Cini Boeri

b. Italy, 1924

Working as an architect and industrial designer, Cini Boeri has made a career of exploring the ideas of expandability and pliability across several disciplines. After graduating from Politecnico di Milano, she collaborated on several projects with Marco Zanuso. Boeri’s architecture, furniture, and lighting designs incorporate a broad spectrum of materials including formless foam and bent glass.

Boeri was a contributing designer for Gavina SpA, an Italian design firm acquired by Knoll in 1968. After the acquisition, Knoll introduced many Gavina Group designs into the Knoll portfolio, including Boeri’s Lunario table. The Gradual Lounge, her first piece designed specifically for Knoll, was an innovative, adjustable lounge system. Boeri later recalled that she, “tried to do the design in a most vigorous and strict manner. It was a system, a new way to produce a sofa in plastic. It was assembled of many seats with the possibility to move them, making a circle larger or smaller for a conversation.”

Boeri’s Brigadier sofa was put into production by Knoll in 1978. A departure from many of her previous designs, the Brigadier featured rigid side and back panels painted in high-gloss colors but still retained Boeri’s signature soft upholstery. Throughout the 1970s, Boeri designed showrooms for Knoll in France, Germany, Italy and California. Today, she heads an architecture studio in Milan. Boeri returned to Knoll in 2008 to introduce the Cini Boeri Lounge Collection.