Designers

Charles & Ray Eames

United States 1907-1978; 1912-1988

In the 1950s, the Eameses continued their work in architecture and modern furniture design. Like in the earlier moulded plywood work, the Eameses pioneered innovative technologies, such as the fiberglass, plastic resin chairs and the wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller. Charles and Ray would soon channel Charles' interest in photography into the production of short films. From their first film, the unfinished Traveling Boy (1950), to the extraordinary Powers of Ten (1977), their cinematic work was an outlet for ideas, a vehicle for experimentation and education.

The Eameses also conceived and designed a number of landmark exhibitions. The first of these, Mathematica: a world of numbers...and beyond (1961), was sponsored by IBM, and is the only one of their exhibitions still existent. [4] The Mathematica Exhibition is still considered a model for scientific popularization exhibitions. It was followed by "A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age" (1971) and "The World of Franklin and Jefferson" (1975-1977), among others.

The office of Charles and Ray Eames, which functioned for more than four decades (1943-88) at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California, included in its staff, at one time of another, a number of remarkable designers, like Henry Beer and Richard Foy, now Co-chairmen of CommArts, Inc., Don Albinson, Deborah Sussman, Harry Bertoia, and Gregory Ain, who was Chief Engineer for the Eames' during World War II[5]. Among the many important designs originating there are the molded-plywood DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and DCM (Dining Chair Metal with a plywood seat) (1945), Eames Lounge Chair (1956), the Aluminum Group furniture (1958) and as well as the Eames Chaise (1968), designed for Charles's friend, film director Billy Wilder, the playful Do-Nothing Machine (1957), an early solar energy experiment, and a number of toys.

Short films produced by the couple often document their interests in collecting toys and cultural artifacts on their travels. The films also record the process of hanging their exhibits or producing classic furniture designs, to the purposefully mundane topic of filming soap suds moving over the pavement of a parking lot. Perhaps their most popular movie, "Powers of Ten" (narrated by the late physicist Philip Morrison), gives a dramatic demonstration of orders of magnitude by visually zooming away from the earth to the edge of the universe, and then microscopically zooming into the nucleus of a carbon atom. Charles was a prolific photographer as well with thousands of images of their furniture, exhibits and collections, and now a part of the Library of Congress.

Charles Eames died of a heart attack on August 21, 1978 while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Louis, and now has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Ray died 10 years later to the exact day. At the time of his death they were working on what became their last production, the Eames Sofa which went into production in 1984.

From the beginning, The Eames furniture has usually been listed as by Charles Eames; indeed in the 1948 and 1952 Herman Miller bound catalogs, only Charles' name is listed, but it's become clear that Ray was deeply involved and should be considered an equal partner. The Eames fabrics (many are currently available from Maharam were mostly designed by Ray, as were the Time Life Stools. But in reading the various books on Eames, and seeing the photos of furniture developement, it's clear that Ray's involvement is absolute.

Ingo Maurer

Germany 1932

A native of Lake Constance, Germany, Ingo Maurer originally trained as a graphic designer, and worked in New York and San Francisco through the early 1960's, before returning to Munich and starting his second career at "Design M." His first lamp, "Bulb" was an immediate critical success, and is still a part of the current Ingo Maurer line as well as being included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Long considered a pioneer in the field of design, his embrace of technology, as well as history, has pushed boundaries beyond the field of lighting . Maurer is continually inspired by the simple beauty and elegance of the common light bulb, and a symbol of this is evident in many of his works. Noteworthy pieces in his career include Bulb, Savoie, YaYaHo, Lucellino, and Zettel'z.

Isamu Noguchi

United States 1904-1988

How does one sculpt space? How do objects give form to the surrounding emptiness? This puzzle, posed both by Europeans like Giacometti and Brancusi and the Zen artists of Japan, creates a theme that runs through the work of Isamu Noguchi. It is not one he attempted to solve, but like the Zen master, posed the question in different ways.

