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Designer

	Eero Aarnio by Eero Aarnio The designer Eero Aarnio is a Finnish interior designer, well known for his innovative furniture designs in the 1960s, notably his plastic and fiberglass chairs. Aarnio studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, and started his own office in 1962. The following year Aarnio introduced his Ball Chair, a hollow sphere on a stand, open on one side to allow a person to sit within. The similar Bubble Chair was clear and suspended from above. Other innovative designs included his floating Pastil Chair , and Tomato Chair. The Eero Aarnio Screw Table had the appearance of a flat head screw driven into the ground. Aarnio's designs were an important aspect of 1960s popular culture, and could often be seen as part of sets in period science-fiction films. Because his designs used very simple geometric forms, they were ideal for such productions.
	Eero Saarinen by Eero Saarinen The designer Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and product designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism. Saarinen first received critical recognition while still working for his father, for a chair designed together with Charles Eames for the "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition in 1940, for which they received first prize. This chair, like all other Saarinen chairs was taken into production by the Knoll furniture company, founded by the Saarinen family friend Florence (Schust) Knoll together with her husband Hans Knoll. Further attention came while Saarinen was still working for his father, when he took first prize in the 1948 competition for the design of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, not completed until the 1960s. The competition award was mistakenly sent to his - at that time more renowned - father. The first major work by Saarinen, started together with his father, was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, designed very much in the rationalist Miesian style, in steel and glass, but with the added accent of panels in two shades of blue. With the success of the scheme, Saarinen was then invited by other major American corporations to design their new headquarters: these included John Deere, IBM and CBS. Despite their rationality, however, the interiors usually contained more dramatic sweeping staircases, as well as furniture designed by Saarinen, such as the Pedestal Series. In the 1950s he began to receive more commissions from American universities for campus designs and individual buildings; these include the Noyes dormitory at Vassar, and dormitories, an ice rink and an auditorium at Yale University.
	Eileen Gray by Eileen Gray The designer Eileen Gray was an Irish lacquer artist, furniture designer and architect now well-known for incorporating luxurious lacquer work into the stark International Style aesthetic. She first studied painting at London's Slade School of Art. She eventually left painting to study lacquer under the guidance of lacquer craftsman, Sugawara. In 1913, she held her first exhibition, showing some decorative panels at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs. She combined lacquer and rare woods, geometric abstraction and Japanese-inspired motifs into her work. It attracted the attention of Jacques Doucet, an art connoisseur and collector. He commissioned a few pieces – her only signed and dated creations. In 1924 Gray and Badovici began work on the house E-1027 in Roquebrune, Cap Martin in southern France (near Monaco). The codename stands for the names of the couple: E for Eileen, 10 for Jean (the tenth letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray. L-shaped and flat-roofed with floor-to-ceiling windows and a spiral stairway to the guest room, E-1027 was both open and compact. Gray designed the furniture as well as collaborated with Badovici on its structure. Her circular glass E-1027 table and rotund Bibendum armchair were inspired by the recent tubular steel experiments of Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus (who had been inspired, in turn, by Mart Stam). le Corbusier was quite impressed by the house, and built a summer house behind the house. Le Corbusier left his hark on the building in the form of several colourful wall murals.
	Elio Martinelli by Elio Martinelli
	Emanuela Frattini Magnusson by Emanuela Frattini Magnusson
	Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec The designer Treille is a system of cylindrical vases, horizontally aligned and connected by nylon belts and height-adjustable painted stainless steel tutors. A stair set can be created, made of three containers, to hang from the ceiling or from a wall. The greenery placed in the cylindrical vases finds an easy support to develop and grow vertically up to completely cover the container.
	Erwan Bouroullec by Erwan Bouroullec
	Ettore Sottsass by Ettore Sottsass The designer Ettore Sottsass was an Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. He founded the Memphis Group. Originally an architect, Sottsass became a consulting designer for typewriter manufacturer Olivetti. Ettore Sottsass is one of the leading members of the ‘Memphis’ group founded in 1981 with Barbara Radice as public relations/art director. The group’s main aim was to bring back radical designs and did so through toasters that the whole group designed together. The products that were made by the ‘Memphis’ group always had bright colours and bold patterns and were made of plastic laminate surfaces. Sottsass and Memphis were out to make a statement and to break down the barriers between high class and low class. To some, this concept would take a lifetime to happen but to others it offered freedom. The Austrian born designer, Ettore Sottsass was described as ‘a forward looking designer.’ He began his career by studying architecture at Turin Polytechnic. He was a student there for 4 years and proved his talent as he wrote articles on art and interior design with his fellow student Luigi Spazzanpan. On leaving College, Sottsass joined the Italian army for 3 years. After finishing his army duties, he worked for a group of architects and before long set up his own Milan based office in 1947, which he called ‘The Studio.’ Sottsass eventually teamed up with Olivetti as a design consultant and worked with him for over twenty years. While working with Olivetti, Sottsass made many new and different things. He designed a pop-influenced “totem”, a Valentine typewriter, Elea 9003 calculator etc. Sottsass, internationally well known as architect too, has signed important projects all over the world. Along the years of his brilliant career have had the precious cooperation of friends often become, themselves, internationally well known in architecture and design field, like Aldo Cibic, James Irvine, Matteo Thun. Last close collaborators in Sottsass's architectural workshop and firm have been the architects Maurizio Scalzi, Oliver Layseca, Marco Palmieri and Marco Dragoni.

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