Achille Castiglioni

The name of Achille Castiglioni is evocative of a story of exceptional grandeur in the panorama of Italian creativity. Son of the great sculptor Giannino, from whom he drew much of his creative inspiration, Achille Castiglioni was born in Milan in 1918, a city where, like many other big names in Italian design, in 1944 he will graduate at the prestigious Politecnico.

Tying his name to a symbolic creation or to a building is almost impossible given the vastness of his production especially in the field of industrial design, where he established himself as one of the great of the twentieth century.

An existence studded with numerous awards and prizes that have constantly accompanied an incessant creativity. A wide repertoire characterized by the variety of objects and materials that have consecrated not only a creative instinct, the result of a very high and constantly evolving training, but an absolute mastery of the material that he has partly inherited from his father's art.

In 1944, the year of his graduation, he began his adventure in the studio founded in 1937 by his brother Pier Giacomo, a professional studio from which an intense activity would begin that would skilfully combine technique with the most advanced experimentation, especially in the use of shapes and some materials.

Architecturally, in the fifties, the two signed important projects such as the Pavilion of the Permanente and the Church of San Michele Arcangelo in Mater dei di Milano.

His work as a designer has always been supported by a prestigious academic career that has allowed him to hold the position of holder on different university professorships, both at the Politecnico di Torino and in his familiar Milanese office.

The creations

Prestigious examples of furniture such as the Bramante and Leonardo tables created for Zanotta and still true icons of style and design are attributed to his signature. As well as everyday objects such as lamps, the progenitor of which in the production of the Castiglioni brothers is certainly the Arco lamp.

Over the years, Castiglioni has never stopped accepting the challenge posed by change. Of this, the numerous acknowledgments received over time certify his undisputed creative eclecticism: from the T12 lamp to the Pitagora coffee machine.
From headphones for simultaneous translation to the design of hospital beds.

Infiniti therefore, the areas in which the artistic excellences of Achille Castiglioni have found space that leaves in 2002, year of his death, a heritage destined to leave in the world design a source of inspiration and comparison for many years still.