PurplePrice Mag · · 2 min read
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Magis, Latin for “more”, is a Venetian company that since the 1990s has become one of the most international in Italian design. Its secret is the ability to turn the ideas of the most experimental designers into mass-produced objects, often with technologies borrowed from other industries.
Eugenio Perazza
The company was founded in 1976 by Eugenio Perazza in Motta di Livenza, near Treviso. For many years it was associated mainly with plastics, using injection moulding and gas-assisted moulding, which produces hollow, light and strong parts. Magis has no large factories of its own: it designs and develops the products and has them made by a network of local manufacturers, but always in Italy.
The designers
Over the years Perazza built a team of designers from all over the world: Richard Sapper, Marc Berthier, Toshiyuki Kita, Jasper Morrison, Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid, Naoto Fukasawa, Philippe Starck, Marc Newson, Pierre Paulin and the Bouroullec brothers. One of its biggest successes is the height-adjustable Bombo stool by Stefano Giovannoni, one of the best-selling design products of the early 2000s and, according to its designer, also one of the most copied in the world.
Chair One and Spun
In 1999 Magis entrusted the German designer Konstantin Grcic with a project in die-cast aluminium: the result was Chair One (2004), a chair made of many triangular facets, like a dismantled football, which became an icon of contemporary design. In 2014 the Spun by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, a spinning-top-shaped plastic seat on which you can rotate, won the Compasso d'Oro. In all, Magis has received the award at six editions.
Magis today
Since 2001 Magis has been a joint-stock company, selling mainly abroad; in 2006 it opened its first foreign branch, in Tokyo. Alongside chairs, tables and accessories for homes and public spaces, it also makes Me Too, a collection of furniture and toys for children by famous designers.
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