Life of Franco Albini
It does not matter the span of time that one spends in this world. What matters is what someone does during that span of time, and what impact and change someone has brought. That is the best that can explain the life and times of Franco Albini. He was born on October 17 1905 and died on November 1 1977. Franco Albini was Italian, having been born in Robbiate, near Milan.
Franco Albini was a fully trained and qualified architect. He obtained his degr
ee in architecture from Politecnico di Milano University in 1929. After graduating, he began his career professionally and started working for Gio Pointi. It is at this time also that he started displaying his works at the Milan Triennale, and finally decided to start up on his own in 1930 when he opened his own practice.
Franco Albini is famously known for his Luisa and Fiorenza armchair, which had an Italian chair design. The best word that could probably be able to describe Franco Albini is a furniture design purist. At the peak of his career, Franco Albini was successfully able to merge the traditional artisanship with new forms of novelty. Franco Albini was original in his work because he tried as much as possible to use inexpensive materials that were locally available and that were raw. With this he was able to utilize the experienced Italian craftsmanship to bring out his designs.
Franco Albini’s work had stylish designs thanks to the modest aesthetics that he used and blended in with unconnected ornamentation to portray extra ordinary yet simple pieces of furniture design. His success started showing in 1939 when he made a radio out of glass to show its internal components. After that, success started flowing with the famous Margherita and Gala chairs that were made of woven cane. Franco Albini could stop at nothing to produce the best of the best.
After the success of the two chairs, he came back with a boom and astounded everyone in the designer’s world by creating the Fiorenza armchair. This he created for Arflex. Hardly had two years passed again than he created the Luisa Chair in 1955, and in 1956 he came with the Rocking Chaise for the Poggi.
In 1961, Franco Albini embarked on designing the Rome Rinascente building. Being the team player that he was and to take his work to perfection, Franco Albini joined hands with a team of other experts to design the Milan Subway stations.
Apart from Gio Ponti, where Franco Albini first worked after graduation, he worked for other renowned companies like the Cassina, Arflex, Artluce, Poggi, Brionvega and Casabella, where he worked as a writer and an editor for the Italian magazine between 1945 and 1946. He was an iconic figure, to say the least. Franco Albini was a man who lived his entire life as an architect, an interior designer and a writer and editor. He multi tasked all his titles to give the world the best in his span of life.