What a Red Dot Award-Winning Designer can teach about Creativity, Emotions and Seeing Beauty Again
Most of us stopped believing we were creative somewhere between childhood and adulthood. This session is about finding out that was never true.
Tuscany and Creativity: A Very Long Relationship
Few places on earth have generated as much beauty per square kilometre as Tuscany. Leonardo da Vinci was born in a small Tuscan village between Florence and Pisa. Michelangelo grew up in these hills. Dante walked them. Donatello, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Piero della Francesca. The Renaissance, the most extraordinary flowering of human creativity in Western history, was born here.
This was not a coincidence of talent. It was a coincidence of conditions. A culture that valued beauty as something serious and worth investing in. Patrons who believed that art mattered. Landscapes and cities built with proportion and intention. An environment, in other words, that told the people living in it: what you make has meaning.
That environment still exists. The hills have not moved. The light has not changed. And something about being in Tuscany, even for a few days, begins to reawaken a sense of perception that most of us have quietly let go dormant.
The Red Dot Award: What It Means to Win It
The Red Dot Design Award is one of the most prestigious design competitions in the world. Founded in Germany in 1955, it receives over 18,000 entries every year from designers, companies and studios across more than 70 countries. A jury of 43 international experts evaluates each entry individually against four rigorous criteria: function, seduction, usability and responsibility.
Winning a Red Dot is considered the design equivalent of an Oscar. Previous winners include the Apple iPod, the iPhone, the iMac and the Ferrari LaFerrari. The award is not given easily. It signals that a piece of design has achieved something genuinely excellent, something that speaks to people beyond its function.
Lorenzo Olivetto, one of the founders of noi.retreats and the creative director of noi. (a collectible design brand), is a Red Dot Award winner. His work as an Italian product designer has always been driven by a single question: how do objects and experiences make people feel? Not just what they do, but what they evoke. This is the lens through which he designs. And it is the lens through which he leads the creative session at the retreat.
Why Most Adults Think They Are Not Creative
Research by NASA in the 1960s tested creative genius in children and adults. At age five, 98% of children scored at genius level for divergent thinking, the ability to generate multiple original solutions to a problem. By age ten, the figure dropped to 30%. By adulthood, it was 2%.
The creativity did not disappear. It was educated out. Years of being told there is one right answer, one correct way, one acceptable result. Years of performance, judgment and the fear of looking foolish. Creativity requires a kind of vulnerability that most adult environments actively punish.
The result is that most adults walk around with a story about themselves: I am not creative. I am not artistic. That is not my thing. And they have repeated it so many times they have stopped questioning whether it was ever true.
It was not true at five. It is probably not true now.
What the Session Actually Explores
The creative session with Lorenzo is not an art class. Nobody is expected to produce anything impressive. There are no grades, no comparisons, no right answers.
It is an exploration of how creativity and emotion are connected. Lorenzo works from his own experience as a designer: the understanding that every meaningful object, every piece of design that genuinely moves people, begins not with a brief but with a feeling. With a question about human experience. With curiosity about what people actually need, beyond the obvious.
The session uses exercises in observation, expression and play to reconnect participants with their own creative instincts. You practice looking at things differently. You practice making something without judging it. You practice the discomfort of not knowing what you are doing and staying with it anyway.
Beauty Heals takes place in May 2026 in a private villa in the Tuscan hills. Maximum 10 guests. 1:1 coaching session included. Book a call with us at noireflections.com/retreats.
noi. is a luxury wellness retreat brand based in Italy. Our retreats are intimate, emotion-led experiences for people who want to feel, not just experience. noireflections.com | info@noireflections.com
