan de Pas and Paolo Lomazzi with whom he in 1966 established the DDL Studio. In 1967 the trio together with Carla Scolari made a great success with Blow, the first mass-produced inflatable armchair made of PVC plastic by the Italian company Zanotta.
Blow is seen as a symbolic object of the 1960’s student´s movement that questioned the conservative lifestyle and the common furniture design. In 1972 the studio also designed several inflatable structures for the World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. Three years after Blow was released D’Urbino, de Pas and Lomazzi launched the leather baseball glove shaped armchair Joe, named legendary player Joe DiMaggio and made by the Italian manufacturer Poltronova.
During the 1970’s and 80’s the design studio DDL concentrated on furniture that were more traditional and made of wood, steel, and leather, such as the chair Linda in 1975 and Onda sofa in 1985, both made by Zanotta. They also designed furniture for BBB Bonacina, Driade and Palina as well as lighting for Stilnovo. In 1991 Gionatan de Pas died which led Lomazzi and D’Urbino to rename to Studio D’Urbino Lomazzi.
During the 2000’s the duo began teaching at both the Politechnico di Milano and at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. In 2012 DDL were celebrated with the monographic exhibition Il gioco de le regole (eng. The Game and the Rules) at the Triennale di Milano.
Together with de Pas and Lomazzi, D’Urbino is represented at among others, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Furniture Studies in Stockholm.
