Thinking about Italian Design Furniture- Try out Franco Albini’s Collections

Thinking about Italian Design Furniture- Try out Franco Albini’s Collections

 

One of the most popular figures in the Italian Rationalist Movement was Franco Albini. He was a well known architecture, museum and industrial designer as well as an innovative furniture designer. He has left back such a huge legacy of designs and objects that would be well remembered for generations to come. He can be considered to be one of the finest designers that Italy has ever produced and every Italian can take pride in the fact that he was born in a country where Franco Albini once lived.  

Franco Albini was born on 17th October 1905 and is a native of Robbiate near Milan. He was born to a moderately rich Bourgeois family and he always used to remember his hometown and his childhood that eh spent in the company of his sisters. He attended the architecture school in Milan right after he had completed his high school. He was very much into academics and enjoyed every moment he spent in the college. He got his architecture degree from the Politecnico di Milano in 1929. He started his professional design and architectural career working for Gio Ponti at the Ponti and Lancia design studios. It is while working here that he mingled with other talented craftsmen and cabinet makers and came to know about the finer aspects of designer art and architecture.  

While he was working for Gio Ponti, he had the opportunity to showcase his talent and work at the Milan Triennale. He later got the opportunity to start his own practice in 1931 in Milan and there was no stopping him from there on. He got a lot of opportunities to show his talent through the reconstruction projects after the war. He renewed his link up with a popular magazine Casabella in the 1940’s which paved the way for him to design some of the most unique chairs and to bring out his signature style chairs and furniture to the world. He also started to offer his furniture designs to other companies like Milan, Poggi and Genoa. Some of his popular architectural brilliance can be seen on the: Stations on Line 1 of Milan’s subway system and in the popular Tesoro di San Lorenzo, Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco museums. He was showered with a lot of accolades and honors for his cultural contributions.  

Franco Albini is also a recipient of a number of prestigious awards for his designs and some of the popular ones are: the Bronze Medal from the Parson School in New York for his work for industrial design, the Royal Designer for Industry title awarded by the London Royal Society of Arts, the Olivetti Award for Architecture, the La Rinascente-Compasso d’Oro Award for the Milan Line 1 Subway project and the La Rinascente-Compasso d’Oro for the design of the Luisa chair.   Some of the popular furniture designs of Franco Albini that is still in demand are: library shelves made of wood and metal, side table TN6 Cicognino, Armchair PT1 Luisa and Margherita, Fiorenza armchair, Radio cabinet, demountable table and rocking chaise lounge.