One of the great sculptors of the 20th century, Noguchi created "lived spaces" for the theater, interiors gardens and playgrounds. He also sought to bring sculptural qualities to the many objects he designed for common use. As a young man, Noguchi studied medicine at Columbia University, but abandoned medicine to pursue painting and sculpture and in 1927, a Guggenheim fellowship took him to Europe. In Paris, he had the great good fortune to be apprenticed in the studio of Constantin Brancusi, whose investigations of form and space recalled the art and architecture Noguchi knew from childhood years spent in Japan.

Back in America, Noguchi met choreographer Martha Graham and began a long friendship with Buckminster Fuller. Graham and Fuller provided Noguchi with inspiration, ideas and opportunities to create new forms like the sets he designed for Graham's dance programmes. In 1939, he designed a free-form dining table for the president of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, A. Congers Goodyear. The table's seductive organic form presaged the coffee table Noguchi would design for Herman Miller in 1944 and the wide range of products that he would design all during the 1940's, furniture informed by the biomorphic imagery of his sculpture.

From his sculpture to his garden design to the Akari lamps designed in the 1950's, Noguchi's work sought always to resolve life and aesthetic practice, the art object and the utensil, just as he sought to reveal the essential unity of form and space.

Marcel Breuer

Hungary 1902-1981

Are any ideas really new? Case in point: while Marcel Breuer's tubular steel chairs were a daring departure from traditional wood furniture, this "radical" idea was sparked by Breuer's familiar bicycle handlebars. "Mass production," he said, "...made me interested in polished metal, in shiny and impeccable lines in space, as new components of our interiors. I considered such polished and curved lines not only symbolic of our modern technology but actually to be technology."

Drawing upon this image of "shiny and impeccable lines in space" Breuer designed his famous Wassilly chair in 1927 for Wassilly Kandinsky while both were in residence at the Bauhaus. Breuer subsequently designed a range of tubular metal furniture that had singular advantages - affordability, hygiene and an inherent resilience. Breuer considered his designs essential for modern living.

Breuer's next breakthrough was his design of the cantilevered chair. While Mart Stam and Mies van der Rohe had created cantilevered chairs using steel tubes, they were rigid and awkard in use in their first edition. Breuer's brilliant insight was to use non-reinforced steel tubing, thereby creating a free-swinging chair that approached his de-materialist ideal of "sitting on columns of air." The cantilevered chair was his greatest commercial success and its design continued to evolve: the frame became lighter, the seat and back more pliant, the lines softer.

In 1928 Breuer left the Bauhaus and moved to Berlin and then to England in 1935 when the Nazis made it impossible for anyone who had been a part of the Bauhaus - a "hotbed of Bolshevism" - to practice architecture. In 1937, he joined Walter Gropius in his architectural practice and also at Harvard as a professor. Breuer moved to New York in 1946 to found his own architectural firm, and like Corbusier, chose concrete as his medium of choice. He used concrete in his design of the Whitney Museum of Art.

Achille Castiglioni

Italy 1918-2002

Achille Castiglioni studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano University and set up a design office in 1944 with his brothers, Livio Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.

The teamwork and professional partnership that came out from the work of Achille Castiglioni, Livio Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni gave birth to the so-called Castiglioni brothers team. Livio then left in 1952. This group have become one of the most witty, elegant and innovative partnerships in modern design. The brothers worked from the viewpoint that design must restructure an object's function, form and production process, and applied this maxim to every work that they produced. Castiglioni described this process with these words: "Start from scratch. Stick to common sense. Know your goals and means".

In the 1950s the Castiglioni brothers publicly cemented their commitment to redesigning objects, with their tractor seat stool, Mezzadro and their Sella chair made of a bicycle seat. Castiglioni said of his design for the Sella, "When I use a pay phone, I like to move around, but I also would like to sit, but not completely." These designs drew upon the ready made school of art, in which everyday objects are repurposed for the showroom floor.

