Salone Selection
Everything you need to know about the 64th edition: dates, times, tickets, the return of EuroCucina / FTK – Technology For the Kitchen. And then the International Bathroom Exhibition, and the absolute novelties such as Salone Raritas, Salone Contract and the installation “Aurea, an Architectural Fiction”
Anna Castelli Ferrieri: form, material, and a democratic vision
Text by
Anna Castelli Ferrieri with her 4870 chair, manufactured by Kartell in 1986 and winner of the Compasso d’oro 1987
The education in Milan, the kinship with Kartell, and the belief that good design belongs in every home: the portrait of a pioneer.
Anna Castelli Ferrieri (1920–2006) was one of the most influential figures in Made in Italy design, and one of the first women in Italy to practice architecture. Her education was completely Milanese: she graduated from Politecnico di Milano – the first Italian woman to earn a degree in architecture – with a thesis on Giuseppe Mengoni and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. She spent a significant portion of her time at Franco Albini’s practice, for two years while still a student. Of that experience, she later said: “Albini taught me to feel the responsibility of a project. The two years spent in his studio were a school for morals and method.” After graduating, she worked for several years with Ignazio Gardella, first as an intern, and then as partner: it was a collaboration between two complementary masters, one of rationalist rigor and the other of compositional freedom, and it instilled in Anna a disciplined yet open-minded approach to design.
Anna Castelli Ferrieri and Giulio Castelli with the 4960 table
A home open to the world: the Ferrieri family
Anna’s family was part of the matrix from which her vision developed. As the daughter of Enzo Ferrieri – founder of the Il Convegno magazine, theatre, and club – she grew up in a home frequented by some of the greatest intellectuals of the twentieth century: Pirandello, Joyce, Thomas Mann, De Chirico, Depero, Ravel… An environment where, as she herself recalled, “everyone worked feverishly, partly because there wasn’t much money but a wealth of meetings, projects, and ideas.” It was from this intertwining of high culture and concrete sensitivity that Castelli Ferrieri formed the conviction that good design should not be a privilege, but a tool at the service of everyone’s daily life.
Journalist, architect, co-founder of ADI
Anna Castelli Ferrieri’s extensive career touched different fields: she was editor-in-chief of Casabella under directors Giuseppe Pagano and Edoardo Persico; correspondent in Italy for British magazine Architectural Design; architect at the studio she founded in 1946 upon returning to Milan after the war; co-founder of ADI in 1952. An intellectual and professional trajectory that is hard to contain. Yet Kartell was where her vision found its most fertile ground, where her design talent and democratic aspiration turned into tangible objects made for everyday life.
Olaf von Bohr, Gino Colombini, Alberto Rosselli, Ignazio Gardella, Joe Colombo, Anna Castelli, and Giotto Stoppino at the Kartell booth for the 9th Salone del Mobile, 1969
The kinship with Kartell: plastic as a designer material
In 1949, with her husband Giulio Castelli, Anna Castelli Ferrieri co-founded Kartell – where she took on the role of artistic director until 1987. The partnership brought together the husband and wife’s complementary profiles: as a chemical engineer and a student of Giulio Natta – who would go on to win the 1963 Nobel prize in Chemistry for his research on polymers – Giulio had technological and manufacturing knowledge, while Anna contributed design rigour and cultural vision. For years, Kartell experimented with plastic materials: ABS, polypropylene, polyurethane, resin… Castelli Ferrieri embraced them in her designs, allowing them the same dignity as wood and metal, certain that industrial-scale production could be achieved without compromising on quality. Author and art historian Maria Luisa Ghianda described her as “the queen of plastic”: the first designer in the world to use this material in such an effective, informal and creative way.
Anna and Giulio Castelli in front of the MoMA bookstore window, where an example of Componibili was showcased
Componibili: an icon from Salone del Mobile to MoMA
Amongst the first fruits of her work at Kartell were Componibili. They launched in a square version – the first ever piece of furniture to be injection moulded in ABS – and later were presented in the famous cylindrical design at Salone del Mobile di Milano in 1967. The modular container elements could be stacked without screws or pins thanks to a simple interlocking shape, and assembled into a variety of different compositions changing colours and the number of shelves. Componibili embodied Castelli Ferrieri’s vision of democratic design, and after fifty years are still one of Kartell’s best-selling items, as well as part of the permanent collections at MoMA in New York and Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Kartell, container system and décor objects in ABS, 1971
The 4822-44 stools: form and engineering
With the 4822-44 stools, Castelli Ferrieri proved that structural stresses, materials, chemistry, form, and aesthetics can be the ingredients of ever-changing and increasingly complex recipes. Launched in 1979, they were the result of cutting-edge advances in structural polyurethane moulding technology, which for the first time allowed for the incorporation of metal inserts into the piece. The first version had an integral polyurethane seat, later followed by variants in lighter and more resistant reinforced polypropylene. The stools were an exercise in engineering and form, where every component – seat, handle, footrest ring – represents a problem solved.
