The Castiglioni experiment with the process of new forms and techniques of industrial production and unpublished materials by creating furniture for Zanotta such as the Mezzadro stool designed from a tractor saddle or the iconic luminaries edited by Flos.
They bring a resolutely contemporary lighting to the technical question of light by imagining for the sign three absolutely iconic luminaries: The ghostly and aristocratic Viscontea made up of a membrane patented by the American army, stretched on a wire frame of metal, then Toïo, a floor lamp reduced to its simplest functional expression from a car headlight and finally the radiant Arco, with its Carrara marble base, a kind of iconoclastic homage to the incomparable grandeur of Italy’s artistic heritage .
Until the death of Pier Giacomo in 68, the charismatic design of Castiglioni, crowned by 8 Compas d’Or and a consecration by the MoMA of New York will continue to infuse in Italian design and inspire generations of creators .
In the economy of means sometimes very “ready-made” and the recourse to recycled industrial elements with a sense of incongruity and a gently poetic irony, the iconic creations of Castiglioni are a little the Arte Povera of design.
