Mezzadro Stool

The " Mezzadro " stool is a design classic created by the two brothers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni. As early as 1957, they presented the world with the first prototype of their stool, which has been manufactured by Zanotta since 1970. The seat of this extraordinary cantilever stool is a simple tractor seat, which the designers mounted on a curved steel frame using a wing screw. A wooden base serves as an additional support for the structure. Each of the parts serves a structural function, and nothing about “ Mezzadro ” is superfluous. At the same time, the stool’s design is outstanding and innovative, even drawing parallels to artistic sculpture. Mezzadro , along with the Sella stool—for which the Castiglioni brothers repurposed a bicycle saddle as the seat—is considered perhaps the most extreme design by this creative duo. It is the perfect and imaginative symbiosis of form and function and is considered an exemplary example of so-called Radical Design, a movement in Italian design that, in the 1960s and 1970s 20., broke away from the doctrine of functionalism and established taste — embodied in Italy by Bel Design —. The “ Mezzadro ” stool by Zanotta is also available in aluminum, orange, yellow, white, and black.