Livio Castiglioni & Gianfranco Frattini

Livio Castiglioni, the eldest of the three Castiglioni brothers, took his diploma in architecture at the Milan Polytechnic in 1936. In 1938 Livio Castiglioni and his younger brother Pier Giacomo opened a practice in Milan's Piazza Castello, which the younger Castiglioni brother , Achille, would join in 1944. Architecture commissions were very rare at the time so the Castiglionis concentrated mainly on the design of useful objects for everyday use, both furniture and appliances. In 1939 Livio and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni designed "Phonola", a radio that represented a principle because it was encased in Bakelite instead of wood. In 1952 Livio Castiglioni left the joint practice. From 1940 to 1960 Livio Castiglioni was design consultant for Phonola, from 1960 to 1964 for Brionvega. The three Castiglionis were very active on the Italian design scene and, in 1956, were among the founders of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale (ADI: the Italian Industrial Design Association), which awards the coveted and important Compasso d'Oro. 1959-1960 Livio Castiglioni was president of ADI. Livio Castiglioni's best known design object is the "Boalum" lamp, which he and Gianfranco Frattini designed for Artemide , in 1971. The lamp consists of a flexible piece of white plastic tubing, two meters long, in which several pilots stand in a row. The tube can be bent and twisted as desired and up to four of these lamps can be linked together for a total length of 8 meters. Gianfranco Frattini (May 15, 1926 – April 6, 2004) was an Italian architect and designer. He is a member of the generation that created the Italian design movement in the 1950s through the 1960s.