Collection: Massimo Castagna

Massimo Castagna (born in 1957) graduated from the Milan Polytechnic in 1984 and founded the AD architettura studio in 1986. He designs residential buildings, hotels and projects like the Everest-K2-CNR scientific committee "Pyramid" laboratory for the National Research Council, installed in Nepal in 1991 at an altitude of 5050 m and still operational today. The project was selected for the XVIII Milan Triennial. Since 1991, he has broadened his range of action in the furniture sector with consultancies in product development, art direction and office and showroom design for Italian and international brands like Acerbis International, Ceccotti Collezioni, Exteta, Flou, Gallotti & Radice, Henge, Minotti, Roda and Rossana. For Ceccotti Collezioni, in addition to his role as art director from 2006 to 2009, he created projects like the solid walnut Sliding sideboard and the modular Flying Circles bookcase. For Rossana Cucine he accompanied his art direction (from 2000 to 2006 and from 2010 to 2012) with the design of such kitchen systems as HD23, HT50, TK38 and the more recent K-IN / K-OUT - identical aesthetically but very different in their construction criteria - designed for indoor and outdoor use respectively.

His longest-lasting collaboration is with Gallotti&Radice, which gave rise to now-famous projects like the Bolle lighting system, which owes its success to its relative simplicity and elegance - now available in multiple versions; and the Audrey sofa, made of non-deformable polyurethane foam and polyester fibre with an MDF base. Among the latest Castagna-designed releases for the brand are the Cloud Infinity modular polyurethane foam sofa, the Clemo-T marble table, the Key-to-Heaven suspension lamp and the vertical version of the Bolle lamp.

"If I had to use just one word to describe my work, I would choose freedom," says Castagna in an interview published on the website of Henge. He has been the creative director of the brand since its inception and for which he designed the new Via della Spiga showroom inaugurated during Milan Design Week 2022. He continues, "I don't want to feel bound by clichés. I pursue the expressiveness of form and material as a unique being, taking design beyond formalism and the boundaries of industrial production, transcending the politically correct. My work plays on the edge of design and artistic influences." He has designed numerous and varied products for Henge, from the Tubular Horizontal brass pendant lamp to the Noctis fabric-upholstered bed, the Ozone stone kitchen, the metal and onyx Ozone Evo bar counter, the Loom Program Doors solid wood wall unit, and the Human leather armchair.

Massimo Castagna has been a lecturer in the "Interior Manager" Master's course organised by Federmobile at Polidesign in Milan since 2000.