Architect and designer Piero Lissoni approaches his work with a mastery of proportion and an acute sensitivity for the subtlety that distinguishes the common from the insightful, never designing for a specific function or purpose, but designing for human beings.

Architect and designer Piero Lissoni approaches his work with a mastery of proportion and an acute sensitivity for the subtlety that distinguishes the common from the insightful, never designing for a specific function or purpose, but designing for human beings. Lissoni’s influences include Italian masters Zanuso, Sottsass, Castiglioni, and Magistretti, but also Danish designers such as Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjaerholm. His clients are many of the most world-renowned design companies: Alessi, Boffi, Cappellini, Cassina, Flos, Fritz Hansen, Kartell, Living Divani, Matteograssi, Poltrona Frau, Porro, and Tecno.

Lissoni began his career in 1978 having gained his architecture degree at the Milan Polytechnic and in 1985 started with Boffi Kitchens as Art Director & Designer. With Nicoletta Canesi he founded the architectural firm Lissoni Associates in Milan in 1986, and ten years later lent his vision to Graph.x, a graphic design company. As well as designing furniture, kitchens, bathrooms and lighting fixtures, he is also a premier art director, focusing on corporate identity, signage and packaging. Known collectively as Piero Lissoni, the affiliates are now handling houses in Moscow, Tel Aviv, Bangkok, and the Turks and Caicos. Graph.x has also handled the corporate identity, logo and billboards for the prestigious Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia since 2007.

Lissoni’s projects are often total designs, meaning, full-scale interiors and architecture of offices and showrooms, yachts, private homes, and hotels. In recent years, he has designed luxury hotels such as the Monaco & Grand Canal in Venice, the Al Porto hotel on Lake Zurich, the Bentley Design Hotel in Istanbul, and the Mitsui Garden Ginza Hotel in Tokyo, a luxurious resort in Miami and a resort in collaboration with other architects at the Turks & Caicos Islands, to name a few.

During the Neocon World Fair in June 1996, Piero Lissoni shared his vision on his new collection with the design trade and the public in a special lecture at Luminaire, and in May 2006 he presented the book Liquid Space: 70 Years of Boffi Design with Roberto Gavatti at the prestigious opening of Luminaire’s new Boffi Kitchen and Bath studio in Coral Gables.

In 2008, Lissoni designed three particularly original pieces for three major design houses. For Living Divani, he created Box Lounge, a sister sofa in a family of formal seating which exudes a depth of character and a quiet presence in a space. For Porro, his new work includes Minimo, which by using the basic principles of Zen aesthetic it is an elegant table that epitomizes simplicity, equilibrium and symmetry. Sidewall, his second dynamic piece for Porro is a storage-system that can be hung on a wall or on a rotating base, and enriches a room with a new dynamic due to perfect proportions. He continued on to operate as the Artistic director for these companies.

In December 2008, for Luminaire’s exhibition and auction PaperLove, Lissoni partnered with his son Francesco, to create a three-dimensional geometric grid that housed paper light boxes placed randomly. This piece, Sol Light, was devised as a tribute to minimalist artist Sol Lewitt, who was also fond of boxes and grids, as well as a play on his name, Sol, which is Latin for ‘Light.’ The piece was auctioned to raise money for cancer research.