The chairs also embrace Castiglioni's theory of a Principal Design Component, or PDC, which the designer has found and is building upon within his design. Castiglioni is best known for his lamps, principally for Flos.

Stefano Giovannoni

Italy 1954

The quirky Italian industrial designer and architect Stefano Giovannoni was born in La Spezia in 1954 and studied architecture at Florence University until 1978. From 1979 Stefano Giovannoni taught there, while researching at the Domus Academy in Milan and the Università del Progetto in Reggio Emilia. With Guido Venturini, Stefano Giovannoni founded the King-Kong studio in the 1980s. For Alessi they designed the extremely successful "Girotondo" line in household appliances and accessories of metal and plastic, featuring the distinctive cut-out stick man.

Stefano Giovannoni has also created numerous original designs on his own for Alessi, including the "Fruit Mama" (1993) fruit bowl, the "Merdolina" (1993) toilet brush, and the "Mary Biscuit" (1995) cookie jar of cheerfully garish plastic sporting an outsize cooky on the lid. Stefano Giovannoni has also worked for Magis, Flos, Fiat, Seiko, Siemens, Henkel, Lavazza, Helit, and many other firms.

Paolo Pininfarina

Italy 1958

After graduating in Mechanical Engineering at Turin Polytechnic he began his career in Pininfarina in 1982 and in 1983 gained experience working at Cadillac in Detroit, USA, and then in Japan with Honda.

On August 12, 2008 he was appointed Chairman of Pininfarina S.p.A. At the Pininfarina S.p.A. parent company he became a board member in 1988, from 2002 he has been a member of the Steering Committee and, again starting 2002, in his capacity as the head of the Quality System Department he contributed to the award of ISOTS/16949 certification to the Company, which took place in July 2003.

From 1999 to 2004 he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of Turin's European Institute of Design.

Patricia Urquiola

Spain 1961

Born in 1961 in Oviedo, Spain, Patricia Urquiola has quickly ascended into one of the most prolific and influential designers working today. Working under the tutelage of some of the greatest designers in history, Urquiola realized her graduating thesis under the supervision of late Achille Castiglioni, went on to develop products with Vico Magistretti for De Padova, and finally ran the design department of Piero Lissoni's office before stepping out on her own.

Realizing her first individual projects with the partnership of an elite group of manufacturers, notale pieces from her include the Lazy and Tufty-Time products for B&B Italia, the Fjord series for Moroso, the Flo series for Driade and the Glove series for Molteni. Urquiola's unique style evokes a playful image that is organic and comfortable, while still being remarkably rigorous and well-executed. Perhaps her greatest gift is that she makes things that look natural and familiar, but entirely fresh.

Jasper Morrison

England 1959

Jasper Morrison was born in London in 1959, and graduated in Design at Kingston Polytechnic Design School, London (1979-82 BA (Des.)) and The Royal College of Art for Postgraduate studies (1982-85 MA (Des.) RCA). In 1984 he studied at Berlins HdK on a Scholarship.

In 1986 he set up an Office for Design in London. His work was included in the Documenta 8 exhibition in Kassel in 1987, for which he designed the Reuters News Centre. The following year he was invited to take part in Design Werkstadt, a part of the Berlin, Cultural City of Europe program, where he exhibited some new items for the house, part I at the DAAD Gallery.

He then began designing products for SCP in London, the German door handle producer FSB, the Office furniture company Vitra, and the Italian furniture producer Cappellini. In 1992 together with James Irvine, he organised Progetto Oggetto for Cappellini, a collection of household objects designed together with a group of young European designers. He also worked with Andreas Brandolini and Axel Kufus on a variety of installations, exhibition designs and town planning projects under the umbrella of Utilism International.

In 1992, his slide show lecture "A world without words" was published in book format by the graphic designer Tony Arefin.

