Covering more than fifty years of architect and designer Antonio Citterio’s work in the field of industrial design, this book presents an in-depth, wide-ranging account of the career of one of the great masters of contemporary design, during which over 600 products were created, united by a distinctive style which combines an air of low-key, elegant modernity with painstaking attention to detail.
The book begins with Citterio’s work in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by the Baia sofa and the Diesis series, which were designed with Paolo Nava and launched Citterio’s decade-long collaboration with B&B Italia. It then continues with his major partnerships with Flexform, Arclinea, Vitra, Flos and Axor, up to his more recent work with Cassina and Knoll.
This multi-author book – the most extensive to date on Citterio – is richly illustrated with images of products and their details as well as original sketches by the designer and archive photos – some personal, others taking the reader behind the scenes to glimpse the process of creating products that went on to become design icons.
According to Antonio Citterio, ‘the book is a trip through time and memory in which the main characters are not so much the products or challenges I encountered as the people with whom I tackled those challenges. I am convinced that if there is a common thread to my work, it runs through the team and the concept of the relationship with people, from those I partnered with to the companies for which I designed and still design today’.

Contents

The art of conviviality
Francesco Bonami

I. Two critical decades
Stefano Casciani

II. The development of a design identity
Stefano Casciani

III. Working with history
Stefano Casciani

IV. Brianza, Meda and the invention of the modern sofa
Francesca Picchi

V. Living in the kitchen
Stefano Casciani

VI. Objects and their context
Stefano Casciani, Deyan Sudjic

VII. ‘I have a feeling that we could do something interesting together’
Francesca Picchi

The complete design work

Bibliography