Queen of Italy

Meet Silvia Preda. I met her at Zoom the first time after responding to her post on LinkedIn about furniture brand miduny. Silvia and I connected straight away and are regularly in touch ever since then. I very much enjoyed sharing and learning from our past career in the international real estate industry and the shifts and turns we have been through in the past year. Silvia is someone I admire, who inspires me, and who is like myself, passionate and driven about what we do.

Silvia, how would you introduce yourself?

I am the mother of two beautiful daughters, Michelle and Nicole, and wife to a half Spanish, half Scottish amazing husband, Rafael. I was born and raised in Italy, surrounded by my grandparents' stable traditions and my parents' determination and grit to work hard and succeed. I moved to Prague in 2004, after studying in Milan and Spain and working around the world on various after-study projects. I always felt the need to live and explore different cultures while holding to my traditional family values. I found something so beautiful and charming in Prague that I felt like being at home. I worked for more than 10 years in Real Estate, managing mainly residential and mix assets and developments for a group of Italian investors. Real Estate has been my primary professional and educational dedication, even getting an MSc in Real Estate in 2014. Then I moved to Dubai, and everything changed. I felt the need to look for a new personal and professional identity. The 3 years journey in Dubai has been a game-changer experience. When we decided to move back to Prague, I knew I needed to do something meaningful. In some way, I felt the need to support, with my strong determination and passion for achieving significant results, entrepreneurs that would have a big important vision. My most valuable recent experience has been working together with Carlo Capalbo, founder of The Prague International Marathon and CEO of RunCzech, who moves more than 100 thousand people together in running events in the Czech Republic and in the beautiful city of Naples, Italy. His passion and determination to achieve big numbers, put together people from all over the world with the same passion for running, and spread his vision worldwide has been very inspiring to me. The Covid situation moved my attention and focus on supporting my daughters with home schooling, so ever since last March, I have been dedicating to the most essential asset of my life: my family. This is how I started to work together with my brother, Alessandro, in miduny. He is an architect based in NY and an award- winning designer who has the vision to create something impactful and meaningful with his work, both as an architect and as the designer of minimalistic handcrafted furniture. The most valuable elements came together for me: family, success, and a big meaningful vision to achieve.

Can you share what miduny brand stands for?

Miduny stands for innovative design with traditional artisanal handmaking and sustainable resources. Miduny's furniture combines timeless form and rigorous engineering with warm materials and whimsical accents. Most miduny designs are intentionally versatile, conceived explicitly with a dual purpose. Miduny stands for Milano-Dubai-NewYork, i.e., where members of the founder's family lived at the founding time. It also stands for global collaboration. While miduny designs and fully prototypes furniture and objects in-house in Brooklyn, the production of finished goods involves the cooperation of FSC certified raw material producers and manufacturers from different countries.

We are both sharing passion for retail and brainstormed how we could collaborate together and bring the new brand design into the retail.

Retail became a different discipline during COVID, and will go through even more changes going forward. In my personal opinion, the retail store will still be essential part of the brand, its experience and talking about the experience, important part of that is the fit-out as expression of the brand's DNA. How miduny can contribute to that? Why miduny?

Miduny is furniture for the "Here and Now": Miduny's collection aims to be beautiful and timeless while at the same time highly responsive to the demands of today's users. Customizable to enhance the brand identity in a retail space. Elegant and functional at the same time. Today, these aspects apply not only to retails spaces but also to office and residential spaces. The concept of space has changed, becoming an even more valuable asset. Let's think about the way COVID impacted our lives and the way we are using our homes. We can probably agree that flexibility and practicality, and beauty became the main sought-after qualities. Miduny's furniture encompasses design aspects with functionality and attention to the environment, as follows:

• Culture. All our products are designed and prototyped in our Brooklyn workshop. We then partner with master artisans in Italy to produce small batches of products. These family-owned workshops usually house three generations of artisans under one roof. The younger generation is tech-savvy. The older generation has an in-depth knowledge of traditional techniques. As such, our products span both worlds and combine tradition with innovation.
• Uniqueness. Each miduny piece is built and finished by hand. A unique serial number is hand-stamped on the piece underside.
• Flexibility. The rate of change in today's world is unprecedented. We embrace this change and strive to design highly adaptable furniture. For instance, most apartments in urban contexts are compact. The size MiMi table is such that it functions well as a desk during the day. Thanks to its lightness and geometry–with the legs positioned unobtrusively at the corners–it can quickly turn into a dining table for 4 or 6. Moreover, today people tend to move often. Our joinery system allows the pieces to be assembled and disassembled as often as required.
• Modularity. The size of our MiMi line is modular. Two tables, placed side by side, create a square configuration; two MiMi Desks and a Square table form an L-shape. The legs' geometry is such that two legs ganged together look like one, decreasing visual clutter. The notch at the top becomes a decorative element. Ultimately, as desktop computers are becoming rarer in favour of light portable devices, we prefer a flexible furniture design that can be reconfigured from pod to L-shape, to a conference table, etc. In our opinion, the hyper specificity of traditional office desks makes them inflexible and limited.
• Sustainability. Our joinery system is such that all our products can ship flat in custom-designed packaging, thus making transportation more efficient. All materials come from certified sources–for instance, wood comes from FSC certified forestries. Moreover, our products can stand the test of time: you can assemble and disassemble the pieces as many times as needed.

Who inspires you and why?

Before, I mentioned that I am very inspired by leaders who have a vision and put their hard work and determination into achieving their goals because they sincerely and honestly believe that they can create something meaningful. I have always worked with people who inspired me and helped me grow. I have amazing friends who inspire me for what they do and why they want to do. I am inspired by my brother, Alessandro, and his willingness to grow and become a well-known architect globally. This is what inspires me the most. If I can learn and grow, even more, I feel happy and fulfilled. If I can inspire others and help them grow, I feel happy and fulfilled. The experience in Dubai helped me understand that we are not just our professional title. There is much more in each one of us.

Is there any question you want me to ask you?

Why we chose Prague? I told you that I love Prague and I am so grateful to live here with my family. I have been trying ever since I came here to integrate more and more into the culture, even learning the language. I have seen a beautiful change in the city and the people being more open to new cultures. My dream is that Prague will help me to create the foundations for expanding miduny brand in Europe and connect ale preda architecture studio with leading market players who share the vision to build something meaningful, impactful and timeless.