Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan & Jorge Ferrari – Hardoy

Antonio Bonet (1913-1989), Juan Kurchan (1913-1975) and Jorge Ferrari-Hardoy (1914-1977) were the founders of Grupo Austral, a collective of architects established in Buenos Aires in 1938, which made a fundamental contribution to the debate on the renewal of Argentine architecture. Influenced by Le Corbusier (at whose Parisian studio the three had worked and met), Grupo Austral promoted an idea of ​​architecture as the "seed of the modern city", in which each building was seen at the same time as a form of expression individual and as part of a potential broader urban development that would contribute to improving people's living conditions. Grupo Austral will have a short life, dissolving already in the 1940s, but will have time to design a piece of furniture that has become iconic, the initiator of a real type of seating: the Butterfly Chair, very light and practical, of which the Knoll acquired the only original production rights at the end of the decade.