Livio Castiglioni
Born(1911-01-16)16 January 1911
Milan, Kingdom of Italy
Died30 April 1979(1979-04-30) (aged 68)
Milan, Italy
EducationPolitecnico di Milano
Known for
  • Architecture
  • Design
Tabletop radio designed for Phonola SA in 1939 (with Luigi Caccia Dominioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni)
Boalum lamp designed for Artemide in 1969–1970 (with Gianfranco Frattini)
Castiglioni family portrait with brothers Achille, Livio (centre), and Pier Giacomo (1922)

Livio Castiglioni (16 January 1911 – 30 April 1979) was an Italian architect and designer. He made a significant contribution to twentieth-century Italian lighting design and was an early proponent of the practice of industrial design in Italy.[1][2][3]

Early life and education

Livio Castiglioni was born in Milan on 16 January 1911, the son of Livia Bolla and the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni, and the elder brother of the architects Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni.[4][5]

He received a degree in architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1936 and subsequently went into practice with his brother Pier Giacomo and Luigi Caccia Dominioni. After the Second World War the youngest Castiglioni brother, Achille, joined their architecture and design studio; in the mid-1950s Livio left to establish his own design practice.[4]

Work and career

Much of the early work of the Castiglioni brothers was in exhibition design, although they also carried out a number of architectural projects, including the reconstruction in 1952–1953 of the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan, which had been destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943.[6]

Livio Castiglioni designed products for companies such as Alessi, Artemide, FontanaArte, and Stilnovo.[7][8][9] One of his first works of industrial design was the 1939 "F.I.M.I. – Phonola 547" tabletop radio, which is amongst the earliest examples of this product typology to challenge traditional shapes and aesthetics, making it a turning point in the history of Italian industrial design.[10][11] He was a consultant to Phonola until 1956 and then for Brionvega from 1960 to 1964.[9]

In 1969–1970 he and Gianfranco Frattini designed the "Boalum" light for Artemide (the name combines "Boa" and "lum" from "lume", an Italian word for light). The design was still in production in 2023, over fifty years after it was first manufactured.[12][13][14][15]

Castiglioni was one of the founding members of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale in Milan and was its president in 1959–1960.[8] He is also credited as being the originator of the Compasso d'Oro award.[16]

Working as a lighting designer throughout the 1960s and 1970s Castiglioni collaborated with many of his contemporaries such as the architects Gae Aulenti, Cini Boeri, Cesare Maria Casati and Roberto Menghi, as well as his son Piero.[17][18]

Legacy

Castiglioni died in Milan on 30 April 1979 and is buried in the cemetery of Chiaravalle.

Examples of his work are held in the collection of museums such as the National Science and Technology Museum and ADI Design Museum in Milan, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam, the Saint Louis Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[19][20][21][22][23][24]

Reflecting on his friendship with the Castiglionis, the designer Massimo Vignelli said:

In reality, the Castiglioni brothers were one person. Symbiosis of thought, creative ability, inspiration and execution were an integral part of their being. Talking to one of them or all three of them was the same, they were completely interchangeable, same voice, same accent, same grin, same laughter, same gestures. They were the Castiglioni, like their work, indivisible fruit of the same research, of the same passion, of a great ability to transform the world around us into a new memorable gesture.[25]

