With the hills, vegetation and baroque church this certainly looks like Rome, doesn't it? Great looking space that seems to be a later addition to a brick building. The large terrace, and seating area suggests that this is a hotel. Notice the Gae Aulenti lamps and Timo Sarpaneva ashtrays. And the jute-rug, which I adore. I keep on coming back to this picture. Great architecture is what it is.

Who knows more about this place?

Via Ancona, Milano

House 1:

House 2:

House 3&4:

Another set of unknown italian 60's residential housing. Italy needs stop taking this unique heritage for granted and promote it better - Milan's the design capital of the world ffs!

Osvaldo Borsani

I must admit I had never cared to sudy the work of Osvaldo Borsani (1911 - 1985) as carefuly as I should have, but afer actually seeing his famous 1954 designed P40 lounge chair in Milano the other week, I needed to find out more about the strangely out-of-time designer and his unique work. Him and his brother founded the apptly-titled furniture producing-firm Tecno in 1953, and if I understand things correctly, he had by the end of his career collaborated with a respectable group of like-mindeds, including Norman Foster, Renzo Piano and Gae Aulenti.

Oz believed that design should work alongside technical innovations...

He also made some very nice shelving systems:

Franco Albini

Franco Albini (b. 1905 d. 1977) is the name of the the italian neo-rationalist, proto-high tech architect/designer, whose Milan 1940 apartment we see above and further down the page. A one-off sailboat inspired bookshelf-prototype from 1938 acted as a space divider (until it collapsed); it has now been meticously re-constructed and reproduced by the technicians of Cassina. Originaly built from ready-made industrial components, its current price from Cassina should spur any Do-It-Yourself-ers to the challenge of creating one's own. Also notice the paintings hung on poles in the middle of the rooms.

If you imagine yourself seeing traces of Gio Ponti's work, then you just may be right (or lucky): Albini worked for Uncle Joe for a year after graduating from architecture school in 1929 (Politecnico di Milano. The year after he set up his own shop). Having said that, the differences in their respectice works are vast. Compared to the structure-driven designs of Albini, Ponti can come of as a luxurious décorateur; Albini instead focusing on devoting his time to designing for the common man.

Desk from 1950 for Knoll, based on a 1938 design.

The 1959 Tre Pezzi chair, inspired by the bergère`. For Carlo Poggi, Pavia, now reissued by Cassina.

Edificio per uffici INA - Parma, 1950 - 54

Galleria di Palazzo Rosso - Genova, 1952 - 62

And last but not least: The breakthrough:

A glass radio. From 1938! (Guten Morgen Schneewittchensarg!) Presented at the 1940 Wohnbedarf-exhibition in Zürich.

source: fondazione franco albini

Piazza Carlo Mirabella, Milan

Fantastic house by a to me unknown architect. Perhaps You, the Reader, know something about it?

Marble Floors of Milan

Cardinal Sin

 

Dante Terzegni

via ffffound

Inspiration 60's

Piece on inspiration from the sixties, by Elle Interiör

Shot at the Italian Institute C.M. Lerici, in Stockholm

Here's another Kasthall rug by Gunilla Lagerhem Ullberg: