Designer Profile: Achille Castiglioni

Achille Castiglioni

The life and career of Achille Castiglioni, who passed away December 2nd at the age of 84, bears witness to the preeminence of Italian postwar design and its relationships with architecture on one hand and industry on the other. Like many of his compatriots, it is via architecture that Achille Castiglioni came to design and it is through direct relations with industry that he was able to realize his daily-use objects that have accompanied the modern way of life.

Born February 16 1918, Achille Castiglioni graduated from Milan Polytechnic in 1944 and joined the architecture firm that his brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo created in 1938.

Beginning in 1952, he worked with Pier Giacomo until the elder’s death in 1968. But in 1940, when design was introduced at the Milan Trienniale, the Castiglionis created a sensation with a radio set called the Phonola, and their participation in these showcases of research in new forms would be an institution from that point forward. Singly or together, the brothers would garner 9 Compasso d'oro awards recognizing the best production object in terms of concept and formal elegance. Beyond the installations at expositions, ephemera that played an important role in forming a profession and a generation as well as distinguishing Italy’s place by its precocious engagement with and pursuit of industrial design, the creations of Achille Castiglioni testify to a strong and clear vision.

There is continuity linking a folding table that can be transformed into a shelf in 1995 and the first folding tables and chairs or cable-suspended shelves of the 1950s. There is kinship between the luminaire families that established his career: Arco (1962), which thanks to a block-marble counterweight, suspends a sphere of metal above a table, allowing the traditional ceiling light to be forgotten; the spotlight at the end of a tube on a simple stand (Luminator, 1955); the suspension of a globe over a circle of opaline (Frisbi, 1978)... all these propositions, industrially viable and well known, are the result of technical reflection as much as formal. The maker analyzes the roles and decides, with a touch of mockery, to present them in a new way. So the famous stool, conceived with a saddle of drilled metal diverted from its agricultural application (the tractor seat of Mezzadro, 1971), is the distant continuation of a first proposition, in 1957, of the same seat on a spring base. We find it again later, sheathed in leather, at the Tokyo salon (1984), more rich and comfortable, but the same idea.

The opposite of the desire to establish his signature, the creative path of Achille Castiglioni is to consider the object as a field of exploration and to invent a new way to activate its elements. The style exists, but it is neither intentional nor ostentatious – it is a result. During his long career, Castiglioni he has been a professor of interior and industrial design at both the Politecnico di Torino and Politecnio di Milano. His designs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (14 objects) and other museums worldwide. Achille Castiglioni is one of the most important and complex figures in Italian design of the 20th century, and the influence of his legacy will continue.