Gatti, Paolini & Teodoro

Piero Gatti (1940-2017), Cesare Paolini (1937-1983) and Franco Teodoro (1939-2005) are a trio of Italian architects and designers remembered mainly for having designed one of the most iconic and recognizable products in the entire history of international design, the famous Sacco armchair, designed in 1968 and produced by Zanotta starting in 1968. The three, all active in Turin during the 1960s, began collaborating together starting in 1965. Their first significant success it was a revolving storage unit produced by Abet Laminati, a company with which Franco Teodoro had collaborated for years, dealing with graphics and colours. This piece of furniture, called MIA '68, was co-signed with the architect Guido Drocco (who a few years later would be the author of another great icon of Radical Design, the well-known Cactus produced for Gufram) and was awarded at the M.I.A. Monza International Furnishings Exhibition in 1968. The production of their Sacco dates back to the following year, a resounding success which will enter the permanent collections of the most important design museums around the world such as the MoMA in New York and the Victoria & Albert in London, as well as being awarded in 2020 with a Compasso d'Oro for lifetime achievement which recognizes her lasting success. A classic example of a "one-hit wonder" in design, despite their subsequent collaborations with brands such as BBB Bonacina, Colli 2 and Rapini, their career never reached great splendor again and was definitively slowed down by the premature death of Cesare Paolini in 1983.