Tobia Scarpa
The son of the architect Carlo Scarpa, Tobia Scarpa (1935 - ) was born and has developed his career in Italy. He collaborated with his wife, Afra, on designs for nearly every major international company, including Flos , Cassina, Knoll, and B&B Italia. Together, they developed a vocabulary for accessible luxury design based on expanding technology and a wide variety of materials.
Tobia and Afra both went to school at the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice. In the late 1950s they began their joint career, in collaboration with the Venini glass factory. In 1960 he went on to open his own design studio in Montebelluna. The furniture that began to be designed , such as Presidente Model 917 , manufactured by Cassina in the early 1960s and produced in walnut or ash with leather or fabric , was based on an appreciation of sumptuous materials and an understanding of the need for designs . comfortable and elegant that were increasingly popular in that period in Italy. These designs, simpler and perhaps more classical than some of their contemporaries, yet make full use of modern materials and construction methods. They attract people who needed modern furniture that could co-exist with the antiques that still decorated their homes. His "Bastiano" set - sofa, armchair, tables - designed for Gavina and later reissued by Knoll is iconic of this design philosophy and became one of the best-selling pieces of its time. The chairs and sofa were constructed of wood with leather upholstered cushions and could be completely disassembled. In 1966 Scarpa designed the " Coronado " series of armchairs for B & B Italia which were a great success . This was one of the first padded pieces of furniture to use the new cold-molded foaming process in which a metal frame could be sunk into polyurethane padding. Scarpa's work for Cassina, where he collaborated with Gio Ponti, included the 1968 "Ciprea" armchair, which features a non-slip fabric cover to support the frameless foam structure. Scarpa's 1970 “Soriana” armchair, on the other hand, had an external metal frame and an organic foam cushion. These two chairs were shown in the New Domestic Landscape show at MoMA in 1972 as representations of his recent work.
Scarpa was commissioned, along with Pier Castiglioni, to design the first models for the Flos lighting company started by Dino Gavina. His later " Papillion " lamp for Flos ( 1973 ) was one of the first designs to use newhalogen technology .
Tobia and Afra Scarpa also worked in commercial architecture and interior design, especially late in their careers. Some of his best known work was for the clothing company Benetton. He is credited with various interiors for them and for his prototype store in Italy. Tobia has also been a professor at the School of Industrial Design in Venice. Throughout his career he worked with the motto that design "is a profession without a rule book... what remains (and is worth it) is that final and concrete result: the object."
