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The material mastery of Angelo Mangiarotti

From precast concrete structures to marble furniture, Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti’s designs stretched the boundaries of sculpture

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The late Italian architect and industrial designer Angelo Mangiarotti. Photo: courtesy Angelo Mangiarotti Foundation

Published: 3:00am, 3 Apr 2025

I can’t think of many architects or designers as particularly attuned to the attributes of specific materials as the slightly overlooked Angelo Mangiarotti (1921-2012). This was someone who really understood what different materials could and couldn’t do, and delighted in pushing them to the sculptural limit.

Angelo Mangiarotti (1921-2012) in his studio. Photo: courtesy Molteni Museum

As an architect, he is probably best remembered for his precast concrete industrial structures. In other words, big chunks of concrete cast off-site and assembled like oversized building blocks to create large structures such as cheap factory buildings (usually) or spectacular churches (occasionally). Precast concrete structures don’t have to be, and rarely are, pretty or elegant, but the Italian had the heart of a sculptor and his were.

They communicate his profound understanding of what this new material and technology could achieve, bringing an elegance and fluidity to structures that, created simply on a tight budget for modest buildings, would otherwise have been soul crushingly boring concrete boxes.

His Eros marble furniture, the design for which he is perhaps best known, exploits the specific characteristics – and limits – of marble with such modesty and economy of expression that these sculptural pieces have remained in production since they were designed in 1971. Each piece is simply composed of two pieces: the conical base is inserted up through the punctured top and the weight of the top holds everything together without any need for fixing.

A sculptural dining table from Angelo Mangiarotti’s Eros series, designed in 1971. Photo: courtesy Modest Furniture gallery

His Giogali system of Murano glass chandeliers for Vistosi, in production since 1967, are his clever modern take on traditional Venetian chandeliers. His version (system) comprised simple little bent glass rod loops that hang off each other to form chandeliers of just about any shape.

In 1956 Mangiarotti designed a small collection of injection-moulded plastic Secticon table clocks for the Swiss luxury clockmaker Portescap, using an extremely precise electronic movement. Examples of this rare clock are in the permanent collections of the British Museum, Triennale di Milano and the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt.

The Secticon table clock, designed by Angelo Mangiarotti for Portescap. Photo: Eugene Chan

The design was radical: the sculptural, flowing plastic body (front and back shells that clip together almost seamlessly) could not have been produced before this. He took advantage of the newest moulding technology and must have suffered through a tedious prototyping phase to get it right. In fact, I’m not sure that clock could be produced, even today, using any other material than the plastic that he chose.

The then newest available electronic mechanism – responsible for the clock movement – was housed in transparent plastic to show it off when you changed the battery.

And the form? Wow… It looks like it should have been used in the set design for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the seminal science fiction film from 1968 that probably best defines what we think of as futuristic design – a dozen years after this clock was launched.

This thing rocketed into 1956 like a time traveller from the distant future.

The material mastery of Angelo Mangiarotti

From precast concrete structures to marble furniture, Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti’s designs stretched the boundaries of sculpture

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