Roda and the IN and OUT idea: how Dordoni shaped an Italian outdoor house
Founded in Gavirate, Lombardy in 1990, Roda was the first house in its sector to name and pursue the IN and OUT idea — indoor quality carried outside. Since 2005, Rodolfo Dordoni has been its art director.
Roda was founded in Gavirate, in the Varese area of Lombardy, by Roberto Pompa. The name encodes the family: RO from Roberto and his wife Rosaria, DA from their children Daniele and Davide. From the start, the house was built around one governing premise that Pompa was the first in his sector to articulate and pursue: IN and OUT — the belief that outdoor furniture deserves the same comfort, finish and design quality as interior furniture. Not a marketing position but an actual design brief, applied to every material choice and every collection brief the house has issued.
When Rodolfo Dordoni came to Roda in 2005, his initial role was to design a collection. That work led quickly to something larger: the artistic direction of the house. The official Roda designer page credits him with Network, Piper, Mamba, Philia and Dandy — a body of work that spans rope seating, aluminium tube structures, modular sofas, and teak systems. Network, the modular teak-and-belt seating system, became the signature collection. It expresses the IN and OUT premise most plainly: deep seats and considered proportions built to live outdoors, with the composure of an interior living-room piece.
Outdoor design projects have the same relevance and significance as those for interiors — creating spaces whose colors, materials and shapes enhance the value of living en plein air.
A curated roster, one shared premise
The guest designers Roda invites bring distinct handwriting to the same underlying brief. Piero Lissoni's Levante, launched in 2021, brings his characteristic precision to wide teak slats over a stainless steel frame. Lissoni described it as a design that feels as if it had always existed — classical outdoor language arrived at through close industrial technique. It won a Good Design Award in 2021. Michael Anastassiades designed Plein Air for the house in 2020, working at a different material register entirely: an aluminium frame carrying a single stoneware slab top with at least forty percent recycled ceramic content. The result reads as an indoor dining table that happens to live outside — exactly the IN and OUT logic applied to the dining category.
Materials chosen for the threshold
The material vocabulary at Roda reflects what the IN and OUT idea demands from a piece that must perform outdoors without losing interior quality. FSC-certified teak anchors the warm, craft-facing collections; powder-coated stainless steel in smoke, milk and rust finishes handles structural precision and longevity; hand-woven polyester and acrylic cord — with growing use of recycled filaments — brings texture without sacrificing weatherability. Stone and gres tops, hydro-draining cushions in outdoor fabrics, cork planters, and wavy-glass table surfaces complete a range that has expanded across thirty years. For US buyers, collections reach the market through authorised dealers; lead times vary by line, finish and configuration.