Pierluigi Cerri (1939 – 2022), counted among the greatest contemporary architects-designers, three times winner of the Compasso d’oro Award, the oldest and most prestigious industrial design award in the world (it was created in 1954), assigned to those who have been able to enhance Italian design. A graduate of the Milan Polytechnic, where he also taught, he moved as a master between architecture, image and communication. He collaborated with major national and international magazines, from ‘Casabella’ to ‘Domus’, he designed graphic projects for very popular publishing series by Electa or Skira, while he founded with Vittorio Gregotti in 1974 the Studio Gregotti e Associati and then in 1998, with Alessandro Colombo, the Studio Cerri & Associati, and designed “some of the best layout and communication systems of major cultural and production realities: the corporate identity of the Lingotto cultural centre in Turin, the furniture manufacturer Unifor, the Italia ’90 events, Pitti Immagine, Genoa04 European Capital of Culture, Cosmit and the Salone del Mobile in Milan, the MART in Rovereto. He was also responsible for the image of the Venice Biennale, the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn and Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and helped build the visual identity of Prada, iGuzzini and Fratelli Guzzini, Ferrari Auto, Pirelli, Artemide, La Triennale di Milano, Mito Settembre Musica, Sea Aeroporti di Milano.” (PIERLUIGI CERRI. A designer who has masterfully blended images and architecture).
From large projects to ‘objects’: yacht interiors and exhibition layouts that have remained a milestone for the genre (see for example ‘Il Futuro dei Longobardi’ for the inauguration of the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia, in 2000), the creation of furnishing elements that twice won him the world’s most prestigious design award (the third time was for a graphic design project).
The Cerri family were close friends of my mother Giorgina and her husband Aldo Bassetti. The couple happily gravitated around the tables at Monate on quiet summer evenings. Pierluigi had also married Donatella Brustio, a descendant of the family that for decades was identified with La Rinascente (she herself worked there from a very young age), one of my mother’s ‘oldest’ and closest friends. She was a very sweet woman and, like all Giorgina’s friends, strong and resourceful. Her death in 2016 left a great void.
Bibliography:
ADI – Association for Industrial Design, News, PIERLUIGI CERRI. A designer who masterfully merged images and architecture, 29 November 2022
G. CAPROTTI, Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana, Milan, 2023