In 1994 Jasper Morrison was guest of honour and held an exhibition at the Interieur 94 exhibition in Belgium. In 1995 he held a solo exhibition at Bordeauxs Arc en Rêve Centre darchitecture. He began a consultancy with Üstra the Hannover Transportation Authority by designing a Bus Stop for the City.

Richard Sapper

Germany 1963

Born in Munich in 1932, he studied philosophy, anatomy, graphics, engineering and economics. Ten times winner of the Compassi d'Oro, his prime interest is the design of technically complex objects, from ships to watches. His first project for Alessi was the Alessi Expresso Coffee Maker, 9090 which won the XIth Crusinallo d'Oro and is displayed in New York's Museum of Modern Art. The Alessi Sapper Kettle has perfectly tuned pitch pipes in E and B, which produce a pleasant clear sound when the water boils. Richard Sapper's versatile design abilities is shown to full affect in the Alessi Expresso Machines and ground breaking Multi-ply Sapper pans.

Born in Munich in 1932, he studied philosophy, anatomy, graphics, engineering and economics. Ten times winner of the Compassi d'Oro, his prime interest is the design of technically complex objects, from ships to watches. His first project for Alessi was the Alessi Expresso Coffee Maker, 9090 which won the XIth Crusinallo d'Oro and is displayed in New York's Museum of Modern Art. The Alessi Sapper Kettle has perfectly tuned pitch pipes in E and B, which produce a pleasant clear sound when the water boils. Richard Sapper's versatile design abilities is shown to full affect in the Alessi Expresso Machines and ground breaking Multi-ply Sapper pans.

Shin & Tomoko Azumi

Japan 1965 1966

SHIN and TOMOKO AZUMI design furniture, products and stage sets in an elegantly playful style. Born in Japan, they have lived and worked in London since studying at the Royal College of Art in the early 1990s.

When most product designers cite the inspirations for their work, they mention a Bauhaus hero or two, maybe a Bauhaus heroine. Shin and Tomoko Azumi cite those too: Oscar Schlemmer for Shin and László Moholy-Nagy for Tomoko. Yet their influences also range from the female contortionist cast as Puck in the Canadian theatre director, Robert Lepage’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to the methodical manner with which the hero of Night Train, one of Masayuki Izumi’s Japanese comic books, plans the process of eating the contents of his bento box on an overnight train.

The Azumis describe their work as being about "changing people’s behaviour in a subtle way". In practical terms, this ranges from placing the holes in their 1996 Upright Salt & Pepper Shakers a little lower than is usual, so they only need to be tilted slightly rather than shaken aggressively for the contents to come out, to designing a compact, versatile 1995 Table = Chest which can be quickly converted from a low table into an equally elegant cabinet.

Both the Azumis were born in Japan: Shin in Kobe in 1965 and Tomoko in Hiroshima in 1966. They met at Kyoto City University of Art, where they studied product design and environmental design respectively. Their first collaboration was a group sculpture project in their first year in Kyoto.

Jean Michel Frank

France 1895-1941

Jean-Michel Frank was a French interior designer known for minimalist interiors decorated with plain-lined but sumptuous furniture made of luxury materials, such as shagreen, mica, and intricate straw marquetry.

Jean-Michel Frank was born in Paris. From 1904, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. In 1911, he began law school, but in 1915, he was cruelly hit by the double blow of the death of his two elder brothers, Oscar and Georges, on the front lines of World War I and that of his father who committed suicide. In 1919, he lost his mother who had been in an asylum for several years. From 1920 to 1925 he traveled and visited the world. In Venice he met the cosmopolitan society that gathered around Stravinsky and Diaghilev. Around 1927, Eugenia Errázuriz revealed to him the beauty of 18th Century styles and her own modern, minimalist esthetic, and he became her disciple.

