Clino Trini Castelli (born Civitavecchia, 1944) is an Italian

industrial designer Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufactur ...

and artist. He has used the concept of "noform" through his work in

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

and

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advan ...

, developed through the application of tools such as Design Primario and

CMF design Color, Materials, Finish (CMF) is an area of industrial design that focuses on the chromatic, tactile and decorative identity of products and environments. Characteristics CMF design uses metadesign logic, the simultaneous planning of the ident ...

Career

Having obtained his school leaving certificate at the Scuola Centrale Allievi Fiat in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

, in 1961 Castelli started working at the Centro Stile of

Fiat Automobiles Fiat Automobiles S.p.A. (, , ; originally FIAT, it, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino, lit=Italian Automobiles Factory of Turin) is an Italian automobile manufacturer, formerly part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, and since 2021 a subsidiary ...

, and after three years moved to

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...

in Milan, in the studio of Ettore Sottsass. At the same time he was part of the growing Arte Povera movement in Turin, comparing himself with artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto,

Piero Gilardi ''For the 19th-century painter and sculptor, see Pier Celestino Gilardi'' Piero Gilardi (born 1942, Turin) is a visual artist. Born in Italy from a Swiss family, he studied at the Liceo Artistico in Turin. In an interview with LeGrace G. Benson, G ...

and Alighiero Boetti. In Milan he worked in fashion, meeting Nanni StradaPaola Colaiacomo (a cura di)
''Fatto in Italia: la cultura del made in Italy (1960–2000)''
Meltemi editore, Roma, 2006, p. 54 and

Elio Fiorucci Elio Fiorucci (; 10 June 1935 – 19 July 2015) was an Italian fashion designer and the founder of the Fiorucci fashion label. Beginning in retailing at the age of 14, he later created a fashion brand that had worldwide success during the 1970s ...

. With the latter in 1967 he founded the Intrapresa Design company. From 1969 to 1973 he devised the Red Books, the first manuals developed in the " metaproject" format, which led to the creation of Olivetti's corporate identity programme. In 1973 with Andrea Branzi and Massimo Morozzi, he created the Centro Design Montefibre; with the same partners a year later he started the CDM (Consulenti Design Milano) company, which became Castelli Design in 1983. In 1978 he founded the Colorterminal IVI di Milano, the first centre to use the new RGB technologies and

, and four years later formed the Gruppo Colorscape for urban planning. Throughout the 1980s he worked with

Louis Vuitton Louis Vuitton Malletier, commonly known as Louis Vuitton (, ), is a French high-end Luxury goods, luxury fashion house and company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton (designer), Louis Vuitton. The label's LV monogram appears on most of its produc ...

and Vitra in Europe, Herman Miller in the United States and

Mitsubishi The is a group of autonomous Japanese multinational companies in a variety of industries. Founded by Yatarō Iwasaki in 1870, the Mitsubishi Group historically descended from the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company which existed from 1870 ...

in Japan. During this period he re-established his partnership with Fiat, which led to the creation in 1985 of the Centro di Qualistica Fiat, the "Qualistic Compendium" programme with

and CMF product range planning with Cassina. At the same time he was one of the first in Europe to look at the concept of domotics, or home automation, developed with

Bticino BTicino S.p.A. () is an Italian metalworking company that operates in the field of electrical low voltage equipment used for residential, employment and production. Bticino proposes solutions for the energy distribution, for the communication (i ...

, Legrand and Somfy. During the 1990s he started new design ventures in Japan with

Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...

, Toli and Itoki. In parallel with this, he taught design at the Politecnico di Milano and the Domus Academy, of which he was one of the founders in 1983. From 1994 to 2005 he wrote articles on design culture for the magazine ''Interni''. In 2000 he founded the Qualistic Lab, a division of Castelli Design that developed new instruments for the emotional positioning of images and products.

Awards

* ADI Compasso d'Oro award for ''Meraklon Sistema "Fibermatching 25"'', Centro Design Montefibre, 1979 * ADI Compasso d'Oro award for ''Abito Politubolare'', Calza Bloch, 1979 * Interior Design Magazine Annual Award for Showroom Design, Herman Miller. Neocon XV, Chicago, 1983 * IBD Product Design Gold Award for ''Color, Fabric, Finish Program for Seating'', CMF Design for Fabric Collection, Herman Miller Inc., 1984 * Intel Design '99 award for the CMF Design of the products ''Wood & Metal'', ''Sfera Modulare'' and ''Metal & Metal'',

, 1999 * IF Product Design Gold Award for ''Hitachi Enterprise Server EP8000 Series'',

, 2007 * IF Product Design Award 2011 for ''VSP – Virtual Storage Platform'',

, 2011 * Machine Design Award 2011 Grand Prize, Japan / Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for ''VSP – Virtual Storage Platform'',

, 2011

Writings

* ''Transitive Design, A Design Language for the Zeroes'', Milan: Electa, 1999 * ''Worldscape. The new domotic landscape'', Milan: Nava, 2006 * ''Observatory'' on Interni n. 445–550, Milan: Mondadori, 1994–2005

Bibliography

* Akiko Takehara, ''The "Philosopher of Color" Clino Castelli'', on: Car Styling n. 48, Los Angeles: Car Styling Publishing, 1984, pp. 13–36 *

John Thackara John Thackara (born 6 August 1951, Newcastle upon Tyne) is a British-born writer, advisor and public speaker. He is known as curator of the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years, which started in Amsterdam. He is a senior fellow ...

, ''Designing without form'', on: Design n. 440, August 1985, pp. 38–39 * Mikio Kuranishi, Clino Castelli. ''Great Design of the World'', Bekkan Taiyo n. 30, Tokyo, December 1989, pp. 98–99 * Thomas C. Mitchell, ''New Thinking In Design, Conversations on Theory and Practice'', New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1996, pp. 60–71 * Guido Musante
''Mater Materia 2''
on: Interni n. 649, Milan: Mondadori, 2015, pp. 62–65

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Castelli, Clino Italian industrial designers People from Civitavecchia 1944 births Living people