Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper
Brionvega Art Products Stories
Architect Marco Zanuso (1916-2001) is undoubtedly one of the most influential designers in the realm of industry in Italy. His activity in this field, spanning over fifty years from the post-World War II era, saw him collaborating with renowned companies in the furniture and electronics sectors. Throughout his career, he designed various objects that contributed to shaping the domestic landscape of many generations, including the Grillo telephone.
He served as a consultant for Fiat and Pirelli in the 1970s, and from 1980 onwards, he was responsible for global product design at IBM. Designing a product for Zanuso meant considering every detail of the production process, bringing true revolutions in numerous sectors. For example, the Lady armchair transformed the production of upholstered furniture, moving from a single structure onto which padding could be applied and shaped to furniture composed of different parts worked on before being assembled.
Richard Sapper (1932-2015) was one of the most influential designers of his generation. In his long and prolific career, he designed a wide range of objects from automobiles to televisions, from telephones to furniture, from kitchen accessories to bicycles, earning a remarkable 11 Compasso d’Oro awards. Of German origins, he moved to Italy to join Gio Ponti’s studio in Milan. Simultaneously, Sapper worked on projects for the German company Telefunken, the Italian sewing machine company Necchi, and for Lorenz, with whom he won his first Compasso d’Oro for the Static watch (1960). His design is recognizable for its simplicity and formal rigor, behind which lie solutions of the highest technical level.
Since 1951, the meeting between the two designers marked the beginning of a long partnership, from which objects that radically revolutionized design were born. Both engaged in a collaboration with the Brionvega brand, designing the Doney television in 1962 (winner of the Compasso d’Oro), the TS502 radio cube in 1964, the Algol portable television in 1964, the Black ST201 television in 1970, and many others. All these objects are now exhibited at the MoMA in New York. Their work is distinguished by two main characteristics: operating in different fields and combining design with the innovation of technologies and materials, always keeping in mind the peculiarities of the companies involved.
In 1962, Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper designed the Doney television for Brionvega, the first compact-sized transistorized Italian television. While technologically inspired by advanced Japanese and American models, the design far surpassed international competitors.
In 1964, they created the Algol television, an evolution of the Doney. The portability of the device was definitive, and the form was even more distinctive than that of the cathode-ray tube.
In the same year, the two designers conceived the radio.cubo, a true revolution in many respects. A parallelepiped with chamfered vertices, made captivating by the use of new colors, made possible by the introduction of a new material for the radio product: ABS. The two cubes that open up and make the product’s functionality accessible represent a playful and original design, made unique by the idea of portability thanks to the retractable handle.