He then got in contact with a Parisian decorator called Adolphe Chanaux to do his apartment in the Rue de Verneuil. In 1932, with Chanaux, he opened a shop at number 140 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. This was to be the consecration of ten years of collaboration, when he decorated for the Rockefellers and Guerlains. During the winter of 1939-40, he left France for South America and the United States.

Orlando Milite

Italy 1949

Born in Italy in 1949, he immigrated to Canada in 1969 where together with his brothers; Frank and Joe, started Milite Design, a business designing and manufacturing glass furniture to be sold in local retail stores. It wasn't to long before the focus shifted toward designing and manufacturing Scandanavian furniture.

In 1976 Le Belle Arti was born and Orlando, then 27, began to design a line of furniture that was comprised of three basic materials; stainless stell, exotic wood, and glass. This collection was sol throughout Canada as well as in the USA. Some of his designs were also being manufactured in italy for the Italian market.

Into the late 80's, Orlando designed the famous Triclinium for Italian manufacturer Arketipo. An intruiging composition of seating with capable of over 100 different configurations, and included marble shelves, lacquered panels, and an adjustable depth. This model became Arketipo's bestseller and was sold through retailers worldwide including the Roche Bobois network.

With over 1000 designs ranging from; sofas, dining tables, desks, beds, wallunits, coffee tables and much more. Orlando Milite designs can be found in some of the most expensive modern homes in the world.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Scotland 1868-1928

Combining a progressive modernity with the spirit of romanticism, the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) created many of the best loved and most influential buildings, furniture and decorative schemes of the early 20th century.

Few designers can claim to have created a unique and individual style that is so instantly recognisable. Famous today as a designer of chairs, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was an architect who designed schools, offices, churches, tearooms and homes, an interior designer and decorator, an exhibition designer, a designer of furniture, metalwork, textiles and stained glass and, in his latter years, a watercolourist.

Excelling in all these areas, Mackintosh left hundreds of designs and a rich volume of realised work. His distinctive style mixed together elements of the Scottish vernacular and the English Arts and Crafts tradition with the organic forms of Art Nouveau and a drive to be modern. As his work matured Mackintosh employed bolder geometric forms in place of organic-inspired symbolic decoration.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work can be divided into three main areas: public buildings, private homes and tea rooms. The Glasgow tea rooms he designed in the early 1900s are perhaps his most unique contribution in which art, architecture and design came together in a complete environment. These light, elegant and sophisticated interiors were an enormous contrast to the gritty, smoky urban city of Glasgow where he was born, trained and lived for most of his adult life. Glasgow is where the majority of his work was executed and Mackintosh’s career paralleled the city’s economic boom. By the end of the 19th century Glasgow was a wealthy, burgeoning European city with an immense network of trade and manufacture that supplied the world with coal and ships. It was also a rich source of commissions for a gifted young architect and designer.

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Germany 1886

Ludwig Mies was born in Aachen, Germany, to the wife of a stonemason in 1886. He attended the Cathedral School there between 1897 and 1900. In 1905 he moved to Berlin and, without formal architectural training, became an apprentice in the office of furniture designer (famous interior designer) Bruno Paul.

In 1907, he built his first house as an independent architect, a wooden house in eighteenth-century style under the influence of English domestic architecture. Employed as a draftsman and designer in the office of Peter Behrens at the same time as Gropius was a senior assistant, Mies remained there until 1911. Among projects he worked on in Behrens's office were the German Embassy in St Petersburg (1911-1912) and an early study of a house (1911) for the art collectors Anton and H?lene Kr?ller at the Hague in the Netherlands.

When Mies van der Rohe left the office of Peter Behrens, be was commissioned by Mrs. Kr?ller to prepare a new design for a house for the Hague, Netherlands. Mies van der Rohe worked for a year in Holland. A full-scale wood and canvas model was erected on the site, but the building was not built (A house was eventually built to the design of H. P. Beriage.)

