Vico Magistretti Biography
Vico Magistretti (06.10.1920 – 19.09.2006) Ludovico Magistretti was born in Milan on 6 October 1920. He comes from a family of architects for many generations: his great-grandfather Gaetano Besia built the Royal College of Noble Girls in Milan; his father, Pier Giulio Magistretti, participated in the design of the Arengrario in Piazza del Duomo. Vico attended the Parini classical high school and enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Royal Polytechnic of Milan in the autumn of 1939. After 8 September 1943, during his military service, to avoid deportation to Germany, he moved away from Italy and moved to Switzerland where he was able to follow some academic courses at the Champ Universitaire Italien in Lausanne, established in the local university. During his stay in the Swiss city he met Ernesto Nathan Rogers, founder of the BBPR studio who took refuge in Switzerland due to the racial laws . This will be a key meeting for the intellectual and professional training of Magistretti, who recognizes his teacher in the Trieste architect. In 1945 he returned to Milan, where on 2 August he graduated in Architecture at the Polytechnic. He immediately began his professional activity, together with the architect Paolo Chessa, in the studio of his father, Pier Giulio, who died prematurely in the same year. Between 1949 and 1959, in the Milan of the reconstruction, Magistretti designed and created around 14 interventions for the INA-Casa in collaboration with other architects. With Mario Tedeschi he participated in the collective undertaking of QT8 with the projects of the houses for African veterans and the church of Santa Maria Nascente (1947-55). In 1946 he participated in the RIMA exhibition (Italian Meeting for Furnishing Exhibitions), held at the Palazzo dell'Arte, with some small, almost self-made pieces of furniture and subsequently, in 1947 and 1948, together with Castiglioni, Zanuso, Gardella, Albini and others, participates in the exhibitions organized by Fede Cheti, creator of furnishing fabrics, in his own atelier. In the Milan Triennale, particular importance is given to his participation in the VIII, IX (Gold Medal) and Award). In 1960, during the 12th edition, he curated the introductory room of the exhibition "The house and the school" with Ignazio Gardella and was a member of the executive council of the Milanese institution. The 1950s were full of initiatives and innovative propositions on the part of the young architect who, in a short time, confirmed himself as one of the most brilliant presences among the exponents of the "third generation", also thanks to the creation of two significant buildings in Milan: the Torre al Parco in via Revere (1953-56, with Franco Longoni) and the office building in Corso Europa (1955-57). In the following years, other particularly important interventions were added to these, including the towers in Piazzale Aquileia (1961-64), the Bassetti house in Azzate (1959-62), the Cassina house in Carimate (1964-65), the house in via Conservatorio in Milan (1963-66). In 1956 he was among the founding members of ADI, the Association for Industrial Design, and in the same year he was part of the jury of the Compasso d'Oro Award for the first time. In 1960 he was again among the jurors of the ADI prize. The particular attention paid to the theme of the house and living will end up monopolizing, starting from the 1960s, his activity as an architect, causing him to develop an extremely expressive language which, although sometimes controversially criticized, will have a great impact on architectural culture Lombardy of the period, allowing him to become one of the protagonists. In this context fits his participation in 1959 at the CIAM Congress (International Congress of Modern Architecture) in Otterlo, Holland, where the Italians presented the Torre Velasca of BBPR, the Olivetti canteen by Ignazio Gardella, the Arosio house in Arenzano di Vico Magistretti (1956-59), the houses in Matera by Giancarlo De Carlo. These works caused a great scandal and were in a certain sense the emblem of the profound crisis that hit the CIAM in those years, until then the undisputed protagonist of the debate around architecture, so much so that this 1959 congress would be the last. The project of the small house in Arenzano is what allows Magistretti to find his own image, to discover his own language. Magistretti is one of the fathers of the so-called Italian Design, a phenomenon that he himself defines as "miraculous" and which could only occur thanks to the meeting of two essential components: architects and producers. Starting from the end of the 1960s he began to collaborate with exceptional manufacturers, including Artemide, Cassina and Oluce, creating for them objects that will remain "classics" of contemporary production. The following decade saw Magistretti's architectural activity increasingly combined with that of a designer. If the first product designed by Magistretti dates back to 1960 - the Carimate chair, designed to furnish the golf club designed by him in the same year and put into production by Cassina - in the following years, again for the same company, numerous other objects were added including the best known of which are the Maralunga sofa (1973, Compasso d'Oro award in 1979), the Sindbad sofa (1981) and the Veranda armchair (1983). For Artemide he also designed a series of lamps, including Mania (1963), Dalù (1969), Chimera (1969), the very famous Eclisse (1966, Compasso d'Oro award 1967), Teti (1970) and Impiccato (1972). Among the furnishing objects, after the Demetrio tables (1966), he designed the Selene chair (1969), which, with Joe Colombo's Panton Chaire Universale, competes for the record of the first plastic chair in the world. For many years Magistretti was also the art director and main designer of Oluce, leaving an unmistakable mark on the company's production. Among his masterpieces, icons recognized throughout the world, the lamps: Snow (1974), Sonora (1976), especially Atollo (1977, Compasso d'Oro award 1979), Pascal (1979), and Kuta (1980). On the architecture side, it is the era of the Municipality of Cusano Milanino (1966-69), of the Milano San Felice district in Segrate (1966-69, with Luigi Caccia Dominioni), of the house in Piazza San Marco (1970-73). The beginning of Magistretti's teaching activity at the Royal College of Art in London as a visiting professor dates back to the end of the 1970s, of which he became an honorary member in 1983. “The truly great enemy today is vulgarity. This is why I love Anglo-Saxon culture which is exempt from it." Vico Magistretti's love for Great Britain was reciprocated and in 1986 the architect was awarded the precious Anglo-Saxon recognition: the gold medal from SIAD, Society of Industrial Artists and Designers. It is precisely here, at the Royal College of Art, that the minimalist school was formed whose most refined exponents, Morrison and Grcic, not only were students of Magistretti but recognized in him an absolute reference for the development of what can be considered one of the most interesting contemporary movements in design. In parallel with his teaching abroad, he continues to work as an architect in Italy. The architectural works of the period include the headquarters of the Department of Biology in Milan (1978-81, with Franco Soro), the Tanimoto house in Tokyo (1985-86), the Cavagnari Center of the Cassa di Risparmio in Parma (1982- 85). Furthermore, there are many interiors created, the projects of which, far from any decorative intent, are limited to creating volumes suitable for those who will live in them and capable of withstanding the "natural insults of life. Because whoever will live in the house I designed has their own culture, their own history and their own taste" claims Magistretti who, once again, claims his belonging to the Modern Movement and distances himself from any decorative intent and consequently from Postmodernism. At the end of the 1980s, the partnership with an exceptional publisher also established itself: Maddalena De Padova, awarded with the Compasso d'Oro for lifetime achievement on the occasion of the twentieth edition of the award. The jury's motivation recognizes that: "Maddalena De Padova's great commitment to the production and diffusion of design, as a common culture and comparison of different international contexts, constitutes a unique case for the coherence and quality of our country". After the sale, at the end of the 1970s, of the ICF brand with the production license of Herman Miller, Maddalena created a line of furniture and objects under the De Padova brand, then "è De Padova", for which great collaborations designers like Achille Castiglioni and Dieter Rams, but above all Vico Magistretti. The “è De Padova” collection designed by Magistretti includes among the classics: the Marocca chair (1987), the Vidun table (1987), the Silver chair (1989), the Uragano wicker chair (1992), the Incisa chair (1992 ), the most recent Blossom table (2002). If, on the architectural front, the projects he created in the 1990s were limited to the Famagosta depot for the Milanese Metro (1989-2000) and the Esselunga supermarket in Pantigliate (1997-2001), on the design front there were many objects signed by the architect that goes into production. In this area, Vico Magistretti's work is increasingly expressed in different ways in relation to the different companies with which he establishes a collaboration that goes beyond the design of the single object. For Flou he invented new types of beds, including, after the Nathalie bed (1978), the first entirely upholstered bed, in 1993, another innovative bed, Tadao, whose base together with the headboard is an essential reinterpretation of the slatted structure. Even in the collaboration with Schiffini Mobili Cucine, Magistretti is not satisfied with traditional typologies. With the Campiglia kitchen (1990) he moderates the use of wall units with the introduction of tall sideboard-type furniture. With Solaro (1995) he transforms the traditional doors of the basic elements into practical and large drawers. With Cinqueterre (1999) he instead uses an industrial semi-finished product, an extruded corrugated aluminum sheet, which formally determines each element. The collaboration with Kartell finally gives life to another industrial chair - Maui (1996) - with a single plastic shell, which, due to the international success it achieved, has nothing to envy of the previous Selene chair. In 1997, the Salone del Mobile in Milan dedicated a monographic exhibition to Vico Magistretti, alongside that of Gio Ponti, curated by Vanni Pasca. The designers of the exhibition are Achille Castiglioni with Ferruccio Laviani. He received the Compasso d'Oro Lifetime Achievement Award a couple of years earlier (1994). At the end of the 90s another fundamental professional relationship was born, the one with Campeggi. For Campeggi Magistretti has the opportunity to apply that subtle revision of some examples of the anonymous tradition of design which allows him to create discreet objects but characterized by his personality: the Kenia chair (1995), the Ospite bed (1996), the Africa armchair ( 2001), all foldable, and the Magellano sofa (2004). Some objects, also designed for Campeggi, instead undergo a sort of dilation to transform their performance such as the Estesa armchair (2000) and the Fan sofa (2006), the last product designed by the architect. The latest buildings completed are a villa in Saint Barth in the French Antilles (2002) and one in Epalinges, near Lausanne (2005). In 2003 the exhibition “Vico Magistretti. Design from the 1950s to today" created by the Schiffini Foundation. In 2005 he received the special “Abitare il tempo” award. His design works are exhibited in the permanent collection of MoMA in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Die Neue Sammlung in Munich and numerous other museum institutions in America and Europe. Following his death in September 2006, the studio, home of the Vico Magistretti Foundation, was converted into a museum dedicated to the study and dissemination of his work.
