Mez z adro a design by Achille Castiglioni

Mez z adroa design by Achille Castiglioni

ACHILLECASTIGLIONI

Italian architect and designer, to whom The Museum of Modern Art dedicates this first individual retrospective in the United States, is an internationally acknowledged master of design. During his fifty-two-year career, he has designed and collab orated on almost 150 objects, including lamps, stools, bookshelves, electrical switches, cameras, telephones, vacuum cleaners, and car seats.

With his functional and purist yet playful objects, Castiglioni has shown that form and function, while certainly the main ingredients for successful design, cannot be a designer’s only concerns. He views the world as a wonderful catalogue of objects that provide ideas and guidance, and his own work is often inspired by everyday things. The designer’s personal collection of found objects, gathered over a lifetime of curiosity, consists of objects with lives of their own.

It is made of four pieces: the seat, a large wing screw, a leaf spring and a cross bar. Even the special fixing system employs a familiar object used for braking bicycle wheels, a large wing screw that permits fixing everything securely without need of screwdrivers or spanners. The seat is in stamped, enamelled metal; the stainless steel leaf spring supporting the seat, which acts as a shock absorber in a tractor, here is turned the opposite way to make the seat springier. The wooden cross bar (solid beech), which vaguely resembles a yoke, furnishes two additional points of support needed to make the seat stable.

Dimensions:19.3" W 20.1" H20.1" D

“What you need is a constant and consistent way of designing, not a style”

Achille Castiglioni

M e z z a d r oMeaning ‘sharecropper ’ in Italian, Mezzadro was originally designed in the early 20th century and was part of Castiglioni’s ‘ready-made’ series from found objects.

Mezzadro is now made of a chromium-plated steel stem, allowing for flexibility and comfort, steam-treated beech foot-rest in a natural finish, and an aluminum seat lacquered in your choice of six vibrant colors.

Achille Cas tiglioni ’s imaginative forms and simplistic designs have made him one of the most influential figures in Italian design. Founder of the Association for Industrial design in 1956 and recipient of many awards including 7 Compasso d’Oro awards.

Start

from scra

tch.

Stick to

common sense.

Know your goals and m

eans

“

”

Achille Castig

lioni

COLOPHONMezzadro, a design by Achille Castiglioni

Cristina Hernandez - cristinahrivero@gmail.com

Created for GC239_02 I Graphic Design

Professor Jeffrey Bleitz

Ringling College of Art + Design

Fall 2011

Sources:

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1997/castiglioni/essay.html

http://hivemodern.com/pages/products.php?sid=1886

http://www.achillecastiglioni.it/