Lounge Chair and Pouff "Canada", Circa 1950

Osvaldo Borsani  

Osvaldo Borsani began working at a very young age in the family business of furniture construction. In 1933 he participated in the Fifth Milan Triennale with the project"Casa Minima", which was awarded the silver medal. After the war, after graduating from the Polytechnic, he became friends with numerous artists including Lucio Fontana, Agenore Fabbri, Aligi Sassu, Roberto Crippa, Fausto Melotti, Arnaldo Pomodoro, together with whom he created important works of art in furniture and interior design.  In 1953, together with his brother Fulgenzio, he founded Tecno, the great project on which he would work all his life to develop series production compared to custom production. His first industrial design works were the P40 adjustable seat (1953) and the D70 sofa with reversible seat. The Graphis office system dates back to 1968 (signed together with Eugenio Gerli and spread around the world in one million units) thanks to which Tecno becomes a major world producer of office design. At the end of the 1960s, Osvaldo Borsani, together with Marco Fantoni and Valeria Borsani, created the Tecno Project Center for the design of new products, the management of large interior architecture works, the experimentation of new technologies, strategies and the tools of business communication. In the same period, Borsani opened up to design for large communities and to the contribution of external designers.