Brionvega
Brionvega
Vega is the brightest star in the Lyra constellation, the fifth brightest in the night sky, and the second brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere.
Founded in Milan in 1945 under the name BP Radio S.r.l., the company assumed its definitive form and name in 1960 when engineer Pajetta left the company. Entirely under the control of the Brion’s from then on, the company entered the world of industrial design and took on the new name Brion Vega Radio Televisione S.a.s. Thus was born the Brionvega brand and company, one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Italian design.
The Brionvega philosophy immediately led the Brion brand to develop a very personal view of material culture. The production of consumer objects, the multiplication of products, is always counterbalanced by a particular spiritual vocation that is reflected in the decision to create objects that are not just objects but means of communication, tools, not only purely products. Tools, therefore, that can be used to do many different things, that reflect the aspirations, dreams, desires and convictions of their users: neutral and apolitical, therefore, yet aesthetically unforgettable and unmistakable.
In the early 1960s, the newly-founded Brionvega entrusted the revitalisation of the brand’s interior design principles to the architect duo Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper. The two designed a series of famous objects for Brionvega and helped give Brion an internal dynamism that would shape its path for years to come.
It is no coincidence that Zanuso, Sapper and Ennio Brion visited NASA in the 1960s. The experience must have been inspirational for the design creativity and enterprise of the three men.
In fact, in the 1960s Brionvega designed a number of pieces that rightfully took their place alongside other classics of the Space Age.
The space age aesthetic was characterised by futuristic and avant-garde objects with a clear utopian reference to a world in which travelling and living in space was part of everyday life.
Coloured plastics and reflective metals dominated the scene for a decade, giving designs a futuristic flair.
Dating to the same period is the construction of the factory in Asolo, Treviso, designed by Marco Zanuso himself, which has become one of the symbols of Industria Felix: bright, open and in the purest spirit of Adriano Olivetti. The factory in Asolo was soon populated by workers with exceptional industrial and artisan expertise, just when companies in the electronics sector were investing in machinery and automation to increase their competitiveness. BRIONVEGA decided to put its eggs in a different basket: it invested in complex products, genuine artistic objects such as the radiofonografo and the Totem, and gambled on manufacturing excellence, training workers and craftsmen to produce these highly sophisticated and unique objects.
Brionvega and its designers learned how to write the future through the lines of objects like the Castiglioni brothers’ radiofonografo, Zanuso/Sapper’s Radiocubo and Bellini’s Totem.
And so, after sixty years, Brionvega continues to sparkle and shine high in the sky of Italian design, just like the bright star from which it takes its name.
