Carlo Bartoli, born in 1931, belongs to that generation who were teenagers at the end of the war: learning from Italian masters of architecture and design of that unsettled period, such as friend and project partner Luciano Baldessari, and Marcello Nizzoli, he graduated in Milano where he opened his practice in 1960. Bartoli started with architecture and interiors, but when one of the recurrent crisis in the building industry left him short of work, he focused on furniture design. Working first on objects he himself needed, he developed his design method: starting form the identification of the limits and translating simplicity into culture.

His cooperation with were-to-be reference design brands, led to important products such as the Gaia armchair by Arflex – in the permanent collection at the MOMA in New York and the design collection of the Milano Triennale – and the 4875 chair for Kartell, the first chair in the world to be entirely made of polypropylene, shown in the design collection of the National Arts Museum, Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Designer of innumerable items for Italian and foreign design brands, Carlo Bartoli was invited to show his works at the Triennale in Milano, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the Stadt Museum in Köln and in New York, Prague, Hong Kong, Athens, Buenos Aires, and taught at the Milano Polytechnic University and the ISIA in Firenze and Roma.
His designs, based on essentiality and the research for balance, have been awarded the XXI Compasso d’Oro ADI in 2008 and the Materialica Design Award (R606Uno chair designed with Fauciglietti Engineering for Segis), the I.D. Design Distinction Award, the Apex Product Design Award, the Red Dot – Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen and IF Award for Good Industrial Design (Breeze armchair for Segis), IF Award (Tube sofa for Rossi di Albizzate) and the 2010 Good Design Award (Sol table for Bonaldo).

A deep understanding of the context and the willingness to use technologies creatively to get “good” obiects, produced items which in several cases have also been market succecces.
The taste for precision and the knowledge of technology led him to design also several small items as handles, where the attention for detail is essential.

Since 1999 Bartoli Design, team comprised of Carlo, Paolo and Anna Bartoli, continue the design research that was begun by Carlo Bartoli in 1960, also taking care of the art directions for some companies and developing architecture projects, environmental issues, urban planning and renewal of town areas.
But their main acitivity is still and steadily industrial design: in the enduring experiment over chairs, despite over one hundred have Bartoli’s signature, the search for the archetype is still ongoing.

Second Hand: about 50% online;
Collectors Items: about 25% online;
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