( Milan, Italy 丨 1918 - 2002 )

Achille Castiglioni was an Italian designer of furniture, lighting, radiograms and other interior objects.

Born in Milan, Achille Castiglioni was the third son of the sculptor Giannino Castiglioni, and both of his elder brothers were architects. In 1937 he started the study of architecture in the Politecnico di Milano. After World War II, he joined the architecural design practice with his brothers. Livio Castiglioni left the practice in 1952, but Achille and Pier Giacomo teamed together until 1968.

In the exhibition brochure for Design!, the 1997 monographic exhibition about Castiglioni's work at MoMA, Paola Antonelli writes: "Castiglioni loves paradoxes and the new perception and wisdom they can engender. One example is the Sella (saddle), the pivoting stool designed with Pier Giacomo in 1957, which garnered the Castiglionis an incongruous "Dadaist" label because of its use of an already existing, everyday object in an unexpected context."