Zanuso, Marco

Marco Zanuso (1916–2001) was one of the most important Italian architects and designers of the twentieth century. He graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1939, where from 1960 he taught industrial design, a discipline that he made a full part of the school’s curriculum. As an architect, he designed several factories for Adriano Olivetti: in Argentina (1954-1961), Brazil (1955-1961) and Italy (Crema, Scarmagno and Marcianise 1962-1972). As a designer, he created objects that quickly became iconic, such as the Doney (1962), Algol (1964) and Black (1969-1970) televisions for Brionvega and the bathroom scales (1968), kitchen scales (1969) and letter scales (1970) for Terraillon. His many writings bear witness to his theoretical thinking on design, always rooted in the reality of production processes. Zanuso campaigned for all scales of design to be taken into account, from mass-produced products to architecture.