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Dec 18,2005 - Dec 25,2005 |
Finding life in an object
Italian design master Achille Castiglioni delighted in useful designs
By Mark Curtis
Originally Published: 2005-08-21
For Italian design great Achille Castiglioni, form always followed function. In a career spanning almost 60 years, Castiglioni produced industrial design icons such as the Mezzadro chair (1957) and the Arco lamp (1962) which emphasized a utility, but still suggested a sense of creative wit. The Milanese designer helped to de-mystify modern design and, along with 1960s peers such as Joe Colombo and Marco Zanuso, he introduced Italian product design to a world audience. Thanks to the work of Castiglioni and his contemporaries, Italian design continues to enjoy an international reputation for the highest quality.
Castiglioni passed away three years ago at the age of 84, but he was working on new design projects until the end of his life. As always, his design process was concerned with an object's function, rather than its look, believing that if the functional challenge was met, good aesthetics would naturally follow. Castiglioni once said that a designer needs "a constant and consistent way of designing, not a style".
A freelance architect and designer since his graduation from the Politecnico di Milano in 1944, Castiglioni maintained career-long associations with a core group of manufacturer clients, including Alessi, Flos and Zanotta. He began his career by joining the Milan design studio of older brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo. The trio earned a solid reputation for their exhibition designs before Livio left the firm in 1952 to pursue solo work in lighting and sound design. Castiglioni exhibit designs continued, but product designs such as Mezzadro soon began earning a higher profile for the brothers. In this and other projects, they explored the use of found objects to challenge conventional ideas about product design.
The classic form of a city street lamp inspired Achille and Pier Giacomo to design their Arco lamp for Flos. The light source is a full eight feet removed from its marble base, effectively bringing an outdoor lighting effect indoors. Their iconic Sella seat - a quirky combination of leather bicycle seat, metal stem and rounded cast iron base - suggested a new genre of seating for the restless and pointed to the brothers' delight in using humour in their work.
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