Carlo Colombo, an architect who shows us how much more there is still to be discovered

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A vocation for discovery is already legible in his surname (the Italian for Columbus): Carlo Colombo, international architect and designer, teaches, designs and promotes the highest levels of Italian creativity throughout the world. Whether for interior design or large-scale planning projects, his work always features concreteness, rigor and precision, and remains close to people’s dreams and needs.

Carlo Colombo is undoubtedly one of Italy’s most famous architects and designers. Considered by critics as the most highly esteemed of a new generation of international-level architects, he has already won numerous awards and prizes worldwide, and established a career spanning everything from countless collaborations with top level design brands to huge planning/architectural projects.

The Blueberry Armchair by BYografia, the Air table by Poliform, the Antoniolupi collections, the Ball armchair by Arflex, the six sneaker models for Levi’s 2012 collection… these are just a few examples of his work in design, a field in which he has won numerous prestigious prizes: in 2004 he was nominated designer of the year in Tokyo; between 2005 and 2011 he won the “Elle Decor” International Design Award four times and won prizes for his “Gioia Casa” and “MD Magazine” projects. In 2009 he was among the winners of the Good Design Award conferred by the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Atheneum.

Whether working on an everyday object, on interior design or grand architectural volumes, throughout his eclectic output Carlo Colombo maintains a single characteristic style: he works progressively by reducing and emptying, eliminating the superfluous and privileging purity of line and formal abstraction.

One of his most interesting projects? Without a doubt, the Hong Kong Louvre Gallery, an exhibition space for highest quality design products.

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Carlo Colombo designs Franke's new showroom

Showroom Franke Carlo Colombo Architetto

A rigorous style, generated above all by his vivid passion for his work, which also leads him to give lessons and conferences in Israel, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, Ukraine, Australia, Russia, England, Brazil and China.

As a recognised and highly appreciated ambassador for Italian design the world over, Colombo’s work for Franke comes with inbuilt prestige attached… which has now been reinforced by his recent project for the new Franke showroom in its base in Peschiera del Garda.

In this case he has designed a space conceived to involve and interact with visitors, also being designed to house various kinds of initiatives, including show cooking, training courses and conferences. A suggestive and hospitable mood prevails, with illumination from large windows that highlights the originality and avant-garde spirit and of the architecture. Colombo has blended an elegantly sophisticated atmosphere with an intimately domestic feel, where the color scheme alternates white, black and grey and is warmed by natural materials like the wooden parquet floor.

In the words of Giulio Cappellini, co-author of an important biography, Carlo Colombo’s projects “don’t follow momentary fashions, being timeless, and they also always have some surprises in store for users, accompanying them in their experience and their inhabitance. (…) Exponent of a stream of thought which shows no uncertainty about continuing the heritage of the great masters of the past, he unerringly manages to show that not everything has already been created, and that much remains to be discovered.”

You’d agree with that, wouldn’t you?