Gianfranco Frattini
Gianfranco Frattini was born in Padua in 1926 to a Milanese lawyer and the scion of a prominent Bergamo family. While he was still very young, they moved back to Milan – a city with which Frattini would be intimately associated for the rest of his life. He earned an architecture degree from the Politecnico di Milano in 1953, joining the cohort of polymath Milanese architects and designers who would drive the post-war renaissance of Italian design.
“My father's approach to lighting was to see it as an integral part of the project. He always said that you can have a wonderful project and then you can ruin it with the wrong lighting. ”
- Emmanuela Frattini Magnusson
MEMORIES OF YOUTH
Gianfranco Frattini was born in Padua in 1926 to a Milanese lawyer and the scion of a prominent Bergamo family. While he was still very young, they moved back to Milan – a city with which Frattini would be intimately associated for the rest of his life. He earned an architecture degree from the Politecnico di Milano in 1953, joining the cohort of polymath Milanese architects and designers who would drive the post-war renaissance of Italian design.
CREATIVE ALCHEMY
Shortly before graduating, Frattini joined the practice of his former professor, the legendary architect Gio Ponti, the figurehead behind the ‘Made in Italy’ movement. It was through Ponti’s studio that Frattini met the likes of Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, and Cesare Cassina, the latter of which became a lifelong friend and collaborator. Indeed, when a lounge chair prototype that Frattini had created for a competition failed to win, it was Cassina who encouraged him to put it into production anyway – the first of many Frattini pieces produced for Cassina over the decades that followed.
DESIGN DUET
In 1956, Frattini founded his own practice with fellow architect and friend Franco Bettonica, who left in 1962. Always wide-ranging, Frattini’s projects varied from furniture for the likes of Cassina and Bernini to cookware for Lagostina. He also undertook high-profile commissions for iconic venues across Italy, including interiors in Capri and Portofino, and Milanese landmarks such as the Stork Club and St. Andrews Restaurant, for which he famously created a rosewood parquet ceiling.
HOLISTIC HARMONY
Frattini’s attention to often-overlooked elements of a space such as the ceiling exemplifies his approach to design. Where many designers treated a room as a ‘white box’ to be filled and furnished, Frattini believed in a concept of ‘total design,’ in which the entirety of the space is considered holistically. For him, the ceiling was the ‘fifth elevation,’ of equal importance and interest to Frattini as the walls or the floor.
DESIGNING THE '70S
Attention to the ceiling went hand in hand with a fascination for light – Frattini was acutely aware of the power of light to transform a space and make or break the aesthetic success of an interior. He became close friends with the great Italian lighting designer Livio Castiglioni, and together they created the iconic Boalum lamp in 1970 – a flexible illuminated strip of tubing that could be coiled, draped, or even knotted – inspired by the hose of a pool cleaner.
Boalum wasn’t the only major Frattini work to emerge in 1970. That same year, he created the Sesann sofa, weaving together a tubular steel structure and luxurious cushioning to create a design that both deconstructed and perfected the sofa as a furniture form.
DISCOVER THE COLLECTION