Franco Albini & Franca Helg PL19 Tre Pezzi Armchair by Poggi Pavia, 1960s

PL19 also known as Tre Pezzi armchair with black enameled steel tube structure, upholstered in white Mongolian goat wool. Designed by Franco Albini & Franca Helg for Poggi, Pavia...

PL19 or Tre Pezzi armchair with frame in black lacquered tubular steel, seat and back in padded red fabric. Designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg in 1959 for the Nuove terme Lui...

LB7 bookcase composed of a single module with shelves and a storage unit with two doors, made in veneered solid teak wood, and black lacquered metal details. Designed by Franco Alb...

Cicognino coffee table entirely made in teak wood designed by Franco Albini in 1952 and firstly produced by the Italian company, Poggi Pavia from the 1950s. The Cicognino coffee t...

Round table model TL30 with black lacquered metal base and a wooden top. Designed by Franco Albini for Poggi, Pavia in 1950s.   After spending his childhood and part of his youth in Robbiate in Brianza, where he was born in 1905, Franco Albini moved with his family to Milan. Here he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic and graduated in 1929. He starts his professional activity in the studio of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia, with whom he collaborates for three years. He probably had his first international contacts here In those three years, the works carried out are admittedly of a twentieth-century imprint. It was the meeting with Edoardo Persico that marked a clear turning point towards rationalism and the rapprochement with the group of editors of “Casabella”. The new phase that that meeting provoked starts with the opening of the first professional studio in via Panizza with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti. The group of architects began to deal with public housing by participating in the competition for the Baracca neighborhood in San Siro in 1932 and then creating the Ifacp neighborhoods: Fabio Filzi (1936/38), Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ettore Ponti (1939). Also in those years Albini worked on his first villa Pestarini. But it is above all in the context of the exhibitions that the Milanese master experiments his compromise between that “rigor and poetic fantasy” coining the elements that will be a recurring theme in all the declinations of his work – architecture, interiors, design pieces . The opening in 1933 of the new headquarters of the Triennale in Milan, in the Palazzo dell’Arte, becomes an important opportunity to express the strong innovative character of rationalist thought, a gym in which to freely experiment with new materials and new solutions, but above all a “method”. Together with Giancarlo Palanti, Albini on the occasion of the V Triennale di Milano sets up the steel structure house, for which he also designs the ‘furniture. At the subsequent Triennale of 1936, marked by the untimely death of Persico, together with a group of young designers gathered by Pagano in the previous edition of 1933, Franco Albini takes care of the preparation of the exhibition of the house, in which the furniture of three types of accommodation. The staging of Stanza per un uomo, at that same Triennale, allows us to understand the acute and ironic approach that is part of Albini, as a man and as a designer: the theme addressed is that of the existenzminimum and the reference of the project is to the fascist myth of the athletic and sporty man, but it is also a way to reflect on low-cost housing, the reduction of surfaces to a minimum and respect for the way of living. In that same year Albini and Romano designed the Ancient Italian Goldsmith’s Exhibition: vertical uprights, simple linear rods, design the space. A theme, that of the “flagpole”, which seems to be the center of the evolution of his production and creative process. The concept is reworked over time, with the technique of decomposition and recomposition typical of Albinian planning: in the setting up of the Scipio Exhibition and of contemporary drawings (1941) the tapered flagpoles, on which the paintings and display cases are hung, are supported by a grid of steel cables; in the Vanzetti stand (1942) they take on the V shape; in the Olivetti store in Paris (1956) the uprights in polished mahogany support the shelves for displaying typewriters and calculators. The reflection on this theme arises from the desire to interpret the architectural space, to read it through the use of a grid, to introduce the third dimension, the vertical one, while maintaining a sense of lightness and transparency. The flagpole is found, however, also in areas other than the exhibition ones. In the apartments he designed, it is used as a pivot on which the paintings can be suspended and rotated to allow different points of view, but at the same time as an element capable of dividing spaces. The Veliero bookcase...

Toga chair was realized in hot-press moulded black fibreglass designed by Sergio Mazza in 1968 and manufactured by Artemide, Italy. The Toga chair is pa...

Armchair designed by Franco Albini (1905-1977) and Franca Helg Model n° PL19, 'Tre pezzi' Lacquered metal, brass and recently eupholstered in white sheep wool skin. Early original m...

"Model PL19" chairs or "The Pezzi" , designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg, manufactured by Poggi Pavia, Italy. The chairs have a lacquered metal frame and are upholstered with ...

Set of two "Model PL19" chairs, designed by Franco Albini, manufactured by Poggi Pavia, Italy. The chairs have a lacquered metal frame and are upholstered with red velvet. Literat...

The "Modello PL19" or "I tre Pezzi" armchairs, designed by Franco Albini and Franca Helg, manufactured by Poggi Pavia, Italy. The chairs have a lacquered metal frame and are upholste...

Armchair designed by Franco Albini in 1959. Relaunched in 2009. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. In 1952, working with Franca Helg, his long-time assistant, Franco Albini designed Tre Pezzi...

Armchair designed by Franco Albini in 1959. Relaunched in 2009. Manufactured by Cassina in Italy. In 1952, working with Franca Helg, his long-time assistant, Franco Albini designed Tre Pezzi...