Giuseppe Terragni was one of Italy’s most important modern architects prior to World War II. In 1926/27, he summed up the basic tenets of the so-called "architettura razionale" in the periodical Rassegna Italiana as a member of Gruppo 7. Like many architects of his generation, Terragni openly flirted with the Fascist regime of Italy; one of his most famous buildings is the Casa del Fascio in Como, completed in 1935/36, which housed the regional office of the Italian Fascist party and which aimed to link the reduced industrial aesthetics of New Objectivity following classical Mediterranean theories of proportion.
For the Casa del Fascio, an armchair as well as the Lariana chair were created, both manufactured by Columbus. While Terragni’s drawings of Lariana include slightly bent front legs and a contoured seat, the final design is much more severe. Due to the constructional separation of the backrest from the free-floating seat, the chair has a double suspension. In addition, Terragni paid more attention to ergonomic principles than did other contemporary designers. These elements give his chair a plasticity that distinguishes it fundamentally from the strict geometrical designs of Marcel Breuer, for example.
Text: Otakar Máčel
