A Beautiful Bare-Bones Radio, Designed by an Architect Who Strove for Simplicity
The Italian furniture company Cassina has manufactured Franco Albini’s Radio in Cristallo in the exact proportions as the original.
By Brian Libby
December 2, 2021
2 minute read
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In 1938, Italian architect Franco Albini received a traditional wood-encased radio as a wedding gift—and proceeded to take it apart. He stripped down what he saw as a clumsy, cumbersome device, then reassembled it to showcase only the essential electric parts, which he suspended between two sheets of glass to create a sense of lightness and simplicity—both hallmarks of the late architect’s neorationalist design approach. The resulting object, called Radio in Cristallo, was unveiled two years later at Wohnbedarf’s modern furniture competition in Zurich, but was never put into production—until now.