Mar 2025 · George Isleden
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1 Milano Travelogue
2 Museum 2D at Molteni Museum
3 Elemental: embracing the force of nature
4 Documenting Design
Standing desks have a long and illustrious history: polymath Leonardo da Vinci was rumoured to have used them in the 15th century, followed by the likes of Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Early proponents commissioned high desks directly from carpenters, or used the taller shelves of bookcases, until manually adjustable sit-stand desks were invented that used hand cranks, pins, screws, or gas cylinders that compress and expand. UniFor’s latest workstation, however, the Spring System designed by architect Antonio Citterio, uses springs to counteract the weight of the desk as it rises.
When Monk re-enters Molteni&C’s catalogue this year, it will mark 35 years since the chair was last in production. “Designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, ‘Monk’ is simple and solid,” reads the company’s 1990 catalogue.
The catalogue for UniArm, the new monitor arm from UniFor, opens with a few pages of closeup photography of the arm’s sleek, hinged form, followed by a double-page spread filled with an X-ray image of the product.
Discover the history of Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela, as we celebrate the Compasso d’Oro Career Award for Products for Gio Ponti’s D.154.2 armchair.
Ponti believed that architecture should serve the lives of its occupants, creating environments that inspire and enrich daily living, and all of the life that he imagined the house would contain is scribbled on to this large sheet of tracing paper.
Like many of Gio Ponti's other pieces, the D.154.2 was conceived for a private client, the collectors Anala and Armando Planchart, as part of the project for their villa in Caracas, Venezuela.
“Ponti style” is a lifestyle that emerged through six decades of the creative practice of Gio Ponti (1891-1979).
Designers as Gio Ponti have long been attracted to the creative and intellectual freedom offered by maritime projects, and that continues to ring true today.
The Belgian architect and designer Vincent Van Duysen has become synonymous with one word: serenity.
Meeting of minds | A new generation of designers offer contrasting visions of the present.
But in addition to his homes in Antwerp and Melides, there is a place to which he has returned time and time again: Milan.
The photographer Jeff Burton is known for the cinematic quality of his work: bathers by a hotel pool become a study in saturated colour; tanned bodies are seen at one remove, distorted by mirrored surfaces; a woman’s glance is glimpsed through a car’s rearview mirror.
