Tecno: A Discreetly Technical Elegance

Description

The planning, production and cultural development of a company that has been one of the keystones of Italian design for almost sixty years. Writing the history of Tecno, a company founded in 1953 by the Borsani brothers, does not mean just investigating the evolution of a significant player in the industrial production of furniture, but also tracing out a fundamental chapter in interior design at a global level. Many Tecno projects have been designed by some of the most prominent international architects and designers, including Vico Magistretti, Roberto Mango, Robin Day, Gio Ponti, Mario Bellini, Norman Foster, Ricardo Bofill, Jean-Michelle Wilmotte, Emilio Ambasz, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Gae Aulenti, and Piero Lissoni. Not to mention Tecno has always had a strong bond with the world of art, which has found material form in a specific collection of furnishings designed by noted artists like Man Ray, Bruno Munari, Francois and Frederic Morellet, and Luigi Veronesi. Today many Tecno products are exhibited in leading museums of the world: at MoMA, New York and San Francisco, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Neue Sammlung, Munich, the Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal and the Triennale in Milan.

Giampiero Bosoni teaches history of design at the Politecnico di Milano. With Skira, he has published Made in Cassina (2008) and Il Modo Italiano (2007).