Born in Cremona in 1960, he studied at the Istituto Professionale Internazionale per l’Artigianato Liutario e del Legno di Cremona and received his diploma in 1978. He then went on to attend the Politecnico di Milano Architecture Faculty and graduated in 1986, after studying on the courses taught by Achille Castiglioni and Marco Zanuso. During this period he also studied at the Politecnico di Design di Milano, a private school from which he received his diploma in 1984. In 1983, he began working at Studio De Lucchi, becoming a partner in 1986 and leaving the firm in 1991 to open his own Studio in Milan.
He works as an architect in the areas of product design, interior design, art direction and graphics. He has been Art Director at Kartell since 1991 and has held this position for various other companies including Flos, De Padova, Foscarini, Moroso, Society (Limonta) and Emmemobili.
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He designs retail spaces and installations, but also offices and residential accommodation, for private clients and brands including Cassina, Dolce & Gabbana, Dada - Molteni & C., Barovier & Toso, Piper - Heidsieck, Missoni, Citroen, Hansgrohe, Martini e Rossi, Swarovski, Veuve Cliquot, Moët Hennessy, Marazzi Group, La Rinascente, Piombo, Ermenegildo Zegna, Paula Cademartori, Renault, Zuhair Murad, Haworth, Emilio Pucci, Zara, Habitat, Pasticceria Cova and Samsung.
His products are featured in the collections of various design brands including Kartell, Foscarini, Bisazza, Dada–Molteni, Emmemobili, Moroso, UnoPiù, Lema, Poltrona Frau, FontanaArte, Fratelli Boffi, Richard Ginori, Laufen, Londonart, Citco, RagnoMarazzi Group, Memphis, Driade, Panasonic and Pelikan.
With his extensive experience as a designer, he is frequently invited to speak at universities, schools of design, trade fairs and institutions that promote culture and design; one particularly significant engagement in 2018 was the invitation to give a conference at Tongji University’s College of Design and Innovation in Shanghai.
In 2008, an exhibition was organised in Milan of his lamp designs for Kartell. Two of these lamps, Bourgie and Take, are in the permanent collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the USA, while other products have been shown in museums and exhibitions around the world. They include the Good Vibrations cabinet designed for Fratelli Boffi, which was featured in the 2018 exhibition “Thrill of Deception” organised at the Kunsthalle in Munich, as well as appearing in 2019 at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine museum in Paris, as part of the exhibition “Le mobilier d’architectes 1960-2020”.
In 2015, he developed the new concept for the Kartell museum in Noviglio by updating the interior design project he created in 1999 and which in 2000 won the Guggenheim Business & Culture Award as best business museum.
In 2017, he designed the Women’s Haute Couture events for Dolce & Gabbana at Laboratori Ansaldo, Teatro alla Scala in Milan and in Piazza Pretoria, Palermo.
At the Milan Salone del Mobile 2018, the retrospective ‘Peep O Rama. The Furniture Show’ at the Metropol Dolce & Gabbana theatre, celebrated his longstanding partnership with Italian company Emmemobili.
The exhibitions he has curated and designed include the 2001 “Design Italiano Hoje: reflexões e projetos”, promoted by Italian foreign trade institute ICE at the San Paolo Museum of Sculpture and, also in Brazil, “Abitare Italia” at the Italian Embassy in Brasilia. In spring 2019, he curated and designed “The Art side of Kartell”, a major exhibition staged in the Appartamento dei Principi at Milan’s Palazzo Reale. The exhibition devised by Laviani celebrates the company’s 70th anniversary, using an unprecedented approach in which the evolution of the language of art tells the concurrent, mirror-image story of the evolution of design by Kartell. In November 2019, he opened at the International Art Design Center in Shenzen, “KartellLand - Celebrating 70 years of Italian Design History” an exhibition that recounts the evolution of the company, through highly immersive installations.