An Open Work

The first English-language publication to focus on the iconic architect-designer Marco Zanuso, revealing his design approach through a narrated tour of his 1960s Milan apartment.

An Open Work investigates the celebrated, enigmatic Italian architect-designer Marco Zanuso (1919–2001). Zanuso’s buildings were widely recognized in Italy, and today his object and furniture designs, which won many awards in their time, can be found in prestigious museums worldwide, yet a lacuna has persisted in the literature. This beautifully written, lavishly illustrated book opens the door to Zanuso’s acclaimed work, specifically his dual focus on architecture and industrial design, a form of practice that many architects in Milan pursued as the Italian economy rebounded in a surge of industrialization after World War II.

Shantel Blakely takes as principal object of study for the book Zanuso’s midcentury family apartment in Milan, a work of architecture that was furnished with the architect's own designs. As Blakely takes the reader from one room in the apartment to the next, detailing floorplans chapter by chapter, objects within each room become a point of departure for explorations of Zanuso’s work in broader terms. This cumulative, descriptive method brings to light analogies, resemblances, and other parallels among Zanuso’s objects at the building, furniture, and object scale—offering an inspired reading of his work while modeling a new way to write architectural and design history.