Model 03 01 Black Chair by Vico Magistretti

Innovative architect, industrial designer, and urban planner Vico Magistretti was a driving force in Italian design from the 1960s onwards. Born into a family of successful Milanese architects in 1920, he became one of Italy’s most respected designers, celebrated for an uncanny mastery of clarity of form.

During the Second World War, Magistretti fled to Lausanne, Switzerland to escape military deportation and began to attend classes at the Champ Universitaire Italien in Lausanne. There, he met and befriended legendary rationalist architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909-69), cofounder of BBPR, who would become a lifelong mentor.

Upon returning to Italy, Magistretti pursued an architecture degree from the Politecnico di Milano, graduating in 1945, and began working at his father’s architectural firm with Paolo Chessa. Shortly after joining the firm, Magistretti’s father, Pier Giulio, passed away.

In the immediate postwar reconstruction years, Magistretti began to work produce modernist furniture designs, especially for exhibition in R.I.M.A. and the Triennale alongside other important Italian architect-designers like Franco Albini, the Castiglioni brothers, Ignazio Gardella, and Marco Zanuso.

During the 1960s and beyond, Magistretti created a number of sleek, high concept furniture and lighting design for major manufacturers, such as Artemide, Campeggi, Cassina, De Padova, Flou, Fontana Arte, Fritz Hansen, Kartell, Olivari, Oluce, Poggi, Schiffini, and Gebrüder Thonet Vienna. Iconic designs from Magistretti career include the Eclipse Table Lamp (1966, Compasso d’Oro 1967), Selene Stacking Chair (1968), Chimera Lamp (1969), and Giuone Floor Lamp (1969) for Artemide; Maralunga Seating (1973, Compasso d’Oro in 1979) and Nuvola Rossa Bookshelves (1977) for Cassina; and the Sonora Pendant (1976) and Model 233 Atollo Table Lamp (1977, Compasso d’Oro 1979) for Oluce.

Magistretti’s most famous architectural additions to Milan are the Tower in Park in Via Revere (1953-56, in conjunction with Franco Longoni) and the office block in Corso Europa (1955-1957). Other architectural feats include the Towers in Piazzale Aquileia (1961-64), Bassetti House in Azzate (1959-62), Cassina House in Carimate (1964-65), a house in Via Conservatorio in Milan (1963-66), Cusano Milanino Town Hall (1966-69), the Milano San Felice neighborhood in Segrate (1966-69, in partnership with Luigi Caccia Dominioni), and a house in Piazza San Marco (1969-71).

Throughout the course of his career, Magistretti held prestigious professorships at the Royal College of Arts in London and the Domus Academy in Milan. His work has been acquired by important museums around the world, including MoMA New York and the Victoria & Albert in London.

Magistretti passed away in 2006. 

* Images courtesy of Artemide, Cassina, and Gebrüder Thonet Vienna

Contemporary furniture manufacturing brand Gebrüder Thonet Vienna GmbH is the current Austrian incarnation of the legendary Thonet company, founded by German-Austrian cabinetmaker Michael Thonet in the 19th century.

Michael Thonet (1796-1871) set up his first cabinetmaking atelier in Boppard, Germany, in 1819, specialized in Biedermeier-style chairs, tables, and storage pieces, characterized by clean lines, reduced ornamentation, and an emphasis on functionalist principles. By the 1830s, Thonet’s experiments in laminated and steam-bent wood furniture, like his famous Boppard Chair (1836), brought international acclaim. Thonet’s designs achieved a marriage of lightness, durability, and comfort unknown in European furniture at the time.

In 1842, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich of Austria invited Thonet to present his designs to the Viennese court. As financial challenges mounted at home, Thonet relocated his family and business from Germany to Vienna. In 1853, he transferred his company to his sons, and Gebrüder Thonet was established. A new factory was set up in Koryčany, Moravia in 1856, which brought access to the region’s wealth of beech wood, an ideal material for Thonet’s signature bentwood process.

Gebrüder Thonet’s bentwood chairs grew in popularity among the European vanguard in the decades leading up to the 20th century—years that coincided with the foundation of the design reform movement and the development of design as a profession. For pioneers of modernism like Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, the formal and material efficiency embodied in Gebrüder Thonet’s furniture became a shining example of what design should be in the modern era.

Iconic pieces from the traditional Gebrüder Thonet collection include Rocking Chair No. 1 (1860), No. 14 Café Chair (ca. 1859), Adolf Loos’s Café Museum Chair (1899), No. 209 Armchair (ca. 1900), Otto Wagner’s No. 247 Postal Savings Bank Chair (1904), and Josef Hoffmann’s No. 811 (1925). 

In 1976, Thonet was divided into two separate German and Austrian companies, which remain independent of each other. In 2003, driven by a personal passion for the company, Franco Moschini, head of Poltrona Frau Group, acquired Gebrüder Thonet Vienna GmbH. In 2013, Moschini brought in former Gufram CEO Riccardo Pigati to further revitalize the Gebrüder Thonet Vienna (GTV) brand and build on its rich legacy. To that end, GTV has moved production from Eastern Europe to Italy in order to better control quality. Furthermore, the company has increased efforts to create “new classics” in collaboration with major, international designers, such as Nigel Coates, Front, Gamfratesi, Martino Gamper, Michele de Lucchi, and Nendo. GTV continues to manufacture, as well, a number of Thonet masterpieces designed by Loos, Hoffmann, Wagner, and, of course, Michael Thonet himself.

* All images courtesy of Gebrüder Thonet Vienna