◿ MIES BY ARCHIZOOM

Designed by Archizoom Associati for Poltronova in 1969, the Mies armchair begins with an unexpected idea: turning a material associated with industrial conveyor belts into a place to sit.

A strip of natural para rubber, strong and elastic, is stretched across a geometric chrome-plated steel structure, reducing the conventional armchair to a few essential elements. In deliberate contrast with the industrial character of the seat, the headrest is upholstered in ponyskin.
The name Mies emphasizes the resemblance of its rigorous structure to the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, conceived as a tribute to the great master who died in the same year, 1969.

Alongside the armchair, Poltronova presented something even more unexpected: a matching luminous footrest, combining the same steel structure and ponyskin upholstery with light. Together, the two pieces blur the boundaries between furniture, industrial materials and the domestic landscape.
Born from the experimental language of Archizoom Associati, Mies transforms an industrial component into a provocative piece of furniture: essential in construction, unconventional in material, and unmistakably Poltronova.

✧ Mies armchair and luminous footrest are produced by Poltronova.

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✧ Everyday object. Larger than life.

Meet Joe.

Designed by De Pas, D’Urbino and Lomazzi for Poltronova in 1970, Joe transforms one of the most recognizable objects in American culture, the baseball glove, into an unexpectedly generous place to sit.

Its name is a tribute to Joe DiMaggio, the legendary baseball player who had already transcended sport to become an American cultural icon.
Inspired by the visual language of Pop Art, the designers took something familiar and changed its scale completely. The glove became monumental. The object became furniture. And something associated with the baseball field suddenly entered the domestic interior.

That shift in scale is what gives Joe its unmistakable presence.
Large, soft and immediately recognizable, the chair invites interaction almost instinctively. You don’t simply look at Joe. You climb into it, sit inside it, move with it. Hidden wheels underneath make its oversized form unexpectedly mobile, adding another playful dimension to the experience.

More than five decades after its creation, Joe still has the ability to stop people in their tracks.
Perhaps because it sits somewhere between furniture, sculpture and cultural memory.

Or perhaps because the best design can take something everyone knows and make us see it completely differently.

☞ Joe: armchair by De Pas, D’Urbino, Lomazzi. Poltronova. 1970.
⚾︎ Joe Ball: footrest by D’Urbino, Lomazzi. Poltronova. 2020.

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🐚 GHERPE TABLE LAMP BY SUPERSTUDIO

Designed by Superstudio for Poltronova in 1968, Gherpe is a table lamp that refuses to behave like a conventional lighting object. Its sculptural form recalls the shell of a marine creature, while its use of methacrylate, an industrial material, places it somewhere between the organic and the artificial.

Conceived during Superstudio’s experimental research into objects and domestic space, Gherpe is also an early example of interactive lighting design. Rather than simply providing illumination, the lamp establishes a relationship with the user: its overlapping methacrylate elements filter and transform the light, making Gherpe a luminous presence that changes according to how it is experienced.

Functional yet deliberately unconventional, Gherpe turns a familiar typology—the table lamp—into something ambiguous, playful and almost alive. A small luminous creature that sits within a room rather than simply lighting it.

Produced in Italy by Poltronova, Gherpe remains a distinctive expression of Superstudio’s Radical Design research, where technology, artificial materials and imagination challenged conventional ideas of furniture and everyday objects.

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✲ Superonda: dynamic sofa by Archizoom Associati for Poltronova, 1967

Superonda: designed without a conventional frame, legs or backrest, a sofa challenging the established typology of upholstered furniture.

Superonda is composed of two polyurethane elements cut from a single block and can be arranged in different configurations.
One very unapologetic idea of living.

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REGOLO: ARMCHAIR / SOFA 📏

Designed by Gianfranco Fini for Poltronova and first introduced in 1975, Regolo is a modular seating system that turns Fini’s fascination with regularity, geometry and seriality into furniture. An armchair, a two-seater or a three-seater sofa: the same essential architectural structure expands according to the space around it.

But Regolo was never conceived to be seen only from the front. Integrated storage compartments run along the sides and back, designed primarily to hold books and objects. This makes the sofa completely accessible from every side and particularly suited to freestanding placement at the center of a room—a piece of furniture that organizes the space around itself rather than simply occupying a wall.

Originally made in pine, today Regolo is reissued by Poltronova with a solid ash wood frame, selected for greater stability and durability, while its generous polyurethane-padded cushions balance the rigorous geometry of the structure with comfort.

Available as a 100 cm armchair, 160 cm two-seater sofa or 220 cm three-seater sofa, Regolo can be upholstered in three different materials: velour, linen or recycled wool. The current palette includes [velour] Mont Blanc / Tuscan sand / wolf gray / light lilac, [linen] flax / celadon / sky blue / old pink and [recycled wool] cream / teal / ocean / taupe
A sofa. A bookcase. A small piece of architecture.
Regolo still plays by its own rules.

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🌼 PASSIFLORA TABLE LAMP BY SUPERSTUDIO

Designed by Superstudio for Poltronova in 1967, Passiflora is a table lamp that imagines a flower growing into a luminous column. Its distorted silhouette floats between the organic and the artificial, challenging the familiar language of lighting and turning an everyday object into an ambiguous presence.

The design originates from a painted cardboard prototype created for the legendary Superarchitettura exhibition in 1966, a manifesto of the emerging Italian Radical Design movement. For Poltronova, cardboard was replaced by a light-permeable material, transforming the original form into the luminous object produced today.

More than an object to illuminate a room, Passiflora creates an atmosphere—transforming light into emotion. Its truncated, almost architectural form plays with scale and perception, while its deliberately artificial interpretation of nature reflects Superstudio’s wider questioning of conventional ideas of objects, interiors and domestic space.

Produced in Italy by Poltronova, Passiflora remains one of the most distinctive examples of Superstudio’s Radical Design, where function, imagery and experimentation come together in a light that is anything but ordinary.

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