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Tobia Scarpa
"For me it’s really fun to discover something that stimulates me to create an object, because the object is, I believe, a gift that honours the intelligence of the other, the other person. The person who receives it, encounters it."
The son of the famous Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, Tobia Scarpa trained in Venice before launching his career as a as a designer of lamps, furniture, and glass objects. In the early 1960s, he began to design modern furniture based on the principles of Le Corbusier. He and his wife Afra designed for several of the biggest names in Italian design including Cassina, Flos, and Gavina SpA.
In the field of architecture, Tobia has worked with public and private clients such as the Benetton Group, for whom he designed the entire complex in the industrial area of Castrette di Villorba, Treviso. To this day, the Benetton facilities are considered a true aesthetic-functional paradigma — an exemplary work of industrial architecture.
“Shaping, in fact driving, all of Tobia Scarpa’s designs is the need to innovate. To do things differently, ” writes journalist Simon Keane-Cowell. “Not for the sake of it, but rather to push back the boundaries of what is materially and technologically possible, and those of the designer’s own competence.
Tobia has won several major awards, including the Compasso d'Oro award for the Soriana easy chair in 1969, and the If Industrie Forum Design Hannover in 1992. Today, his objects can be found in some of the most important museums worldwide, like the Louvre in Paris, home to Tobia’s famous 'Libertà' chair.
Since 2002, Tobia has taught in the Design Department of the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice. In October 2004, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura hosted a one-person exhibition of his work in the fields of architecture and design in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington.
In 2008, Tobia’s long career was further honored with another Compass d’Oro award.
Lights Designed by Tobia Scarpa
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