Mies 's design for the house was derived from his study of the work of Kari Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1840). The project is known from drawings and photographs of the model and the mock-up. It was about that time that Mies, added his mother's family name, van der Rohe, to his surname for reason of its "sonorous" sound.

Le Corbusier

Switzerland 1887

Internationally influential Swiss architect and city planner, whose designs combine the functionalism of the modern movement with a bold, sculptural expressionism. He belonged to the first generation of the so-called International school of architecture and was their most able propagandist in his numerous writings. In his architecture he joined the functionalist aspirations of his generation with a strong sense of expressionism. He was the first architect to make a studied use of rough-cast concrete, a technique that satisfied his taste for asceticism and for sculptural forms.

Le Corbusier was born in a small town in the mountainous Swiss Jura region, since the 18th century the world's centre of precision watchmaking. All his life he was marked by the harshness of these surroundings and the puritanism of a Protestant environment. At 13 years of age, Le Corbusier left primary school to learn the enamelling and engraving of watch faces, his father's trade, at the École des Arts Décoratifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds. There, Charles L'Eplattenier, whom Le Corbusier later called his only teacher, taught him art history, drawing, and the naturalist aesthetics of Art Nouveau.

Eileen Gray

Ireland 1878

Born on 9th August 1878, at the family home in Brownswood, Enniscorthy, Ireland, she spent her childhood in London and was among the first women to be admitted to the Slade School of Art where she took up painting before undergoing an apprenticeship in a laquer workshop.

She moved to 21 Rue Bonaparte, Paris in 1902. She meets Seizo Sugawara, the Japanese lacquer master who teaches her his art, and she quickly established herself as one of the leading designers of laquered screens and decorative panels. In 1917, the first article in English, about her work appears in Vogue magazine.

During the '20s and '30s she became one of the leading exponents of the revolutionary new theories of design and worked closely with many of the outstanding figures of the modern movement, including Le Corbusier. In 1924 a special edition of the Dutch newspaper Wendingen features Gray’s work with texts by Jean Badovici and Jan Wils. After several formative journeys with Badovici, Eileen Gray decides to build her first architectural work E-1027 which was finished in 1929. Her other important house was Tempa a Pailla, at Castellar (built 1932-34).

Harry Bertoia

Italy 1915

Italian-born American sculptor and designer, best known for his monumental architectural sculptures and the classic Bertoia chair.

Bertoia attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and taught painting and metalworking there from 1937 to 1943. He worked in California with designer Charles Eames (q.v.) before joining Knoll Associates in New York City in 1950. His achievements there included the Diamond chair (more commonly known as the Bertoia chair), made of polished steel wire, sometimes vinyl coated, and covered with cotton or with elastic Naugahyde upholstery.Bertoia claimed that his sculpture evolved when the jewelry he was designing kept getting larger and larger.

Some of his later works, the sound sculptures, were designed to be activated by the wind or by hand to produce pleasing metallic or airy sound patterns. His numerous major works for public areas include huge decorative flow-welded metal Sculpture Screens for major corporations and educational institutions, a large copper and bronze fountain, Waves, for the Philadelphia Civic Center; the bronze sculpture View of Earth from Space at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.; and a sounding fountain piece for the sunken outdoor plaza of the Standard Oil building (later renamed) in Chicago.

Frank Lloyd Wright

U.S.A 1867

Believing that the space within that building is the reality of that building, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (1867-1959) was one of the most prolific and influential architects of the 20th century. From his early Prairie Style homes, to the sculptural curves of the Guggenheim Museum in New York he defined a North American style of architecture which was rich in emotion and sensitive to its surroundings.

One of the founders of modern architecture in North America, Frank Lloyd Wright embraced the use of new technology, materials and engineering to create some of the 20th century’s most influential and iconic buildings. During a long and productive career spanning 70 years he designed over 1,000 buildings of which over 400 were built.