In 2014 the city of Milan named a street after the three Castiglioni brothers (Via Fratelli Castiglioni).[26][27]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Livio Castiglioni.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Livio Castiglioni.
  1. ↑ Campbell, Gordon, ed. (2006). "Castiglioni". The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts. Oxford University Press. p. 208. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195189483.001.0001. ISBN 9780195324945.
  2. ↑ Scodeller, Dario (2003). Livio e Piero Castiglioni: il progetto della luce [Livio and Piero Castiglioni: lighting projects] (in Italian). Milano: Electa. ISBN 88-370-2056-2. OCLC 52771344.
  3. ↑ Myerson, Jeremy (1990). Lamps and Lighting. Sylvia Katz. Boston, MA: Springer New York. ISBN 978-1-4684-6661-4. OCLC 852790619.
  4. 1 2 "Il design dei Castiglioni" [The Design of the Castiglionis]. Archiportale – Edilportale S.p.A. (in Italian). Retrieved 26 October 2022.
  5. ↑ Scodeller, Dario, ed. (2019). Il design dei Castiglioni: ricerca, sperimentazione, metodo = The design of the Castiglioni brothers: research, experimentation, method. Host institution is Galleria Harry Bertoia. Mantova. ISBN 978-88-7570-750-7. OCLC 1085670034.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ↑ Bergamasco, Porzia (5 September 2013). "100 volte Castiglioni. Una mostra a Vicenza ricorda Pier Giacomo Castiglioni nel centenario della nascita" [100 times Castiglioni. An exhibition in Vicenza commemorates Pier Giacomo Castiglioni on the centenary of his birth]. Living (in Italian). Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  7. ↑ "Livio e Pier Giacomo Castiglioni". Alessi Spa (in Italian). Retrieved 30 October 2022.
  8. 1 2 "Artemide – Livio Castiglioni". www.artemide.com. Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  9. 1 2 "Livio Castiglioni". www.fontanaarte.com. Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  10. ↑ Sparke, Penny (1988). Design in Italy: 1870 to the present (1 ed.). New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-89659-884-5. OCLC 17548762.
  11. ↑ "Phonola - FIMI Castiglioni 547 Tipo L - radioricevitore" [Phonola - FIMI Castiglioni 547 Type L – tabletop radio]. Lombardia Beni Culturali [Lombardy Cultural Heritage].
  12. ↑ "Artemide – Boalum". www.artemide.com. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  13. ↑ Bosoni, Giampiero (2008). Italian design. Museum of Modern Art. New York: MoMA. ISBN 978-0-87070-738-4. OCLC 216939341.
  14. ↑ Raimondi, Giuseppe (1990). Italian living design: three decades of interiors. London: Tauris Parke. ISBN 1-85043-258-9. OCLC 21873572.
  15. ↑ "Boalum — Gianfranco Frattini". gianfrancofrattini.com. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  16. ↑ "Castiglioni, Livio". Fondazione Fiera Milano (in Italian). Retrieved 13 November 2022.
  17. ↑ Krzentowski, Clémence; Krzentowski, Didier (2012). The complete designers' lights (1950–1990): 30 years of collecting. Zurich: JRP/Ringier. ISBN 978-3-03764-199-6. OCLC 769430303.
  18. ↑ "Livio and Piero Castiglioni". Bottega Ghianda. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  19. ↑ ""Boalum" Lamp, 1967". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  20. ↑ "Livio Castiglioni | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  21. ↑ "Blow-Up: Graphic Abstraction in 1960s Design". Saint Louis Art Museum (Past exhibition archival summary describing it as conceived while on view.). Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  22. ↑ "Livio Castiglioni". Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  23. ↑ "Radio n° 547, Livio Castiglioni and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (1939–1940)". Centre Pompidou. Retrieved 13 November 2022.
  24. ↑ "ADI – Associazione per il Disegno Industriale" [ADI – Industrial Design Association]. www.adi-design.org (in Italian). Retrieved 13 November 2022.
  25. ↑ Vignelli, Massimo. "Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, ovvero il coraggio della modestia". Professore Architetto Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (in Italian). Archived from the original on 23 June 2021. Retrieved 23 February 2023. In realtà i fratelli Castiglioni erano una sola persona. La simbiosi di pensiero, la capacità creativa, l'ispirazione e l'esecuzione erano parte integrante del loro essere. Parlare con uno di loro o con tutti e tre di loro era lo stesso, erano completamente intercambiabili, stessa voce, stesso accento, stesso ghigno, stessa risata, stessi gesti. Erano i Castiglioni, come il loro lavoro, frutto indivisibile di una stessa ricerca, di una stessa passione, di una grande abilità a trasformare il mondo che ci sta intorno in un nuovo memorabile gesto.
  26. ↑ "Via Fratelli Castiglioni in Milano". Nuove Strade [New Streets] (in Italian). 29 November 2001. Retrieved 13 November 2022.
  27. ↑ "Via Fratelli Castiglioni, Milano". Ordine degli Architetti [Order of Architects]. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
Boalum lighting (illuminated)
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