Vittoriano Vigano & Gino Sarfatti

Vittoriano Viganò (born December 19, 1919, Milan, Italy–died January 5, 1996, Milan, Italy) was an Italian designer and architect. He was born into a culturally-rich environment, as his father was the painter and engraver Vico Viganò. The young Vittoriano developed a strong interest in design from a young age, which later led him to enroll at the school of architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, graduating in 1944. After World War II, he had a brief apprenticeship at BBPR, obtained a master’s degree in construction and the use of reinforced concrete with famed engineer Arturo Danusso in 1947, and served as an assistant to Gio Ponti in the department of interior architecture, furniture and decoration. In 1947, Viganò opened his own studio, started a long-term cooperation with Gino Sarfatti and his lighting design and manufacturing company Arteluce, and began a 16-year editorial contribution with the French magazine L’architecture d’aujourd’hui directed by his friend French sculptor André Bloc. Through his studio, Viganò developed a wide professional practice that included industrial design, interior design, architecture and urban planning projects. It is at this time that he started to articulate the similarities shared among all design practices, and to discount the notion of interior architecture and design as banal decorative practices. For him, these intimate disciplines shared the approach and aims of architecture and urban planning.