First-ever monograph on Carlo Mollino as an architect. Demonstrates Mollino's prowess in architectural design. Based on extensive new research and drawing on rich archival material. Lavishly illustrated with previously unpublished images, plans, drawings, and documents. Today, Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is known chiefly for his furniture designs. He is famous also for his erotic polaroid photography of the 1960s, which has been subject of many exhibitions and has lost nothing of its great appeal to the fashion world today. Much less attention has so far been given to Mollino's architecture, and a comprehensive critical study of his work in this field has been lacking. Yet his built work, although relatively small, constitutes a seminal contribution to modernism that is uniquely marked by a strong relationship with Surrealism. Based on years of research and drawing on rich archival material as well as on Mollino's own writings, this new book is the overdue tribute to an extraordinary personality in 20th-century architecture. It features an exemplary selection of his key designs, both built and unrealised, lavishly illustrated with images and reproductions of previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents. Rounded out with scholarly essays by expert authors, this is a long-awaited addition to the library of architecture lovers, professionals, and scholars.

Focusing on Mollino's furniture and interior design, this text also showcases his incredible passion for photography, providing a comprehensive overview of his creativity and versatile talents.

Born in 1905 as the son of a well-to-do Turin builder, Carlo Mollino studied art history and architecture and became known as a designer of furniture and interior furnishings.Mollino's obsession was with the formal language of the female body, a passion which he pursued secretly in his photographs. Between 1962 and 1973 he took some 2,000 staged nude and semi-nude Polaroid portraits of female beauties of the Turin night life.Even though Mollino had turned the staged photographs into an art genre, he always kept his women's portraits hidden away. Even today they occupy a special, enigmatic role in his work.This publication makes the attempt for the first time to shed light on this ambivalence by contrasting a selection of Mollino's Polaroid portraits with objects from Casa Mollino that were also excluded from the public eye.Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Kunsthalle Vienna project space from August – September, 2011.

Maniera Moderna is dedicated to the multi-faceted work of the Italian architect, designer and photographer Carlo Mollino (1905-1973). His surrealist roots are evident in the black and white photography and interiors of the 1930s, right through to his later work in the elegant Teatro Regio and his highly staged erotic Polaroids. However, he was also inspired to create the most individual of designs by the Futurism of Gaud�, Niemeyer and Le Corbusier. His extravagant furniture, which he produced in limited numbers or as unique pieces, is still extremely sought after. It is an expression of the designer's extraordinary flights of fancy: chairs can look like deer, the ribs of a table like the human spinal column, backrests like skis. This monograph is divided into six chapters: choreography, montage, publications, display, appropriations and techniques, which impressively highlight the correspondences within Mollino's wide-ranging and heterogeneous oeuvre.

Carlo Mollino (1905-73), the son of a prominent engineer of the city of Turin, graduated with honors from the Royal School of Architecture in Turin in 1931. He joined his father's firm in the same year, only to leave to pursue an independent and highly original career in design and architecture seven years later. From the start, both his interests and personality set him apart from his contemporaries. Influenced by the Second Futurism movement and the Surrealist avant-gardes, he was active in an impressive number of fields, including aeronautics, automobile design, art, photography, set design, town planning, furniture, interior decoration and architecture. Highlights from his architectural output include the headquarters of the Societa Ippica Torinese (1935-9) and the Teatro Regio Torinese (1966), both in Turin. Mollino was able to bring together various forms of expression through his profound artistic research. His furniture was based on organic shapes, such as tree branches, animal horns and the human body - the female profile figuring prominently in his design work. These pieces evolved from the appreciation of the shapes of Art Nouveau and the architect Antoni Gaudi, and were more expressive and sculptural than those being produced in Milan at the same time. Most of his furniture designs were site specific one-offs for especially commissioned interiors and were manufactured by the Apelli & Varesio joinery in Turin. This has ensured that these pieces are very rarely available on the market and are highly valued by furniture collectors, as proven by the recent sale at Christie's of one of Mollino's tables for the record price of $3.8 million. Beyond the sculptural aesthetics of his furniture, his designs involved thorough research into materials and technology. He developed a complex construction technique whereby the structure seemed liberated by the weight of the material, as clearly seen in the glass and bentwood Arabesque table (1949), still in production by Zanotta. His famous interiors were richly decorated with fabric, used not only as upholstery but also as spatial device. He aimed to create architecture and interiors that could be manipulated by the user, as with the innovative lighting system for the Miller House (1937), which was mounted on a curving track and could be moved along the ceiling of the house. The Furniture of Carlo Mollino presents for the first time Mollino's complete furniture and interior design. Including drawings and archival photographs, it represents the most comprehensive record of this part of Mollino's production. Realized in collaboration with the Museo Casa Mollino and written by the Museum's curators Napoleone Ferrari and Fulvio Ferrari, this monograph emphasizes the contemporary significance of Mollino's groundbreaking oeuvre.

Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) was one of the foremost figures in a generation of Italian designers. This biography demonstrates Mollino's unique anti-conformist attitude, a design statement that was at odds with the zeitgeist in his home town, Turin, in the