Franco Albini and Franca Helg
Olivari Designers
Robbiate (IT), 1905-1977
A leading exponent of Rationalism during the 1930s, Albini designs several housing projects with Milan’s Institute of People’s Housing, in full step with the European avant-gardes. The relationship between architecture and history is the theme in his architecture after WWII, evident in his Pirovano Refuge in Cervinia (1949) and Rome’s Rinascente Department Store (1957).
— La Rinascente: staircase, Rome 1957
Albini is considered one of the most innovative exhibition designers. His constant attention to technical consistency emerges in his Milan Subway Stations (1962) and in his furniture design for Poggi. His chair Luisa won the 1955 Golden Compass Award and has been reissued by Cassina.
— Franco Albini, Tre Pezzi armchair, Poggi 1959
— Franco Albini, Fiorenza armchair, Arflex 1952-1955
Franca Helg (Milan, 1920-1989), who graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 1945, worked in both architectural design and industrial design, with major projects carried out in collaboration with Franco Albini, with whom she was professionally associated from 1951.
After a stint as Assistant Professor of Architectural Composition to Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso first at the Venice University Institute of Architecture (IUAV) and then at the Milan Polytechnic, she becomes a visiting professor in 1967. She has designed installations at the Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and the Treasury of the Genoa’s San Lorenzo Cathedral museums. She has also designed for the department store La Rinascente in Rome and stations of Milan’s subway line no. 1.
— Franco Albini, Margherita, armchair, Vittorio Bonacina 1956
— Franco Albini, “Room for a Man”, 6th Milan Triennale 1936