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May 30 - June 6, 2004 |
Beautiful Gestures From A Designer
Design an agent of change says renowned and fame Italian architect Anna Castelli Ferrieri
By Mark Curtis
Originally Published: 2003-08-10
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Anna Castelli Ferrieri
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Although a committed modernist, Milan architect and designer Anna Castelli Ferrieri has not subscribed to the modernist maxim that "form follows function". Instead, the legendary designer, perhaps best known internationally for helping to legitimize plastic in the 1960s as a material for domestic objects, has put a premium on beauty throughout her remarkable career. "It is not true that useful is beautiful," says Castelli Ferrieri. "It is beautiful that is useful. Why? Because it changes the world".
High ideals and aspirations, it seems, have always been a part of the life and work of Castelli Ferrieri. Her father Enzo Ferrieri, a prominent journalist, established Milan's Il Convegno theatre and an artistic circle that included James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Maurice Ravel. In 1943, she was one of the first women to graduate with an architecture degree from the Politecnico di Milano. That same year she married childhood sweetheart Giulio Castelli, who six years later would found Italian manufacturer Kartell.
With the respected modernist architect Franco Albini as her mentor and the task for a new generation of architects to rebuild Italy after the second World War, Castelli Ferrieri had a rigourous approach and an important canvas from the start of her career. "(Albini) trained me to feel the responsibility, above all moral responsibility, which you take on when you dedicate yourself to architecture or to design, which is a decision very high up on the ladder of human activities," she has said. Recognition for her work came early on in her career when she earned a gold medal at the Milan Triennale of 1947 for her design of a steel tube armchair and a child's bed. But those early years of her work were primarily concerned with urban planning and housing designs.
Castelli Ferrieri began collaborating with fellow architect Ignazio Gardella in 1959 and their professional partnership yielded significant projects such as Kartell's corporate headquarters at Binasco, Milan (1966 and 1973) and the engineering offices of Alfa Romeo at Arese. Castelli Ferrieri also designed municipal buildings such as the Pordenone city hall (1963-73).
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