Compasso d’oro Carrier Award

An architect in the most cultured sense of the term but also a prolific designer during a long association with Afra Bianchin, he has designed some of the most representative icons of Italian design. His attention to production processes, technological and formal innovation and, above all, his continuous and passionate research aimed at reinventing the use of materials, have become a significant part of the recognizability of Italian design. In his work, tradition and innovation are welded together in one of the finest and most coherent lessons onf method and creative freedom.

The list of all his work places him among the masters of contemporary graphic design. His tremendous level of culture, constant attention to the suggestions of the artistic avant-gardes and his profound humanism are an indication of freedom, which allowed him to overcome disciplinary restrictions and fashions. His lesson was exceptionally useful for the education of the new sensitivities in vogue in the world of communication.

Behind the apparent rebuttal of technology, which represents a distinctive element of his work, there is instead a constant search for the right technology, the most appropriate, with nothing more and nothing less. Milá’s design stems from a reflection on concrete problems, freed from prejudices and theoretical postulations. For him, who confessed that he had never been too interested in developing a definition of design, “the best design is achieved with the minimum of elements”.

During the early post-war years, when the word design was not yet part of the current lexicon, Gavina began his exceptional adventure as an inexhaustible creator and instructor, always curious, always outside or on the margins of pre-existing formats and always at the service of innovation, between art and design, between ethics and aesthetics, between manufacturing company and publishing company. This human adventure ended in 2007 and outlined a cultural itinerary destined to continue over time.

Among the most important post-war Italian architects, he belongs to that small group of forerunners and founders of Italian design. His work as a designer is characterized by a rare synthesis of expressive rigour, a mastery of formal language and technological knowledge. He offered an objective contribution to the very definition of what Italian design is and the originality of its contents. A belated recognition for a great teacher who has always worked above ideologisms.

Over forty years of work as a lecturer, critic, historian and theorist of design has offered generations of students and professionals useful and valuable tools for study and reflection. With op.cit., the magazine he founded and still edits, he has followed and analyzed the path of Italian design from the 1960s to today in the light of the parallel evolution of Art and Architecture. His books have greatly contributed to the disciplinary definition of design.

Self-taught, autonomous and rigorous, driven by a passion for beauty and fascinated by innovation, since the end of the sixties he has been able to make his shop in Catania a point of reference for the Italian design market. His stubborn work as a courageous merchant and popularizer, carried out in geographically unfavourable conditions have contributed to making the best Italian and foreign companies and products known and appreciated long before they came to fame.

His energetic activities as a designer, entrepreneur and dealer have shaken the traditionalist English market since the early sixties and exploded in his beloved France with the chain of Habitat stores, innovative both in product design and in sales techniques. Having lost control of his company on the stock exchange, he found success with a new collection of products and a new chain of stores in his name. Thanks to his exceptional talent, he was knighted, thereby becoming the first Sir of design.