Giancarlo Piretti

€800

4 Plia chairs

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Product Description

Giancarlo Piretti (b. 1940)

set of 4 Plia chairs

Chrome-plated tubular steel, transparent Cellidor

H: 75cm  W: 47cm  D: 48cm

Castelli, Bologna, Italy, 1969

The Plia folding and stacking chair is the best-known work of the Italian designer Giancarlo Piretti. When designing the Plia between 1967 and 1969, Piretti focused particularly on the folding mechanism. Instead of the usual six joints, he decided to concentrate the whole mechanism on two joints on either side of the seat. When the chair is folded, it becomes extremely flat in this position, only five centimetres. In an unfolded position several chairs can be stacked into one another.

The seat and backrest made of transparent Cellidor have screwed-on chrome-plated tubular steel edges.

Plia represents the realization of “democratic design” and it is nowadays exposed at the design sector of the MoMA in New York.

This chair is still in production today.

 

Giancarlo Piretti

Italian interior and industrial designer Giancarlo Piretti was born in 1940 in Bologna. He obtained his teaching degree in drawing at the Art Institute of Bologna, and continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 1960. From 1963 until 1970, he taught interior design at the Art Institute of Bologna. Sometime in the 1960s, Piretti also joined Italian design company Castelli as an interior designer, creating home furniture and office furnishings. Piretti’s work for Castelli garnered the company an international reputation in furniture design. His most well-known design is the plastic folding Plia Chair (1968), which is still in production.

In the late-1970s, Piretti worked with Argentine architect-designer Emilio Ambasz on several award-winning designs. From 1984 to 1986 Piretti worked for Castilia, a firm that was part of the Castelli group, that specialized in the production of home furniture characterized by functional and aesthetic systems.

In 1988, Piretti revealed The Piretti Collection in Chicago, which included over 50 different office chairs and seating styles. It is still manufactured by various licensees around the world. The collection was designed to respond to the specific needs of each individual user.

Today, Piretti lives and works in Bologna with his son, designer Alessandro Piretti.