Italian design
Related: aesthetics - Archizoom - design - radical design - fashion - futurismo - industrial design - interior design - Italy - Memphis Design Group - Olivetti - Superstudio
People: Alessandro Mendini - Ettore Sottsass - Luigi Colani - Joe Colombo - Piero Gilardi - Andrea Branzi - Mario Bellini - Piero Fornasetti - Carlo Mollino - Gaetano Pesce - Gio Ponti
Olivetti Divisumma 18 (Mario Bellini - 1973)
Presagio di rose (1967) - Archizoom, part of a dream bed series
Tramonto a New York (1980) - Gaetano Pesce
Carlton Cabinet (1981) - Ettore Sottsass
Gio Ponti
Typical Fornasetti design
Como (c.1957) Lino Sabattini
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Memphis Design Group
Ettore Sottsass conceived Memphis in 1981, one of the most fascinating recent phenomena in the field of furniture and object design.Memphis explored a visual language outside of the limiting canons of "good taste," blurring the boundaries between "high" or popular culture and mass-produced "ordinary" consumer goods.
Alessi
Poster for Italian design company Alessi
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Alessi is an Italian family-run company, famous for its playful design of affordable objects and appliances for the kitchen, created in colorful plastics and stainless steel. For the designs, Alessi attracts a selection of the world's foremost architects and designers.
History
Alessi was founded in 1921, when Giovanni Alessi bought a piece of land in Omegna, Italy for the startup of a company that made household objects in copper, brass and nickel silver. Giovanni's son Carlo assisted him from a very young age and was responsible for the objects created by the firm from the mid-1930s till 1945. Carlo Alessi introduced design and enabled, among others, the creation of the famous Italian Bombé coffee and tea sets.
After World War II, Carlo Alessi took over the firm, and first concentrated on mass-production of stainless steel household items. His youngest brother, Ettore Alessi, introduced substantial technical knowledge in the area of cold pressing of steel. Ettore attracted external designers from 1955, including the architects Carlo Mazzeri, Luigi Massoni and Anselmo Vitale.
Carlo's son Alberto Alessi joined Alessi in 1970; as the firm's current director, he invited the impressive list of contemporary designers who would make the firm world famous. Alessandro Mendini is the most important among them, since he has also worked for Alessi as a design consultant, architect and company historian. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessi [Aug 2005]
RADIO/PHONOGRAPH RR 126 (1965) - Achille and P.G.Castiglioni designers
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RADIO/PHONOGRAPH RR 126
Achille and P.G.Castiglioni designers, 1965
See also: 1965 - Italian design - radio - phonograph
Italy: the new domestic landscape;: Achievements and problems of Italian design (1972) Museum of Modern Art
Italy: the new domestic landscape;: Achievements and problems of Italian design (1972) Museum of Modern Art [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
New York, 1972. Catalogue to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that explored sociocultural implications of Italian product design "environments." Contributions by Argan, Tafuri, Portoghesi, Gregotti, among others.
See also: 1972 - Italian design - MoMA
Bocca della Verità (1974) - Mario Ceroli
Bocca della Verità (1974) - Mario Ceroli
Image sourced here.
See also: bed - Italian design - 1974