DE ARCHITECTS
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S-097
year 1990
material leather, metal, wood
source title Achille Castiglioni
info “The Castiglioni brothers’ new armchair expresses their ironic acceptance of the new Italian line,” wrote Paolo Portoghesi in 1963. “The soft inflected panels of which it is made evoke those ancient chairs with frilly borders still used as models in upholsterers’ shops. Its quirky aggressive profile places it within the long line of furniture of character produced by modern architects. However, in this case no attempt has been made at an analysis of the frame, so dear to the Functionalist tradition. Only the supports are made of a different material from the cartilaginous volutes upholstered with leather. The subtly controlled form of the chair contrasts with the experimental character of the earliest explorations in new Italian design. Here we have a sleek, elegant piece of furniture, specially designed to create a flexible rapport with an existing interior. It is conceived to fit in with both period furniture and a cold, rarefied modern ambiance, always with a new role, a new part to be played with impersonal bravura… Through its irony, the Castiglioni’s armchair produces an alibi that is equally valid for antiquarian and cultural escapism or the sterile technicalness of false, standardized design.” Pier Giacomo Castiglioni commented: “It looks a bit like Art Nouveau. This enables us to take in the lady who buys a new piece of furniture because she thinks it’s old.” Designed to a commission by Duno Gavina, the Sanluca armchair was developed on models in clay, chalk and wood. “At the start,” explained Achille Castiglioni in 1991, “we thought we might mould the various components, but later one we realized Sanluca wouldn’t have the same turnover as a TV set. So the sizable costs of moulding it would be beyond the reach of a furniture maker.” Its forms derive from examples of eighteenth-century furniture, while the designers see it as echoing the dynamic lines of Boccioni’s sculptures, though they worked on it “in front of an old Frau armchair we had at home.”.
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year 1990
material leather, metal, wood
source title Achille Castiglioni
info “The Castiglioni brothers’ new armchair expresses their ironic acceptance of the new Italian line,” wrote Paolo Portoghesi in 1963. “The soft inflected panels of which it is made evoke those ancient chairs with frilly borders still used as models in upholsterers’ shops. Its quirky aggressive profile places it within the long line of furniture of character produced by modern architects. However, in this case no attempt has been made at an analysis of the frame, so dear to the Functionalist tradition. Only the supports are made of a different material from the cartilaginous volutes upholstered with leather. The subtly controlled form of the chair contrasts with the experimental character of the earliest explorations in new Italian design. Here we have a sleek, elegant piece of furniture, specially designed to create a flexible rapport with an existing interior. It is conceived to fit in with both period furniture and a cold, rarefied modern ambiance, always with a new role, a new part to be played with impersonal bravura… Through its irony, the Castiglioni’s armchair produces an alibi that is equally valid for antiquarian and cultural escapism or the sterile technicalness of false, standardized design.” Pier Giacomo Castiglioni commented: “It looks a bit like Art Nouveau. This enables us to take in the lady who buys a new piece of furniture because she thinks it’s old.” Designed to a commission by Duno Gavina, the Sanluca armchair was developed on models in clay, chalk and wood. “At the start,” explained Achille Castiglioni in 1991, “we thought we might mould the various components, but later one we realized Sanluca wouldn’t have the same turnover as a TV set. So the sizable costs of moulding it would be beyond the reach of a furniture maker.” Its forms derive from examples of eighteenth-century furniture, while the designers see it as echoing the dynamic lines of Boccioni’s sculptures, though they worked on it “in front of an old Frau armchair we had at home.”.
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