Wright developed a language of architecture that did not look to Europe but was unique to the United States. As well as creating buildings which were radical in appearance, Wright had a rare ability to integrate them with the landscape stemming from his deep love and knowledge of nature. It was this gift that marked him out from contemporary pioneers of modern architecture, such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, and make his buildings seem in tune with our environmentally conscious era.

Paolo Piva

Italy 1950

Born in Adria in 1950, he began to attend the Architectural Faculty at the Venice University in 1968 and occupied himself with the research in the visual area.

In 1970 he co-operated to the realisation of the project concerning WIG 74 competition on behalf of Vienna and to the competition for the RESISTENZA MONUMENT in Modena. He attended the INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF ART in Venice. Since 1970 he has been applying himself to industrial design.

In 1973 he studied at the architectural Faculty of Venice University with Prof. Carlo Scarpa and he got University degree proposing a thesis co-ordinated by Prof. Manfredo Tafuri, about VIENNA from 1918 to 1934. He attended the INTERNATIONALEN MALERWOCHEN in Retzhof- Graz.

In 1975 he worked for the INSTITUTE OF HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE OF VENICE together with the AKADEMIE DER ANGEWANDTEN KUNST of Vienna, for the realisation of an important exhibition about Vienna during its socialist period. This research ended in 1980 with the exhibition VIENNA ROSSA requested by Roma Town Council. Together with Manfredo Tafuri, he took care of the catalogue and the organisation of the exhibition.

Philippe Starck

France 1949

The son of an aeronautical engineer, Philippe Starck was born in Paris in 1949 and attended the École Nissim de Camondo in Paris from 1965 until 1967. In 1969 Philippe Starck became art director at Pierre Cardin. In the 1970s Philippe Starck embarked on a career as an interior decorator; stylish early interiors he designed include the "La Main Bleue" bar in Montreuil (1976) and "Les Bains Douches" in Paris (1978). In 1980 he founded Starck Products and, in 1985, a furniture-making firm, XO (with Gerard Mialet).

In 1982 Philippe Starck was one of the designers commissioned by François Mitterand to refurbish his private apartments in the Elysée Palace in Paris. The interior Philippe Starck designed for Café Costes in Paris (1984) made Philippe Starck famous worldwide. One of the pieces of furniture he designed for the café was the elegant "Costes" shair (for Driade). From then on Philippe Starck could pick and choose from any number of prestigious interior design commissions around the world. Philippe Starck designed the interiors of such New York boutique hotels as the Royalton (1988) and the Paramount (1990).

In 1988 Philippe Starck came up with "Ará", a horn-shaped metal table lamp that has been one of his most successful lamp designs. It was for Alessi that Philippe Starck designed his signature, a long-legged octopus of a lemon squeezer, the "Juicy Salif" (1990/91) and "Hot Bertaa", a kettle.

Carlo Scarpa

Italy 1906

Carlo Scarpa was born in 1906 in Venezia, Italy. In 1922-24 he began his first projects as a collaborator in the office of Architect V. Rinaldo and in 1926 obtained his diploma of Professor in Architectural Drawing at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Venice. He then began his career at the Royal Superior Institute of Architecture of Venice (successively Architectural Institute of Venice University) as assistant to Prof. G. Cirilli.

He possessed an exceptional understanding of raw materials, and from 1933 to 1947, was artistic director of Venini - one of the most prominent producers of Venetian glass before he began the pursuit of his career as an architect. During the years 1954-64 he gave annual lessons to Fulbright scholarship holders in Rome. In 1956 he won the National Olivetti Award for Architecture and in 1962 the IN-ARCH National Award for Architecture for the Castelvecchio Museum of Verona. In 1972 he became the Director of the Architectural Institute of Venice University.

In mounting his 'attack' on the outward signs of architectural habit, Scarpa ending up by designing works meant to elude time, favouring the vivid colours of the past above the dull grey of the future. He achieved the maturity of this approach after a lengthy apprenticeship, working slowly and cautiously. His true youth, for this reason, was irremediably belated.