Franco Albini PL19 or Tre Pezzi Armchair in Black Mongolian Fur for Poggi Pavia

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...

TL30 table with a round top in wood and a base in black lacquered metal, designed by Franco Albini and produced by Poggi in the 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...

P 40 armchair with structure in walnut wood, the seat and back are composed of a removable padded cushion covered with fabric and sustained by a fabric structure directly attached to...

Samarcanda or CS49 sideboard composed of two modules in black lacquered beech plywood and top in wood covered with black skai. This Samarcanda sideboards presents frontal drawers and doors revealing inner shelves. Designed by Vico Magistretti and produced by Poggi in 1970s Samarcanda is an easily stackable system of drawers and containers that can compose living-room furniture, chests of drawers, tables and desks. It is a system of self-standing drawers made of beech multi-layered plywood lacquered with polyurethane paint in black and white that can be freely stacked and combined. Licterature: R. Dulio, F. Marino, S.A. Poli, Il mondo di Poggi. L'officina del design e delle arti, Electa, Milano 2019, p. 129 Domus 1971, 497 Ludovico Magistretti was born in Milan on 6 October 1920. He went to Parini High School and in autumn 1939 enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture at the Royal Polytechnic in Milan. After 8 September 1943, to avoid being deported to Germany, he left Italy during his military service and moved to Switzerland, where he took some academic courses at the Champ Universitaire Italien in Lausanne, taught at the local university. During his stay in the Swiss city he met Ernesto Nathan Rogers, the founder of the BBPR firm who had taken refuge in Switzerland after racist laws were passed in Italy. This was a key encounter in Magistretti’s intellectual and professional development, since the architect from Trieste turned out to be his maestro. He returned to Milan in 1945, where he graduated in Architecture at the Polytechnic on 2 August. He then immediately began his career working with the architect Paolo Chessa at the firm owned and run by his father, who died prematurely that same year. Here, in his father’s small firm, he spent his entire career in partnership with Franco Montella. During reconstruction operations in Milan from 1949-59, Magistretti designed and constructed about 14 projects for INA-Casa in conjunction with other architects. He was involved with Mario Tedeschi in the joint project for the QT8 neighbourhood, designing houses for veterans from the African campaign and also Santa Maria Nascente Church. In 1946 he participated in the R.I.M.A. exhibition (Italian Assembly for Furniture Exhibitions), held at the Palazzo dell’Arte, designing some small almost self-made pieces of furniture and then, in 1947 and 1948, he took part together with Castiglioni, Zanuso, Gardella, Albini and others in the exhibitions organized by Fede Cheti, a furniture fabric maker, held at her own workshop. The young architect was involved in plenty of activities and came up with lots of new ideas and proposals in the 1950s. Over the following years he also designed a number of other important projects, including the Towers in piazzale Aquileia (1961-64), Bassetti House in Azzate (1960-62), Cassina House in Carimate (1964-65), and the house in via Conservatorio in Milan (1963-66). In 1956 he was one of the founding members of the ADI, Industrial Design Association, and during the same year he was a member of the panel of judges for the Golden Compass Award for the first time. His work as an architect was almost totally focused on the issue of housing and living from the 1960s onwards, as he developed his own extremely expressive idiom, which, even though it was heavily criticised at times, made a real impression on the architectural scene in Lombardy during that period, making him one of its leading figures. This is the context in which he took part in the CIAM Congress (International Modern Architecture Congress) held in Otterlo in the Netherlands in 1959, during which the Italians presented Velasca Tower designed by the BBPR, the Olivetti canteen designed by Ignazio Gardella, Arosio house designed by Vico Magistretti (1956-59), and the houses in Matera designed by Giancarlo De Carli...

"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 ...

Gorgeous iconic piece of design in a new interpretation of Limited Edition of only 100 pcs. Designed by Franco Albini together with Franca Helg in 1959, and manufactured by Cassina ...

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...

Prices vary dependent on the material. In 1959, working with Franca Helg, his long-time assistant, Franco Albini designed Tre Pezzi, a contemporary restatem...