Pier Giacomo Castiglioni


Pier Giacomo Castiglioni was an Italian architect and designer.

Life

Castiglioni was born on 22 April 1913 in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. He was the second son of the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni and his wife Livia Bolla. His elder brother Livio and younger brother Achille were also architects.
Castiglioni studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, and graduated in 1937. In that year or in 1938 he started an architectural design practice with his brother Livio and Luigi Caccia Dominioni. Amongst the designs produced by the practice were the first Italian bakelite radio. The studio closed in 1940. Castiglioni married Maria Coduri de Cartosio on 30 December 1942.
After the Second World War he and Livio worked with their younger brother Achille, who had graduated in architecture in 1944. Much of their work was in product and exhibition design, but they also carried out a number of architectural projects, including the reconstruction in 1952–53 of the, which had been destroyed by bombing in 1943.
Livio Castiglioni left the practice in 1952 or 1953. From then until Pier Giacomo died – in Milan, on 27 November 1968 – he and Achille worked as a team; most of their designs are not attributable to either one of them. Products designed by the Castiglioni brothers in the post-war years included the "Turbino" and "Arco" lamps and the "Spalter" vacuum cleaner. Working alone, Pier Giacomo designed the "Mezzandro" stool for the Zanotta company based Marcel Duchamp's concept of "ready made". However, it was not manufactured until 1971, three years after Castiglioni's death.
Castiglioni also taught life drawing at the Politecnico di Milano from 1964 to 1968.