look back at the late architect and designer's radical legacy

REMEMBERING PIETRO DEROSSI (1933–2025)

Emblematic architect and designer Pietro Derossi passed away on September 5th, 2025, at the age of 92. A pioneering figure of Italian radical design, the Turin-born visionary shaped contemporary culture with works ranging from the playful Pratone seat for Gufram to the influential nightlife interiors of the 1960s and 1970s. To honor his legacy, designboom looks back at Derossi’s life and career — from his formative years to the milestones and iconic works that continue to inspire today.

The stage and audio-visual system inside Piper, Turin, designed by Pietro Derossi, Giorgio Ceretti and Riccardo Rosso, 1966. © Pietro Derossi

EARLY STUDIES AND ACADEMIC FORMATION

Born in Turin in 1933, Pietro Derossi (find more here) tudied at the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic of Turin, where he graduated before beginning a lifelong dialogue between design practice and academic research. Early in his career, he combined professional projects with teaching, becoming a full professor of architectural design at the Polytechnic of Milan and later holding visiting and contract positions at leading institutions including the Architectural Association in London, Pratt Institute and Columbia University in New York, the Polytechnic of Lausanne, and the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. His writings and projects were widely published in both Italian and international journals, establishing him as a voice of influence within the architectural discourse of his time.

portrait of Pietro Derossi | image via @randcompanynyc

Designing the Night

From the mid-1960s, Derossi’s career took on a radical and collaborative direction with the founding of the Strum Group, alongside Giorgio Ceretti and Riccardo Rosso. They approached architecture and design as forms of social and political participation, challenging the conventions of modernism with an experimental and irreverent spirit. Derossi channeled this approach into the Italian nightlife scene, transforming venues such as the Piper Club in Turin and L’Altro Mondo in Rimini into radical laboratories of sound, light, and space. These clubs were more than entertainment venues — they became platforms where architecture intersected with politics, art, and youth culture during a period of profound upheaval. Dissatisfied with the limits of post-war modernism, Derossi and his peers in the Radical Design movement — alongside groups like Superstudio, UFO, and Gruppo 9999 — turned discotheques into experimental stages for multimedia environments, reconfigurable furnishings, and immersive technologies. In doing so, Derossi helped define a new kind of architecture that dissolved disciplinary boundaries and transformed nightlife into a theater of creativity and collective participation.

Derossi channeled his approach into the Italian nightlife scene | image via Derossi Associati

From Radical Furniture to Lasting Architecture

At the same time, Derossi extended his radical ethos into furniture design. Together with Ceretti, Rosso, and artist Piero Gilardi, he pioneered the use of polyurethane foam to create provocative, anti-design objects for the Italian manufacturer Gufram. Among these, the iconic PRATONE (1971) remains one of the most emblematic pieces in contemporary design. A playful field of oversized, yielding ‘grass’ stalks, the seat reimagined sitting as a surreal and communal experience, blurring the lines between nature and artifice. PRATONE quickly became a global symbol of radical design, appearing on the cover of the catalogue for MoMA’s landmark 1972 exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. Now part of the collections of the Vitra Design Museum, MoMA, and other international institutions, PRATONE has been celebrated as a masterpiece of irreverence and imagination — a status reaffirmed in 2021 with the SUPERPRATONE, a towering inflatable installation in Milan commemorating its 50th anniversary.

In 1994, Derossi further expanded his architectural practice with the founding of Derossi Associati, alongside Paolo and Davide Derossi. The studio went on to complete major projects including housing for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin and numerous public and cultural buildings, cementing Pietro Derossi’s lasting influence on Italian architecture and design.

Pratone® , Ceretti / Derossi / Rosso, 1971. Gufram Catalogue, 1972