Franca Helg e Franco Albini
Olivari designers
A leading exponent of Rationalism during the 1930s, Albini designs several housing projects with Milan’s Institute of People’s Housing, in full step with the European avant-gardes. The relationship between architecture and history is the theme in his architecture after WWII, evident in his Pirovano Refuge in Cervinia (1949) and Rome’s Rinascente Department Store (1957).
AGATA
1965
AMBRA
1973 – Out of production
Albini is considered one of the most innovative exhibition designers. His constant attention to technical consistency emerges in his Milan Subway Stations (1962) and in his furniture design for Poggi. His chair Luisa won the 1955 Golden Compass Award and has been reissued by Cassina.
Franca Helg – Milano, 1920-1989
Franca Helg graduates from the Milan Polytechnic in 1945, and is active both in architectural and industrial design. She designs important projects in collaboration with Franco Albini, whom she has been professionally associated with since 1951.
After a stint as Assistant Professor of Architectural Composition to Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso first at the Venice University Institute of Architecture (IUAV) and then at the Milan Polytechnic, she becomes a visiting professor in 1967. She has designed installations at the Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and the Treasury of the Genoa’s San Lorenzo Cathedral museums. She has also designed for the department store La Rinascente in Rome and stations of Milan’s subway line no. 1.