The design world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Achille Castiglioni - a cult figure of post-war Italian design, a crowd, a father and a guru of the Milan professional community.
Related: Achille Castiglioni: 100 years of the hero of modern design
Achille Castiglioni designed hundreds of things. He had a great influence on several generations of designers: he spent an unbelievable amount of time and effort on teaching (in 1969–1980 he was a professor at the Turin Polytechnic Institute, and in 1980–1993 he taught at Milan). His high status as an outstanding designer is confirmed by the repeated award of the Compasso d’Oro award - the Golden Compass.
Achille Castiglioni with his masterpiece - the minimalist floor lamp Luminator, Flos. The Compasso d’Oro Prize is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards. It was established by the Italian Industrial Design Association ADI in 1954 on the initiative of Joe Ponti, becoming the first European award in its field. ADI chooses things that “stand out for originality, functionally-typological innovation, the production process, the materials used and the form”. The “historical collection” of the Compasso d’Oro is recognized as part of the national heritage of Italy.
Floor lamp Luminator, Flos, The Golden Compass, 1955. 
Chair T12, Palini. The Golden Circle, 1960. 
Coffee machine Pitagora, "Golden compass", 1962. 
Spinamatic beer dispenser, Golden Compass, 1964. 
Headphones for simultaneous interpreters, The Golden Compass, 1967. 
Lamp Parentesi, Flos, The Golden Compass, 1979. 
Omsa hospital bed, The Golden Compass, 1979. 
Cutlery Dry, Alessi. The Golden Circle, 1984. Nine times Achille Castiglioni received a prestigious award (solo and with his brothers). Eight “compasses” from 1955 to 1984 brought the objects he designed - a floor lamp, a lamp, a coffee machine, a beer machine, a chair, headphones, a set of forks and knives, a hospital bed. The ninth “compass” was awarded to the maestro in 1989 on the basis of merit “for the fact that, thanks to his unique experience, he was able to raise industrial design to a high level of culture”.
Achille Castiglioni is surrounded by his most famous things: the Arco floor lamp for Flos, the Sanluca chair (released by Poltrona Frau), the Rocchetto table for Kartell. Premiums quite often diverge from historical selection. So among the awarded things there are not many “icons” of Castiglioni - no Arco floor lamp, no Grillo phone, no Mezzadro stool. But the designer himself was able to look a lot through his fingers and taught everyone to treat with irony. “The irony is needed everywhere in design and in objects. I notice a professional disease around me: everything is taken too seriously. One of my secrets is to joke all the time. ”
