Matteo Thun was born in Bolzano, Italy in 1952. He studied at the Salzburg Academy under Oskar Kokoschka, and received his degree in architecture in Florence in 1975, and with Adolfo Natalini and moved to Milan in 1978; where he met and started working with Ettore Sottsass.

In 1981, he became the co-founder of the Memphis group, which played an integral part of the design movement in the 1980s. The next year, the Vienna Academy for Applied Arts appointed him as chair of product design and ceramics. Leaving Memphis, he founded the Studio Matteo Thun in Milan in 1984 and served as Creative Director with Swatch in 1990-93.

Matteo Thun has won the ADI Compasso d Oro Award for design excellence three times. His hotel in Hamburg was chosen as Hotel of the Year in 2001, the Vigilius mountain resort won the Wallpaper Design Award in 2004 and the Radisson SAS Frankfurt was chosen as the best hotel opened in the year in the Worldwide Hospitality Awards in 2005. Matteo Thun was inducted into the Interior Hall of Fame in New York in December 2004 and is a member of RIBA, the Royal Association of British Architects.