For such a revered piece of lighting design, the Atollo lamp is impressively simple, comprising just three forms: a cylinder, a cone and a dome, stacked so neatly atop one another that the dome appears to hover above the fixture on its own. This sculptural table lamp, an outwardly geometric tour de force from postwar Italy that produces warm diffused light, was created by prolific industrial designer and architect Vico Magistretti (1920–2006).

Born in Milan to a family of architects — both his father and grandfather worked in the profession — Magistretti studied architecture in both his hometown at the Polytechnic University of Milan and at the Champ Universitaire Italien in Lausanne, Switzerland, as a young man during World War II. In Switzerland, he met architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers, who served as his mentor and role model. The younger designer was deeply moved by Rogers’s humanist ideals to revitalize a postwar Italy: The two would later work together on the urban planning of a number of working-class neighborhoods in Milan with Rogers’s firm BBPR. Magistretti also participated in the creation of QT8, an experimental neighborhood in Milan conceived at the Milan Triennial, for which he designed a church.

After he graduated from Polytechnic in 1945, Magistretti worked at his father’s practice, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that he recognized his interest in furniture design. (He would return to architecture and urban design projects in the ’80s and ’90s.) He collaborated with Cesare Cassina for more than 30 years, designing for Cassina’s eponymous firm the successful Carimate chair and the Maralunga sofa as well as Cassina’s villas in the commune of Carimate. Magistretti also found a successful partner in Artemide, for whom he designed the Eclisse lamp, which won the 1967 Compasso d’Oro. In 1979, Magistretti would win another Compasso d’Oro award for his Atollo table lamp, perhaps his most enduring work.

The decorative and versatile Atollo — which was available in three sizes, in milky white opal glass as well as aluminum — was designed in 1977 and produced by Oluce, where it is also manufactured today and offered in multiple finishes. The Atollo table lamp is held in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich.