Matteo Thun

Architect; Interior Designer; Product/Industrial Designer; Lighting Designer / Italy / Matteo Thun & Partners

www.matteothun.com

Architect and designer Matteo Thun, born in Bolzano, Italy (1952), studied at the Academy of Salzburg with Oskar Kokoschka and at the University of Florence. In Milan, with Ettore Sottsass, he founded the Memphis group and was a partner of Sottsass Associati from 1980 to 1984. He taught design from 1983 to 2000 at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst). From 1990 to 1993 he served as art director for Swatch before opening his own office in Milan in 1984.

In 2001 he founded Matteo Thun & Partners, working internationally on architectural, interior, and product design projects, ranging from a small to large scale, in collaboration with partners Luca Colombo, Herbert Rathmaier, and Antonio Rodriguez. The office includes a team of 50 international professionals, architects, interior designers, product designers, and graphic designers. The continuous interdisciplinary challenge is the successful formula of the office.

Matteo Thun has won the ADI Compasso d’Oro Award for design excellence three times as well as the Wallpaper* Design Award in 2010. The recipient of many other awards, Thun was given the Interior Innovation Award by the German Design Council in 2013; won the Good Design Award in 2011 for Onto, designed for Duravit; the Simon Taylor Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011 from  Designer Magazine; and the Good Design Award in 2012 for the Savoy line and the Green Good Design Award in 2011  for the Isy System—both designed for Zucchetti. Thun’s Side Hotel in Hamburg was chosen as Hotel of the Year in 2001, the Vigilius mountain resort won the Wallpaper* Design Award in 2004, and the Radisson SAS Frankfurt was recognized by Worldwide Hospitality Awards as the best hotel opened in 2005. He was awarded the Prix Acier for the Hugo Boss Strategic Business Unit in Switzerland in 2007.

Matteo Thun was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in New York in December 2004 and is a member of RIBA, the Royal Association of British Architects.

In April 2013, Hatje Cantz published Matteo Thun: The Index Book, a comprehensive selection of Matteo Thun's architecture and product design achievements from his earliest works to the present.

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