Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper
Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper
1964: a year in technicolour
Marco Zanuso can be regarded as one of the founding fathers of Italian industrial design. He, together with others, has the merit of initiating the post-war debate on the “modern movement” in architecture and design. Zanuso was also one of the very first to take an interest in the problems of product industrialisation and the application of new materials and technologies to everyday objects.
In the words of Ennio Brion, “We appreciated Marco’s penchant for experimentation, not only with materials and technologies but also with behavioural values: a radio that opens is an object with a playful and performative nature, and this also applies to the Fonovaligia which, with its bivalve shell, resolves, in competition, separately defined functions.”
The Zanuso/Sapper partnership began in the 1950s when the German designer began working with the Zanuso studio. From 1956 to 1971 the pair designed a series of successful and award-winning pieces for brands such as Gavina, Kartell, Siemens and Brionvega (of course), winning countless Compasso d’Oro awards and taking their rightful place in the pantheon of global design.
1964 was a very busy year that saw them involved in three Brionvega projects that would prove highly successful and influential. Interested in recent technical developments in the processing of new materials, 1964 was a year of great experimentation for the partners.
Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper
Patricia Urquiola
Elena Salmistraro
Castiglioni brothers
Mario Bellini
Giulio Cappellini
Jasper Morrison
Nendo
Shiro Kuramata
Joe Colombo
BrogliatoTraverso
Ron Arad
Ross Lovegrove
Todd Bracher
Marc Thorpe
Nipa Doshi & Jonathan Levien
