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At Stefano Giovannoni, art and design come together
Harmonies Magazine

Harmonies Magazine

At Stefano Giovannoni, art and design come together

by
September 9, 2020
Armchairs and pots from the Stone collection for Vondom

Imaginative and innovative, the work of Italian architect and designer Stefano Giovannoni often blurs the lines between design and art. His simple and intuitive ideas have become classics, easy to integrate into modern homes. We owe him many bestsellers and highly successful products.

Italian designer Stefano Giovannoni was born in La Spezia in 1954. Graduated in Architecture in Florence in 1978, he lives and works in Milan. From 1979 to 1991 he taught and researched at the Faculty of Architecture in Florence. He was a master-professor at the Domus Academy in Milan, at the Progetto in Reggio Emilia, and professor of industrial design at the University of Architecture of Genoa. At the beginning of the 80’s, he founded, with Guido Venturini, the production group King-Kong, and collaborated with Ettore Sottsass and Alchimia-Mendini. He works not only as an architect, but also as an industrial designer and interior decorator, particularly specialized in plastic products. His explosive talent allows him to embody a complex system of affective codes in his projects. A quintessential technical designer, he has industrial design in his DNA and an unprecedented ability to understand public sentiment.

With an eye for communication and a penchant for ingenuity, Giovannoni has imagined some of the most commercially successful products in the world. He has collaborated with the renowned brand Alessi, for more than 500 steel and plastic designs: the Mami series, Il Bagno Alessi and the famous Lilliput, Magic Bunny and Merdolino, as well as the Girotondo collection, absolute bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. For Magis, he is a hit with designs such as the Bombo stool, the Paso Doble range, Chair First and Table First, which illustrate his innovative use of materials and his original thinking. Chair First, for example, is the first three-dimensional plastic chair created by injecting air, while the Bombo stool, the most copied product to date, generates a whole new typology (it goes up and down) and is so futuristic that it appears in the Star Trek movie.

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Contemporary concept, sober and elegant lines, colors and muted tones resolutely in tune with the times, noble and quality materials… The multiple creations designed and sculpted by Terry Dwan have everything to seduce us. Take a look at this outstanding talent. An architect and designer at the same time, Terry Dawn has, for a long time, established his notoriety on the international scene, thanks to his remarkable style. Based in Milan, this native American but adopted Italian uses a language of her own. Born in 1957, in Santa Monica, California, United States, she began her career after studying engineering and architecture at Rice University, Houston, in addition to training in Fine Arts at Studio Arts Center International (SACI) in Florence, Italy. The designer, who won the Fulbright Fellowship to study the architecture of cemeteries and war monuments in Italy, graduated from Yale University in Architecture in 1984. After an experience alongside Antonio Citterio, with whom she collaborated from 1985 to 1996 and founded the Citterio/Dwan office, working on several projects and residential complexes, fairs and exhibitions, notably in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and Italy, she opened her own design agency in 1992 and got involved in great designs, whether in architecture or decoration. A book entitled Antonio Citterio & Terry Dwan: Ten years of Architecture and Design, signed by Pippo Ciorra, was published on the occasion of the exhibition that the duo organized in Bordeaux in 1993. At the same time, it multiplies design projects for the biggest publishers and won numerous awards at international competitions. In 1996, she began by developing industrial design plans for firms such as Sawaya and Moroni, Electrolux, San Lorenzo and Driade. An accomplished designer, she juggles with forms, materials and concepts, questions obvious codes, experiments and explores eclectic universes: from the architecture of private residences, public buildings and interior decoration, through the design and the from salon and exhibition design to furniture and porcelain or silver objects, she is interested in everything and comes out with flying colors. Marrying current vision with everyday functionality, some of her works are part of the permanent collection of the Design Museum at the Milan Triennale. Passionate, her career is marked by numerous explorations of the material where wood, her material of choice, occupies a privileged place. She enjoys working with it revealing its multiple aesthetic qualities, through several everyday basics, many models of which have become emblematic, such as Maui, seat in scented cedar wood, edited by Riva 1920, and the Napa armchair, object oscillating between functional piece of furniture and biomorphic sculpture, or even Implement, a desk composed of two juxtaposed and misaligned wooden boards. Her collaboration with Driade is crowned by the timeless Burgos and Bedda sofas. A sought-after speaker around the world, Terry Dwan has taught architecture at SACI, Florence, and co-taught architectural heritage conservation at the University of Milan. Since 2006, she has been Dean of the Council of the School of Architecture at Yale University and a member of the SACI Board of Trustees.
Terry Dwan, multifaceted designer

Some of his projects won prizes including Design Plus at the Frankfurt Fair in 1994, 1996 and 2003, 100% Design in 1997 in London, Forum Design Hannover in 1999 and ISH in 2003, and were selected Compasso d’Oro in 1996 and 1998. It is therefore not surprising that Giovannoni’s prodigious work is present in museums around the world. His creations are part, for example, of the permanent archives of the Center Georges Pompidou and of the MoMA in New York.

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