As a designer, his practicality and progressiveness won him awards, and his artistry in furniture design earned his pieces a place at New York’s MoMa.
Agnoli’s 9000 Sofa for Arflex, functional and lush, conceived in the late 60s and relaunched in 2021 with new fabrications and finishes, is a culmination of his mastery of curves.
The sectional sofa, armchair and pouffe pieces fold in on themselves, sit together, curve away. A boxy frame is engulfed in soft wedges of textile, fitted and fanned around corners.
Agnoli — already training as a painter when he moved into architecture and then into design — didn’t believe in straight lines or the status quo.
For the 9000 he worked with Arflex, a group testing technological advances to meet furniture design demands.
Arflex was founded as a ‘flexible furniture’ firm in 1947, by a team that included both an engineer and a money man fresh from Pirelli, the tyre manufacturing kings.
They worked together with young architect Marco Zanuso and began to try out industrial rubber and other elements for application in the furniture market.
After a couple of years of experimentation, Arflex presented to the public for the first time in 1951 at the IX Triennale in Milan.
This early entrance into the avant garde saw Arflex winning medals celebrating its manufacturing philosophy, and a commitment to deep research to create work both technologically and aesthetically outstanding drew admirers and encouraged artistic collaboration.
Modular furniture seldom goes out of style. It’s the ultimate reinvention aid, adaptable to suit changing needs and tastes. And designers have embraced modern modular enough times over the years that the fixtures and furnishings of today can find complementary items in a neo-minimalist home, a curated vintage collection or retro-modernist room.
