Giancarlo Piretti
Netherlands

Giancarlo Piretti's folding chair Plia has become a part of design history. With its 3-disc hinge, "Plia" was influential in framing the term "Italian Design". More than six million have been sold since its introduction in 1969.

Plia chairs have been exhibited in design exhibitions across the globe and it is also an exponent in the design department in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The designer, who was born in Bologna in 1940, studied at the Instituto Statale d

9; Arte in his hometown. He later worked as an interior designer for Anonima Castelli and designed home furniture series, office furnishing systems and the legendary award-winning Plia chair. During his twelve with Castelli, he developed countless innovat

ed furniture designs primarily in the field of chairs.
From the late 1970s, he worked together with Emilio Ambasz on award-winning designs including two series of ergonomic seating systems, Vertebra und Dorsal.
He introduced his Piretti Collecti

on in 1988 at the NeoCon in Chicago, a series with over 50 different office chairs and seating ensembles. The special thing about them: the furniture has a patented mechanism on the backrest that allows the chairs to be adjusted to the weight of the user.

This collection also won many prizes including the IBD (USA, 1989), the ASID (USA, 1990), the Compasso d'Oro (Italy, 1991) and the G-Mark (Japan, 1992).