Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni

Achille Giacomo Castiglioni was born in Milan, Italy in 1918 the younger brother of Pier who was born in 1913. After graduating in architecture in 1944, Achille joined his brother’s design practise and began research into shapes, techniques and new materials, aimed at developing an integral design process. The professional partnership of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni became one of the most witty, elegant and innovative partnerships in modern design history, responsible for such marvels as the Taccia lamp, the Snoopy lamp and the eccentric perfection of the Arco, which required two people and a broom handle to move it. The brothers worked from the viewpoint that design must restructure an object's function, form and production process and applied this maxim to everything that they produced. Castiglioni described this process with these words: Start from scratch. Stick to common sense. Know your goals and means.