Angelo
Mangiarotti

Angelo Mangiarotti was born on February 26, 1921 in Milan.
He graduated in architecture in 1948 at the Milan Polytechnic. He carried out his professional activity in the US in 1953-1954 where, among other things, he participated in the competition for the Chicago “LOOP”. During his stay overseas he met Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Konrad Wachsmann.
Back from the US in 1955 he opened his own firm in Milan with Bruno Morassutti, until 1960.
In 1989 he opened the Mangiarotti & Associates Office, based in Tokyo.
From 1986 to 1992 he was the art director of Colle Cristalleria.
Alongside his professional activity, which saw his works published in books, specialized magazines, and newspapers, he was busy teaching at Italian and foreign Universities.
In 1953 he was a visiting professor of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; in 1963-1964 he held a course at the Higher Institute of Industrial Design, Venice; in 1970 he was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii; in 1974 at the École Politecnique Fédérale, Lausanne; in 1976 at the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Institute of Technology, Adelaide; in 1982 he was an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Palermo, in 1983 he was an alternate professor at the Composition Chair of the Faculty of Architecture in Florence; in 1989-90 he was an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Milan; in 1997 he was an adjunct professor at the Industrial Design graduate course of the Faculty of Architecture of the Milan Polytechnic. He held several international seminars and conferences.
The design activity of Angelo Mangiarotti, whose theoretical foundations were set forth in the book “In nome dell’architettura” (In the name of architecture) published in 1987, tends to highlight the intrinsic properties of each object, in that only “objective” design can be immune from abuses on users and become generally recognizable. While the language of architecture is used to express a new man-environment relation, Mangiarotti attributes a very special role to plastic research in his designer activity. His studies, always carried out in full respect of the properties of materials, were aimed at defining the shape of the object as a quality of material.
Mangiarotti died on June 30, 2012 in Milan.