Italian Designers 🇮🇹 (Page 2)

“When I was young, all we ever heard about was functionalism, functionalism, functionalism. It’s not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting.” Ettore Sottsass

Giovanni Battista Gianotti (1873-1928) was an Italian painter, decorator, and designer. He specialised in the liberty and art deco styles. His fashion sense has been contrasted with that of Alban Chambon. In 1928, he perished at sea while sailing from Italy to Argentina.Read More →

For S-SPACE, THE Mondial Festival N. 1, “VITA, MORTE E MIRACOLI DELL’ARCHITETTURA,” IN 1971, Featured a vegetable garden

Gruppo 9999 was a group of radical architects founded in Florence in 1968 by Giorgio Birelli, Carlo Caldini, Fabrizio Fiumi and Paolo Galli. Read More →

Olivetti Poster by Giovanni Pintori featured image

Giovanni Pintori (1912–1999) was an Italian graphic designer best known for his advertising work with Olivetti. His posters for the Lettera 22 and Olivetti logo are renowned for their use of geometric shapes and minimalist design. Read More →

La Danese domestic goods manufacturer

La Danese was founded in Milan by Bruno Danese and Jacqueline Vodoz. The company specialised in editing, designing, and marketing well‐designed everyday products with a modern aesthetic. There were three significant focus areas: domestic and office products, artistic editions, and children’s games and creative play stimuli. Read More →

Enorme Telephone - Ettore Sottsass

Although trained and active as an architect, Sottsass secured a permanent place in pop culture with his designs of everyday items. From 1957, he was a consultant designer at Olivetti, where he designed computers, adding machines, typewriters, and systems furniture. Read More →

Italian Telephone "cobra" designed by Pasqui e Pasini Associati, 1980s

Gianni Pasini was born in 1937 in Venice and professionally active in Milan. Some of his clients were Olivetti, Fabbrica Italiana, Magneti Marelli, and Crin hospital. He worked with Sandro Pasqui in a design studio from 1974 onwards.Read More →

Antonio Zanussi featured image

Antonio Zanussi established the household appliance firm in Pordenone in 1916. It was initially a workshop for repairing stoves. His sons and Guido and Lino took over on his death in 1946, and under them, the firm began its rise. Read More →

Mies Chair and Ottoman featured image

Four architects—Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi—and two designers—Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini—founded Archizoom this Italian avant-garde design studio in 1966 in Florence, Italy. They focused on exhibition installations and architecture and designing interiors and goods as part of the Italian Anti-Design or Radical Design movement.Read More →

Matteo Thun featured image

We reject design as an issue of taste! We follow a different strategy:
Simplicity. We always
search for the iconic form and create things that people can understand intuitively. We,
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George Sowden - Joe Teapot

George James Sowden is a British designer. He was born in Leeds and active Italy. Between 1960-64 and 1966-68, he studied architecture, Gloucester College of Arts. Read More →

Alessandro Mendini featured image

Alessandro Mendini (b.1931) played an important part in the development of Italian, Postmodern, and Radical design. He was co-founder of Studio Alchymia (with Alessandro and Adriana Guernero) in 1976. He was awarded several international prizes, including the Compasso d’Oro in 1979, 1981, and 2014. In 2011, he was awarded with the title Doctor Honoris Causa of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan.Read More →

Lettera 22 Typewriter

Olivetti’s 1950 Olivetti 22 typewriter became the standard for portable typewriters. Marcello Nizzoli’s Typewriter won the Compasso d’Oro at the 10th Triennale in Rome in 1951. Ettore Sottsass would further develop this design in the 1964 Teckne 3.Read More →

Proust Armchair featured image

The Studio Alchimia in Milan was founded in 1976 and exhibited its first collection in 1979. Alessandro Mendini’s Proust armchair is one of the most unusual pieces from the Bau.Haus collection. It was made in a small number and individually painted to express the collective’s unease with mass production.Read More →

Tizio Lamp by Richard Sapper

The halogen bulb is the first new invention to completely transform the lighting industry since Thomas Alva Edison succeeded in creating the incandescent lamp by successfully making a loop of carbonized cotton thread glow in a vacuum for 40 hours.Read More →

Marco Zotta "Arcobaleno" Table Black Lamp for Cil Roma, 1970's, Italy

He designed furniture and furnishings, lighting for clients including Fargas, Le Cose, Studio Grando, Stilnovo and Evoluzione. He became a member of ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale).Read More →

Arco della Vittoria by Marcello Piacentini

Marcello Piacentini (1881–1961) was an Italian urban theorist and one of the leading proponents of Italian Fascist architecture.Read More →

Livio Castigilioni featured image

In 1938, Castiglioni and his brother Pier Giacomo Castiglioni set up a studio with Luigi Caccia Dominioni, which closed in 1940. Read More →

The Moka Express

Designed and Made in Italy

The Moka Express is a straightforward stovetop coffee maker. It unscrews in the centre, and water is poured into the bottom compartment.

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Gino Valle featured image

Gino Valle (1923 – 2003) was. Italian architect, designer, and town planner. He was born in Udine. He studied at the Instituto Universitario di Architettura, Venice, to 1948. From 1951, he was at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Read More →

Lino Tagliapietra glassware

From 1956, Tagliapietra taught glassmaking with Archimede Seguso and Nane Ferro; 1966—68, designed glass for Venini, Murano; until 1968, for Murrina; from 1968, taught glassmaking at Haystack School and Pilchuck School, Stanwood, Washington.
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