The Italian design lady has passed away

Cini Boeri, one of the most outstanding female personalities of Italian design culture of post-Second World War and one of the first woman to graduate at Milan Polytechnic and to access the architecture and design sector, has passed at the age of 96.

In her long and flourishing career, she has collaborated with the greatest designers, from Gio Ponti to Marco Zanuso, and won many awards, such as the Compasso d’Oro in 1979 with the sofa Strips, exhibited in the permanent collection of  Triennale in Milan. In 2011 she was awarded the Compasso d'Oro Career Award and it is emblematic that she died on the day of the 16th edition of this award, a symbol of excellence in Italian design around the world.

Boeri’s family remembers her by saying:

"Architect, designer attentive to users' desires, partisan messenger during the Resistance, mother of Stefano, Tito and Sandro Boeri; Cini Boeri has been a golden age protagonist of Milan and Italian creativity since the second half of the last century. She was born in 1924 in Milan, in S.Ambrogio Square, where she lived until a few years ago; now she is known worldwide for her industrial design creations, including the Ghost armchair and for the Serpentone. Not to forget are also the architecture, including the houses designed on the island of La Maddalena in Sardinia and the Casa nel Bosco in Osmate. Cini took an active part in Italian cultural and political life too, taking a stand on issues of ethics and social commitment. She was married to the neurologist and partisan commander Renato Boeri, from whom she separated in the late 1960s and with whom she had three children - Sandro, Stefano and Tito - six grandchildren and a great-grandson".

In the industrial design sector, she was particularly involved in the design of furnishing elements and components for the building industry. Among homes, offices, shops and museum fittings, her creativity emerged from her desire to favour the functionality of the project over aesthetics, to enhance space by optimizing it and for her constant attention "to the study of the functionality of space and the psychological relationships between people and the environment".

"During the day, our right hand (or left hand for left-handed people) touches and moves a handle 10 to 30 times. That's not little. The hand is one of the most delicate and complex parts of the human body. It is no wonder, then, that I am so fond of drawing an object whose morphology, material and function must correspond perfectly to the shape of the hand, facilitating its movement, without hurting it".

We are proud of her collaboration in the Fusital collections, which will forever remain a timeless design heritage.