Magis
Magis was established in 1976 in the north east of Italy, one of Europe’s most dynamic industrial areas. It was founded by Eugenio Perazza, “a businessman who asks clear design questions that already provide a significant part of the answer, particularly when carefully formulated together with a talented designer” (Giampiero Bosoni, Domus 941, November 2010). The company is a prominent lodestar in the design world.
Its success is based on the desire to provide a broad swathe of users with access to high functional and technological quality products for the home, developed in partnership with major international designers, with a vision of the resulting products that is ethical and poetic as well as aesthetic.
Stefano Giovannoni, Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Marc Newson, Ron Arad, Naoto Fukasawa, Marcel Wanders, Philippe Starck, Zaha Hadid and Thomas Heatherwick are just some of the designers that have worked with Magis, creating a vast collection of pieces, each with its own story to tell and its own character to express, be it in domestic settings or collective spaces.
Magis products are dedicated to their international public (exports account for some 85% of production), and are all 100% “Made in Italy”: a guarantee of high quality, in line with the firm’s tradition, which has developed from its craftsmanship and cultural roots, through the evolving styles and industrial growth of the eighties and nineties, and continues to comprise one of the company’s greatest and most valuable assets.
In early 2010, Magis moved to a new production site in Torre di Mosto (near Venice) with a total meterage of 98,000 m², including two separate buildings: the first, measuring 15,000 square meters, houses the logistics and assembly departments, the other, measuring 3,500 square meters, was made for the offices and a showroom, which exhibits all the most iconic products from the collection. Featured pieces range from Stefano Giovannoni’s Bombo, possibly one of the most frequently imitated products in the history of design, to Ronan & Erwan Bourollec’s Steelwood Chair, awarded the ADI Compasso d’Oro in 2011, to the children’s collection Me Too, developed together with famous designers and experts in the field of education. In 2008 Trioli (designed by Eero Aarnio) from the Me Too collection also won the Compasso D’Oro, while in 2014 the same highly prestigious award was bestowed upon Spun, designed by Thomas Heatherwick.
In addition to receiving this and many, many other major accolades in the design arena, Magis products have become part of the permanent collections of museums including the MoMA in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
