But what lies behind these masterpieces of design that have graced the homes of Italians and inspired generations of designers? Passionate individuals, fruitful collaborations, insights drawn from everyday life, and a rich historical and cultural context ignited the explosion of what we now know as Italian design.
In a journey across the 20th century, we retrace the story of the Castiglioni brothers, Vico Magistretti and Gae Aulenti - among the great "Masters of Light" - to celebrate their bold personalities, creative brilliance and the iconic objects they left behind.
The Castiglioni brothers and the 'shape of usefulness'
"In our family life, Livio always made us feel like pioneers, always enjoying playing at doing things that couldn't be done without overdoing it. The craziest of the wise and the wisest of the crazy".Achille Castiglioni's words about his older brother, shared in Flare magazine (1999), capture the siblings' commitment to experimentation and their knack for creating designs that no one had ever envisioned.
Milan in the 1950s and '60s was a cradle for postwar prosperity, offering fertile terrain for the intellectual vibrancy of young architects and designers beginning their professional lives. But above all, it was a time of profound social change when living spaces became fluid and adaptable.
These decades saw exhibitions and art shows – like the Milan Triennials – propelling Italian design to international recognition, chronicling societal shifts, and anticipating groundbreaking trends and innovations. They served as hubs of exchange, diffusion, experimentation, and cultural energy, paving the way for fruitful collaborations between designers and manufacturers. During this period, the architectural firm founded by Livio Castiglioni and later taken over by his two younger brothers, Achille and Pier Giacomo, began creating the first prototypes for furniture destined to become timeless classics.
A topical moment came with the 1957 Villa Olmo exhibition "Colors and Shapes in Today's House" in Como, where the Castiglioni brothers presented a series of objects that synthesized their language, blending historical influences with modern aesthetics, where functionality and minimalism were interpreted with a dose of irony.
The Luminator lamp, featured in the exhibit, epitomizes their approach. With a simple tripod and austere stature, the iconic indirect light lamp is pure functional minimalism: by directing light upwards, it shielded lateral emission, emphasizing practicality. "Luminator," said Achille Castiglioni, "was our response to the demand for a 'form of the useful' for Italian industry".
By the 1960s, some family-run or artisanal companies like Arflex, Kartell, Cassina, and Gavina were evolving into industrial-scale operations, seeking out young architects to push the boundaries of design and production.
"The birth of Italian design," observed Vico Magistretti, "owes much to the close dialogue between production and design: producers who wanted to change, grow, evolve, which is why it has lasted since 1960".
In their small workshop in Merano, Dino Gavina and Cesare Cassina experimented with new materials to bring workshop production to an industrial scale.
Meanwhile, entrepreneur Arturo Eisenkeil introduced Cocoon, an innovative polymer coating imported from the United States - a new type of fiberglass-reinforced spray plastic designed to protect decommissioned warships.
Eisenkeil imagined using it to coat steel structures to create new forms by using a spray process similar to the production of cotton candy. The texture created by applying the resin seemed ideal for letting light through, creating a warm and inviting effect.
So why not experiment with the potential of Cocoon specifically for lighting? The three entrepreneurs began working together to create Flos.
The meeting between Castiglioni and Dino Gavina at the 10th Milan Triennale marked a turning point. A fruitful collaboration was born between the fledgling company and the Castiglioni brothers, sparking the designers' interest in lighting design.
"Project research," argued Achille Castiglioni, "is not an isolated endeavor, but rather a collective effort of many people within their specific competences, from different disciplines and interests, which are found in the designer's project, resulting in the expressive synthesis of important collective work."
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni with M. Breuer and Taraxacum and Viscontea lamps, Flos, 1962
Lamps with strictly functional organic geometries followed, translating a conceptual minimalism charged with irony and distortion, in line with the Surrealist and Dadaist movements of the first decades of the 20th century.
The Castiglioni lamps represent the two brothers' approach to design based on transforming ordinary objects into iconic pieces by drawing inspiration from everyday life.
"We took one of those street lamps and had the courage to bring it into the house," said Achille of Arco, the 1962 lamp that eliminated the need for ceiling lighting. A telescopic arch, a marble base as a counterweight, and a perforated diffuser to dissipate heat. Precise, clean, geometric. Each part of Arco serves a purpose, allowing a large area to be illuminated from a single point on the floor, leaving space around the work table.
Starting with intelligent questions, the two designers provided new lighting to meet the new housing needs of the time.
In a 1970 interview, Achille Castiglioni recalled the design of Taccia, "We certainly didn't have prestige in mind when we designed it; we just wanted to create a cooling surface that would disperse heat".
Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni with Taccia lamp, Flos - Courtesy Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas
The brilliance of the luminous icons created by the Castiglionis lies in "a continuous replay," as Achille's son Carlo Castiglioni explains. "The end result is something that must not only be seen, used, heard, but also touched and felt in its three-dimensional reality".
Vico Magistretti's "telephone projects"
In the same period, Ludovico "Vico" Magistretti, another young Milanese architect, began collaborating with manufacturers like Artemide, Cassina and Gavina. From the 1960s, he began to specialize in furniture design in a context of growing interest in domestic architecture. A child of Italian Rationalism, an architectural movement in which form is a direct consequence of function, Magistretti created simple, clean, no-frills geometric objects. Effective and functional projects evolved around a strong idea, perfect for the serial production that was developing at the time. His lamps are now part of the international collective imagination and remain classics of contemporary production."What I believe should be done is simplicity, which is the hardest thing in the world," Magistretti explained in his design philosophy, where form is derived from the object's specific function.
