At Stefano Giovannoni, art and design come together

Armchairs and pots from the Stone collection for Vondom

Imaginative and innovative, the work of Italian architect and designer Stefano Giovannoni often blurs the lines between design and art. His simple and intuitive ideas have become classics, easy to integrate into modern homes. We owe him many bestsellers and highly successful products.

Italian designer Stefano Giovannoni was born in La Spezia in 1954. Graduated in Architecture in Florence in 1978, he lives and works in Milan. From 1979 to 1991 he taught and researched at the Faculty of Architecture in Florence. He was a master-professor at the Domus Academy in Milan, at the Progetto in Reggio Emilia, and professor of industrial design at the University of Architecture of Genoa. At the beginning of the 80’s, he founded, with Guido Venturini, the production group King-Kong, and collaborated with Ettore Sottsass and Alchimia-Mendini. He works not only as an architect, but also as an industrial designer and interior decorator, particularly specialized in plastic products. His explosive talent allows him to embody a complex system of affective codes in his projects. A quintessential technical designer, he has industrial design in his DNA and an unprecedented ability to understand public sentiment.

With an eye for communication and a penchant for ingenuity, Giovannoni has imagined some of the most commercially successful products in the world. He has collaborated with the renowned brand Alessi, for more than 500 steel and plastic designs: the Mami series, Il Bagno Alessi and the famous Lilliput, Magic Bunny and Merdolino, as well as the Girotondo collection, absolute bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. For Magis, he is a hit with designs such as the Bombo stool, the Paso Doble range, Chair First and Table First, which illustrate his innovative use of materials and his original thinking. Chair First, for example, is the first three-dimensional plastic chair created by injecting air, while the Bombo stool, the most copied product to date, generates a whole new typology (it goes up and down) and is so futuristic that it appears in the Star Trek movie.

Some of his projects won prizes including Design Plus at the Frankfurt Fair in 1994, 1996 and 2003, 100% Design in 1997 in London, Forum Design Hannover in 1999 and ISH in 2003, and were selected Compasso d’Oro in 1996 and 1998. It is therefore not surprising that Giovannoni’s prodigious work is present in museums around the world. His creations are part, for example, of the permanent archives of the Center Georges Pompidou and of the MoMA in New York.