Osvaldo Borsani for Tecno 'E22' Wall Unit or Bookcase
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This sleek, wall-mounted shelving unit, crafted from wood and metal, offers a refined solution for home or office furnishing. Designed by Osvaldo Borsani, it combines functionality with a clean, modern aesthetic. The structure is supported by elegant metal profiles, providing both stability and visual lightness.
Osvaldo Borsani (1911-1985) was an Italian designer and architect, raised by a family of fine furniture makers in Varedo. At the age of 16, he joined his father’s furniture shop, the Atelier di Varedo, which was fully engaged in designing and furnishing homes inspired by the Italian Art Deco movement. The designer of the atelier was the Italian architect Gino Maggioni (1898-1955) who was known for his Viennese Jugendstil orientation of the early 20th century. In the 1930s, he graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and Politecnico di Milano, where he studied Fine Arts and Architecture respectively. In 1932, the family company was renamed ‘Arredamenti Borsani’ and opened its first studio in Milan. During this period, he encountered Avant-Garde artists of various artistic disciplines like Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Agenore Fabbri (1911-1998), Aligi Sassu (1912-2000), Roberto Crippa (1921-1972), Fausto Melotti (1901-1986), Arnaldo Pomodoro (1926-) and Giò Pomodoro (1930-2002). These collaborations resulted in the creation of furniture and interior design projects with a high-level of craftsmanship and artistry. In 1953, Borsani founded together with his twin brother Fulgenzio Borsani ‘Tecno’, a design and manufacturing company that produced items based on mechanical innovations and refined technicality. The ‘P40’ adjustable lounge chair (1953) has become the ideological manifesto of Borsani's Tecno program, and still remains the best known, exemplary piece in the Tecno catalogue. Other iconic works that were produced by Tecno were created by Gio Ponti (1891-1979), Vico cham (1920-2006), Carlo de Carli (1910-1999), Gae Aulenti (1927-2012), and many other influential Italian designers. Osvaldo Borsani died in 1985 in Milan. His diverse and sophisticated oeuvre is to be found in permanent collections, such as of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Neue Sammlung in Munich, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Trienalle di Milano Museum.
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From a Varedo workshop to Tecno's industrial stage
Borsani joined his father's Varedo workshop as a teenager and studied architecture in Milan, absorbing the rationalist language of Muzio, De Finetti and Portaluppi — and, at one remove, the Central European modernism of Adolf Loos. While still a student, he co-designed the experimental Casa Minima with Alessandro Cairoli and G.B. Varisco for the 1933 Triennale; over the following decade he designed Villa Borsani for his family, completed in the mid-1940s and still a remarkably complete surviving example of the period's integrated Milanese approach to architecture and interiors.
In 1953 he founded Tecno with Fulgenzio — Osvaldo directing design, Fulgenzio the business — and Osvaldo's fascination with mechanism and adjustability produced enduring icons such as the P40 reclining armchair and D70 convertible sofa, helping establish Tecno within the international culture of postwar Italian design.
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