"In a lamp, the most important thing is the light". His lamps are a juxtaposition of elementary geometries, which is why he did not make drawings of his designs, believing that all the necessary information could be transmitted by telephone. For Magistretti, communication with production was fundamental to good design.
An emblematic example is the famous Eclisse. Ernesto Gismondi, the founder of Artemide, asked the architect to create a lamp that could solve the problem of adjusting the intensity of light sources. Magistretti himself recounted that in 1965 while reading Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables on the Milan metro, he came across the description of the blind lantern used by Jean Valjean to play the thief. Hence, the inspiration!
A sketch on the back of the metro ticket and a simple phone call to his assistant describing the idea were enough to create the new lighting icon.
In the space age, with the launch of Sputnik, Magistretti and Artemide created a table lamp in which the internal rotating shade allows the light source to be "darkened" by adjusting the intensity of the light. A juxtaposition of three hemispheres creates the concept. Nothing else is needed.
"The ability to communicate one's design with words," the designer argued, "requires a very clear concept. The end result is very close to people, with a kind of immediate attunement".
Magistretti's "concept design" is what makes his products enduring, transcending fashions and styles. Conceived in the same period as Eclisse, the Chimera floor and table lamp is "a very simple geometric shape of three cylinders in semi-transparent plastic," according to the designer. The project was communicated "by phone without drawings," its configuration depending on the resistance of the material: an opalescent methacrylate sheet on which a serpentine shape of three cylinders is imprinted by hot bending, making it self-supporting.
In the 1970s, after taking on the role of art director of Oluce, Magistretti designed Atollo, a lamp that changed the conception of the classic table lamp. "I thought of showing three different lights depending on the parts of the lamp. A dark dome (which hides the lamp), a very bright and very white cone, and a gray cylindrical base. It would look good on a table".
Maintaining respect for his own tradition within the framework of mass production, Magistretti imbues his lamps - and his design approach more broadly - with a typically Milanese sobriety, complemented by a touch of irony and lightness, well expressed by the so-called 'Vico red', visible in some versions of his most iconic lamps. With his distinctive 'red socks', he embodied the image of an authoritative professional who didn't take himself too seriously.
Gae Aulenti and site-specific lighting
Architect Gae Aulenti approached design differently, believing that "a lamp is not a machine for producing light, but a form in harmony with its intended context".Educated in Milan in the 1950s, Aulenti made her way into a world that had previously been reserved for men. She rejected the austere lines of Fascist era architecture to distance herself from a regime that openly hindered women's emancipation. She thus became a leading proponent of Neoliberty. In open opposition to the prevailing Rationalism embraced by other leading designer, her projects revived a taste for ornament and decoration.
A versatile personality who worked in interior, furniture, showroom, exhibition, and set design, in the 1960s, Gae Aulenti developed a fruitful dialog with FontanaArte, a lighting brand born from the meeting between Gio Ponti and Luigi Fontana.
This union led to products that revealed the designer's innovative approach to form and material. Among them, the Giova lamp marks the designer's debut in the field of designer lighting. Giova is a cross between a vase and a lamp - a true light sculpture in glass.
The Olivetti showrooms in Paris and Buenos Aires thrust Gae Aulenti onto the international architectural scene as a leading figure, giving us Pipistrello, a site-specific lamp for the Paris showroom. In the design of the showroom, which follows the "idea of creating a real Piazza d'Italia" with "steps, different levels and continuity in space," as Aulenti explains, Pipistrello was intended to highlight the individuality of the typewriters by contrasting them.
The elusive shape of the conical base spreads upwards and widens into the ribs of the diffuser, like unfolding bat wings, in a decorative reinterpretation of the Greek column.
Following an encounter with entrepreneur Elio Martinelli, arranged by the founder of Poltronova, with whom Aulenti collaborated, Pipistrello entered industrial production and became the iconic lamp that has survived to the present day.
Following Pipistrello, the designer and Martinelli Luce created other emotionally charged products, like Ruspa, that could endow space with great character.
By the end of the 1970s, she took over the artistic direction of FontanaArte. She began to collaborate with other prominent figures in design, including lighting designer Piero Castiglioni, Livio's son, with whom she created the Parola lamp, among others. It is an exemplary model of the technical integration of craft and industry, in which three different glass types and processes coexist in a single object: blown, natural and natural crystal.
When Gae Aulenti and Piero Castiglioni had to develop a lighting system to meet the needs of the new gallery at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, they had to come up with ideas and solutions that could not be achieved with existing commercial products: they had to design something new.
Cestello projector at the exhibition dedicated to Gae Aulenti - Reproduction Palazzo Grassi, Triennale Milano - Ph. Luca Rotondo
After an initial, almost artisanal object designed specifically for Palazzo Grassi, the Marche-based company recognized the projector's great potential and decided to initiate a process of engineering and industrialization undertaken by Aulenti, Castiglioni and Fiat, the then-owner of Palazzo Grassi.
Since then, the Cestello projector has illuminated some of the world's most prestigious cultural institutions, such as Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, Le Samaritaine in Paris, and Galleria Borghese in Rome.
An eclectic and determined designer, Gae Aulenti considered the study of light and its diffusion in space as the basis of many of her projects. Unlike other masters of her time, she did not design specifically for industrial production but for the uniqueness of the given context.
Aulenti once reflected, "I have almost never designed lamps in isolation. My lamps are a consequence of specific spaces; some later went into production".
