Zanotta – Maggiolina armchair

“A Cinderella that turns into a Princess,” we could write, to paraphrase Aurelio Zanotta about the process that led to the creation of the Maggiolina lounge chair. Starting from the hypothesis of an inexpensive, dismantable armchair, it was designed by Marco Zanuso towards the end of the 1940s for a competition held by the MoMA of New York.

It had a structure of curved steel tubing from which a burlap ‘bag’ was hung, the ‘pockets’ of which contained two panels of plywood, inserted to support the two padded cushions used as seat and backrest.

While designing the lounge chair Maggiolina in 1947, Zanuso experimented a brand new construction system conceived for the serial industrial production, giving up the traditional concept of an armchair with frame made with artisan techniques.

Marco Zanuso

Marco Zanuso; (1916-2001) was one of the major interpreters of modern culture, as an architect, designer and university professor. He trained at the Politecnico di Milano and, after the war, co-director of Domus magazine with Ernesto N. Rogers, he was awarded several times the Gold Medal and the Grand Prix of the Milan Triennale and five Compassi d'Oro.

The designer was one of the first planners in Italy to take an interest in the problems of product industrialization, going beyond the aesthetic question to incorporate technological, industrial, distributive and communicative variables. The shape of an object intended for serial reproduction, according to the designer, is therefore a synthesis of opportunities, experiments and innovations located in the concrete process that links creativity, production and the socio-cultural context. “I am interested in giving shape to what I call complexity through design”.

Zanotta

Founded in 1954, Zanotta is recognized as one of the major protagonists of the history of Italian design. In particular since the 1960s, guided by the intuition and extraordinary entrepreneurial ability of its founder Aurelio Zanotta, conquer the international scene thanks to emblematic products for formal innovation. The technological research supported by the continuous evolution of the quality of materials and production processes is one of the best in the world. The cultured and precious history of Zanotta is renewed in 2017 in the union with Tecno starting a common project. This implies the consequent strengthening of synergies and commercial strategies at the international level under the guidance of Giuliano Mosconi. It brings irony to the domestic universe, which suggests different ways to feel better in the world of the home, which for the first time has included in its catalog the works of the great masters of design, creating an unparalleled "collection" of masterpieces, awarded and exhibited in the most important design museums.