Exclusive Achille Castiglioni by Modborn

Achille Castiglioni (February 26, 1918 - December 2, 2002) was a renowned Italian industrial designer. He was often inspired by everyday things and made use of ordinary materials. He preferred to use a minimal amount of materials to create forms with maximal effect.

Achille Castiglioni was born in Milan and studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano University and set up a design office in 1944 with his brothers, Livio Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. In 1956, Castiglioni founded the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (Association for Industrial Design, ADI).[3]

Castiglioni taught for many years, first at the Politecnico di Torino. In 1969 and later he led a class in Industrial Design at the faculty of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, teaching several thousand students.

Castiglioni has exhibited his designs at every Milan Triennial since 1947 and has received seven Compasso d'Oro awards. Most of Castilglioni's products are design classics and are still in production under licence. The Museum of Modern Art has some of his most important designs in its permanent collection.

In 1962 the brothers introduced "Arco", a floor lamp with a long, curved arm extending eight feet from the marble base which had to be moved by two people inserting a broomstick through the hole in the base.

Their Snoopy Lamp of 1967 was a table lamp, indeed inspired by the cartoon character, also had a marble base, which stabilized the egg-shaped metal and glass shade. Their "Toio" (1962) lamp again used the PDC method, using a car reflector as its inspiration. Their lighting system for the Montecatini pavilion at the Milan Fair in 1962 featured cone shaped lights suspended from wires.

The Castiglionis also designed the "RR126" stereo system (1965), which was meant to be a "musical pet." The dials and controls form the shape of a face, with the speakers as ears. This design, for Brionvega, was free standing, with casters to make it mobile, and the speakers folded up when not in use, to make the design more compact.