Marco Zanuso

Lifetime

1916–2001

Country

Italy

Marco Zanuso was born on 14 May 1916 in Milan, where he died on 11 July 2001. From 1934, he studied architecture at Politecnico di Milano (graduating in 1939), and from 1945 ran his own office. From 1952 to 1956, he was editor of “Casabelli”, and in 1956 co-founded the designers’ association ADI.

For Arflex, he designed the Antropus armchair (1949), Lady armchair (1951), Tripoltrona sofa (1952) and Sleep-o-matic (1954); the Lady armchair was awarded at the 1951 Triennale. In 1956, he designed the model 1102 sewing machine for Borletti. From the late 1950s, Zanuso worked with Richard Sapper. This period saw, among other things, the Doney (1962), Algol (1964) and Black 201 (1969) televisions and the TS 502 radio (1964) for Brionvega, the Grillo telephone for Siemens (1966), the Lambda chair for Gavina (1960) and the Hastil pen for Aurora (1970).

He received the Compasso d'Oro in 1956 and 1962 (for the Doney television), as well as a lifetime achievement award in 1994; in 1999, Politecnico di Milano awarded him an honorary doctorate. He took part in the MoMA Low-Cost Furniture competition (1948) and the exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” (1972). His work is held in collections including those of MoMA, Triennale Milano and Vitra Design Museum.