Achille Castiglioni

Achille Castiglioni was born in Milan in 1918 and graduated with a degree in architecture in 1944.

As early as 1940 he dedicated himself to testing industrial production with brothers Livio (1911-1979) and Pier Giacomo (1913-1968). After graduating, they began research into shapes, techniques and new materials, aimed at developing an integral design process. This group have become one of the most witty, elegant and innovative partnerships in modern design. The brothers worked from the viewpoint that design must restructure an object's function, form and production process, and applied this maxim to every work that they produced. Castiglioni described this process with these words: "Start from scratch. Stick to common sense. Know your goals and means".

A Flos original since 1962, the Arco lamp famously links the qualities of floor and hanging lamps.