Cabina dell'Elba

Prototype

Aldo Rossi, 1980

The Cabina dell’Elba was Aldo Rossi’s first furniture project for Molteni&C. A new professional encounter arose in the late 1970s, thanks to the intuition of Luca Meda, art director and designer for the Molteni Group, who put Rossi in contact with the company in Giussano.

Design Aldo Rossi, 1980

After the construction of the Molteni family funeral chapel, begun between 1980 and 1982 and completed in the mid-1980s, Carlo, Luigi and Piero Molteni introduced the architect to a field he had never worked in before: designer furniture. Right from the project for the Cabina dell’Elba, one can understand Rossi’s attitude toward the creation of furniture as domestic architecture.Thus was created a wardrobe that adopted the form of a cabana (changing cabin, beach hut). Presented at the Salone del Mobile in 1980, the Cabina dell’Elba remains a prototype of which only four versions were produced.

Design

Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi (Milan, May 3, 1931 - Milan, September 4, 1997) was one of the greatest Italian architects of the 1980’s. His Molteni Group collaboration marked his passage from masterful architect to an industrial designer. He created models and furnishings for the Museum of Maastricht, the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa and the reconstruction of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Aldo Rossi designed items that were destined to become icons of the 20th century.

Complete biography

“Perhaps it is snobbery but the more I see the world, the more I feel being a citizen of it and the more I want to go back to the old way of things”

Aldo Rossi