Everything Is Permissible As Long As It Is Fantastic

There might be no greater gift than being able to inspire others. Here three great Italians who I found - and find - a great inspiration, as designers and as humans:

Achille Castiglioni, 1918-2002. I was lucky enough to meet him in person when I was a student. He was humorous, charming, and modest despite the considerable fame he had at the time, having won the Compasso d´Oro, back then the most prestigious design prize on the planet, seven times. The lightness, simplicity and ingenuity of his designs remains unmatched - that is, not that kind of "simplicity" which is simple for the sake of being hip which is often found nowadays, no, a natural simplicity which instantly convinces without the need of explanation (as all great art).

Carlo Scarpa, 1906-1978. One of the great architects of all times, despite never having been officially recognized as an architect (that much to accreditation schemes). Like all great artists, he was not part of any "ism" - he just practiced architecture, although his work clearly eludes what is commonly considered "architecture" today. His sense of space, material, light, and detail is impossible to describe in words - you have to travel to Asolo and visit the Tomba Brion-Vega to experience it yourself. He himself said about it: "I consider this work, if you permit me, to be rather good and which will get better over time. I have tried to put some poetic imagination into it, though not in order to create poetic architecture but to make a certain kind of architecture that could emanate a sense of formal poetry...."
I made some pictures of the Tomba here.

Carlo Mollino, 1905-1973. The man who said "Everything is permissible as long as it is fantastic." He refused rationalism and embraced life, designing cars and furniture with dynamic curves and volumes full of tension, expressive and nearly biological, yet reduced to what is just necessary to express design and structure as an adaptation to the forces of gravity. Again a body of work which escapes a proper description: it speaks for itself.