Denis Santachiara was born in 1950 in Campagnola in the province of Reggio Emilia. He began his career as a self-taught industrial designer driven by an interest in technology and fostered by his innate drawing talent. At a very young age, he worked as a designer in the Modenese dream car district, where a De Tomaso group company hired him to assist a young engineer from Ferrari as a car stylist. This experience gave light to the Nembo, a supercar made in only twenty 90 cm high examples, for which he designed the general line and the dashboard. A significant milestone in his professional career was the exhibition 'La Neomerce. Il design dell'invenzione e dell'estasi artificiale" that he curated in 1984 at the Triennale di Milano and in 1985 at the Centre Pompidou (with the technological consultancy of Montedison Cultura). For the exhibition, he invited a series of designers to present innovative and high-tech objects with an interactive and ironic character. This experience - in which he investigated the performative and sensorial object -became the premise for the founding of Domodinamica in 1989 with Cesare Castelli. Domodinamica proposed 'animated objects for the home', like the Cicalino doormat, the Maestrale lamp and Ines, a domestic robot (presented at the 1986 Triennale and proposed at the 2022 Triennale) produced by Kartell, a forerunner in design thinking,
In Milan, he joined the editorial staff of Modo. There, he met Alberto Meda, with whom he won the Compasso d'Oro ADI in 1986 for the book 'La materia dell'invenzione' (The Matter of Invention). Another Compasso d'Oro for the Vivawine bottle holder produced by Morellato (2004) followed this recognition. In 1999, he won the Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and, in April 2000, the Design World Prize. In 2010, the Accademia Italiana also honoured him for spreading Made-in-Italy values worldwide. From 1988 to 1992, he designed the interiors of the Charterhouse of Avignon and the Museum of Magic in Blois for the French Ministry of Culture. In 1993, he created furnishings for a square in Toyama, Japan and in 1994-95, the interiors of the Art Hotel in Dresden. In 1996, he won the international ZIP competition for the city of Saarbrucken and designed and realised the "The New-Persona" installation at the Florence Biennale. In 1998, he participated in the creation of a new telematic banking system for Assicurazioni Generali.
Denis Santachiara has worked with leading companies in the design sector, including, Artemide, Baleri Italia, Bang-Olufsen, BPT, Campeggi, De Padova, Desalto, Fiat, Foscarini, Mandarina Duck, Marutomy, MikroDesign, Montedison, La Murrina, Nintendo, Panasonic, Rosenthal, Rossin, Sector No Limits, Serralunga, Snia Viscosa, Superga, Swatch, Vitra, Zerodisegno. Some of his works are exhibited at MoMA in New York and the Musée des arts Décoratifs at the Louvre in Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Museum of Lyon, the Frankfurt Museum, the Philadelphia Museum and the Milan Triennale.
